Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations people face a dilemma about making individually costly but...

The world's poor -- and programs to raise their incomes -- are increasingly concentrated in fragile states. We review the evidence on what interventions work, and whether stimulating employment promotes social stability. Skills training and microfinance have shown little impact on poverty or...

This study examines the impact of the Sierra Leone civil war on household expenditure inequality. The paper exploits three rounds of household survey data for Sierra Leone in an attempt to estimate the impact of the conflict on the distribution of household welfare over both short-run and...

The relationship between inequality and crime has been of long-standing interest to social scientists of various disciplines. While theorical work from both economics and sociology postulates a positive link between the two, the empirical evidence is rather inconclusive and typically focuses on...

This paper develops a model of social interactions and endogenous poverty traps. The key idea is captured in a framework in which the likelihood of future social interactions with members of one's group is partly determined by group-specific investments made by individuals. I prove three main...

This paper develops a model of social interactions and endogenous poverty traps. The key idea is captured in a framework in which the likelihood of future social interactions with members of one%u2019s group is partly determined by group-specific investments made by individuals. I prove three...