This paper examines how impatience interacts with inequalities in economic development. We consider two distinct groups of households (i.e., with intrinsic inequality), and show that (i) under decreasing marginal impatience (DMI), an unequal society may be preferable for poor households; (ii)...

This paper examines how impatience interacts with inequalities in economic development. We consider two distinct groups of households (i.e., with intrinsic inequality), and show that (i) under decreasing marginal impatience (DMI), an unequal society may be preferable for poor households; (ii)...

The empirical literature on household savings tends to treat savings simply as the residual of income minus consumption. This paper takes a unique approach to reconstruct the cash and asset balances using detailed household transaction data on farm households in rural India and generates monthly...

The present study tests the twin hypotheses, namely, (a) the poverty nutrition trap hypothesis that wages affect nutritional status, and (b) the activity hypothesis that activity intensity affects adult nutrition as measured by the Body Mass Index (BMI) in the context of India. The analyses draw...

In response to the Deaton and Dreze (2009) explanation of a downward shift in the calorie Engel curve in terms of lower requirements due to health improvements and lower activity levels in India, we develop an alternative explanation embedded in a standard demand theory framework, with food...

Our study examines changes in diets over the period 1993-2009. Diets have shifted away from cereals towards higher consumption of fruits, vegetables, oils and livestock products. Using household data, a food diversity index (FDI) is constructed, based on five food commodities. Significant price...

The objective of the present study is to examine whether household access to microfinance reduces poverty. Using national household data from India, treatment effects model is employed to estimate the poverty-reducing effects of MFIs loans for productive purposes, such as investment in...