If people's labor-supply decisions are taken at the level of the household, it is natural to expect aggregate demand and unemployment to influence the supply curve of labor. An increase in unemployment could prompt households to send more workers out in search of work to insure against the risk...

We study informal insurance within communities, explicitly recognizing the possibility that subgroups of individuals may destabilize insurance arrangements among the larger group. We therefore consider self-enforcing risk-sharing agreements that are robust not only to single-person deviations...

This article reviews the literature on aspirations in economics, with a particular focus on socially determined aspirations. The core theory builds on two fundamental principles: (a) Aspirations can serve to inspire, but still higher aspirations can lead to frustration and resentment; and (b)...

In pre-industrial and developing economies, it is common to find (i) entire families, including children, working together in family farms or urban factories; and (ii) a positive link between a person's consumption and her productivity. This paper argues that there is a natural reason for the...

This paper studies bilateral insurance schemes across networks of individuals. While transfers are based on social norms, individuals must have the incentive to comply. We investigate the structure of self-enforcing insurance networks. Network links play two distinct and possibly conflictual...

This paper describes and analyzes the results of a unique field experiment especially designed to test the effects of the level of commitment and information available to individuals when sharing risk. We find that limiting exogenously provided commitment is associated with less risk sharing,...

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