This paper examines the extent to which social networks among indigenous peoples have a significant effect on a variety of human capital investment and economic activities, such as school attendance and work among teenage boys and girls, and migration, welfare participation, employment status,...

This paper examines the impacts of weather shocks, defined as rainfall or growing degree days more than a standard deviation from their respective long-run means, on household consumption per capita and child height-for-age. The results reveal that the current risk-coping mechanisms are not...

The authors use the unique experimental design of the Food Support Program (Programa Apoyo Alimentario) to analyze in-kind and cash transfers in the poor rural areas of southern states of Mexico. They compare the impacts of monthly in-kind and cash transfers of equivalent value (mean share 11.5...

The authors evaluate whether increasing school resources and decentralizing management decisions at the school level improves learning in a developing country. Mexico's Quality Schools Program (PEC), following many other countries and U.S. states, offers US

As the financial crisis has spread through the world, the lack of real-time data has made it difficult to track its impact in developing countries. We use a microsimulation approach to assess the poverty and distributional effects of the crisis. In Bangladesh, Mexico, and the Philippines, we...

This paper synthesizes the results of five studies using household panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali, Mexico and Russia, which examine the extent to which households are able through formal and/or informal arrangements to insure their consumption from specific economic shocks and...