Do people conform to social norms at least partly to signal their social preferences? Using a vignette experiment, we find that parents who do not marry off their under-age daughters in Malawian villages where child marriage is prevalent are perceived as less altruistic, reciprocal, and...

In Malawi, only 5% of parents state that the right age for a woman to marry is below 18, but 42% of girls get married before they reach that legal age. We document that social image concerns are likely an important mechanism behind that wedge: where the prevalence of child marriage is high,...

Medicine theft is a leading cause of inadequate healthcare. Audits of public health supply chains suggest that up to a third of medicines go missing in low-income countries, disproportionately affecting those facing greater health risks and poverty. Despite much investment, policy-makers...

The predominance of rain-fed agricultural cultivation in Malawi, makes income and consumption to be highly seasonal for more than 80 percent of the population that largely derive their livelihoods from agriculture. Seasonality of livelihoods for the poor is bound to affect their consumption at...

The recent food crisis in Malawi has drawn stark attention to the failures of development policies over the last 40 years to create wealth and develop a robust economy or the markets on which such an economy must depend. Current market liberalisation policies have achieved at best mixed success...

There is a limited but growing literature on direct impacts of HIV/AIDS morbidity and mortality on rural household livelihoods. Less is known, however, about indirect impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural communities, allowing for market interactions between households. Thus while labour shortages are...

Medicine theft is a leading cause of inadequate healthcare. Audits of public health supply chains suggest that up to a third of medicines go missing in low-income countries, disproportionately affecting those facing greater health risks and poverty. Despite much investment, policy-makers...