We experimentally evaluate two micro-lending schemes to finance high-value smallholder agriculture. Loans featured durations that matched crop cycles, low interest rates, dynamic repayment incentives and index insurance. In the TRAIL design, the lender incentivized a local trader to recommend...

A large body of literature attests to the growing social divide between urban residents and rural-urban migrants in China’s cities. This study uses a randomised experiment to test the effect of intergroup contact on attitudes between a group of urban adolescents and a group of rural-urban...

This study contributes in bridging the dichotomy between economic growth and business cycle paradigms by providing dynamic characterisation of the link between economic growth, risk aversion, uncertainty and variability in industrial production, consumption and investment. In a system of...

The measurement of housing affordability in Australia is reconsidered to contribute to better housing policies. The ratio approach, based on the percentage of income that is spent on housing, is the most common method of measuring housing stress, but this is applied uniformly across housing...

Using a unique panel dataset collected from rural households in Bangladesh, we examine the role of microcredit in the intra-household and inter-sectoral distribution of labour supply. The data also enables us to discuss seasonality in labour supply. We find robust evidence that the effects of...

This paper investigates how government transfers affect economic growth. Using meta-analysis techniques, we systematically review 24 primary studies with 164 estimates that examine the effect of government transfers on economic growth. After addressing heterogeneity and issues of publication...

This study explores the relationship between home ownership and subjective wellbeing in urban China. We first present a theoretical model examining the relationship between housing property rights and subjective wellbeing in China. We then test the predictions of the theoretical model using a...

We examine the relationship between sexual activities and happiness using a sample of 3800 adults from China. We establish some firm results about the contribution of sexual activities and relationships to happiness for an important country other than the United States. Our main finding is that...

This paper proposes a preference based methodology, analogous to the estimation of equivalence scales in the demographic demand literature, for the estimation of the item specific intra country PPPs (i.e. spatial prices) and inter country PPPs in a unified framework using unit records of...

How students’ non-school inputs respond to ability grouping may explain the currently mixed findings in the literature about the impacts of tracking. Using data from South Korea, where students are randomized into middle schools under the country’s equalization policy, but sorted into...