Common wisdom as well as sound analytical arguments suggest that stronger punishment of deviant behavior meted out by a principal typically prompts the agents to better conform with his objectives. Addressing the specific issue of donor-beneficiary relationships in the context of participatory...

Common wisdom as well as well-grounded analytical arguments suggest that stronger punishment of deviant behavior meted out by a principal typically prompts the agents to better conform with his objectives. Addressing the specific issue of donor-beneficiary relationships in the context of...

If we understand well the individualization of land tenure rules under conditions of growing land scarcity and increased market integration, much less is known about the mode of evolution of the farm-cum-family units possessing the land. Inspired by first-hand evidence from West Africa, this...

During the last two decades, economists have paid increasing attention to the role of informal risk-sharing arrangements as a privileged way through which traditional rural communities can achieve a significant degree of protection against income fluctuations and other hazards beyond their...

This article proposes an original theory of marriage payments based on insights gained from firsthand information collected in the Senegal River valley. This theory postulates that decisions about the bride-price, which are made by the bride's father, take into account the likely effects of the...

Aid coordination is a constant theme of discussion among national and international aid agencies in their search for more effectiveness and efficiency in delivering development assistance. This paper seeks to clarify some of the arguments currently made in support of aid coordination, and to...

In Senegal we encountered a situation in which a minority group of migrant fishermen had completely different sets of expectations regarding a collective action depending on the location where they operated. In one village expectations were pessimistic, while in the other village they were...

We analyze the individualization of farm units in Mali in the sense of a transformation of purely collective farms into mixed units in which private plots coexist with collective fields. Since a moral-hazard-in-team problem plagues production on the latter and the household head extracts his...