This paper explores the two-way relationships between Economic Growth (EG) and Human Development (HD), building on an earlier work by Ranis, Stewart, and Ramirez (2000). Here, we show that HD is not only a product of EG but also an important input to it. The paper develops new empirical...

We explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption. In our panel sample, adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent. We find that, while shocks reduce consumption by 7 percent for nonusers, the...

The global expansion of urban slums poses questions for economic research as well as problems for policymakers. We provide evidence that the type of poverty observed in contemporary slums of the developing world is characteristic of that described in the literature on poverty traps. We document...

Access to credit is important for the productivity and overall welfare of farmers in developing countries. We present a theoretical framework which shows that a change in the mode of shipping (from air to sea) in the Ghanaian pineapple industry made it profitable for pineapple exporters to...

This paper investigates an empirical puzzle in technology adoption for developing countries: the low adoption rates of technologies like hybrid maize that increase average farm profits dramatically. I offer a simple explanation for this: benefits and costs of technologies are heterogeneous, so...

This paper examines a well known empirical puzzle in the literature on technology adoption: despite the potential of technologies to increase returns dramatically, a significant fraction of households do not use these technologies. I study the use of hybrid maize and fertilizer in Kenya, where...

Mobile money allows households in Kenya to spread risk more efficiently. In this paper we show that these efficiencies are achieved through deeper financial integration and expanded informal networks. Active networks are more geographically dispersed and support more reciprocal financial...

Summary This paper explores the two-way relationship between economic growth (EG) and human development (HD). We develop panel data strategies to estimate the strength of these relationships and find that HD plays an essential role in determining growth trajectories (our measure of sustained...