The papers in this symposium originated in a multi-year project sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts entitled “The Moral and Social Dimensions of Microeconomic Behavior In Low-Income Communities”. This project brought together a team of 15 economists1 with the twin purposes of considering...

This paper examines the potential for sector-specific productivity growth, human capital, credit markets, and infrastructure to contribute to the development of stable, well-paid employment in rural areas of low-income countries. Particular emphasis is placed on the way that different sectors of...

From 2000 to 2014, per capita gross domestic product in Sub-Saharan Africa increased by almost 35 percent in real terms, doubling in some countries. Such progress happened while agricultural productivity growth remained low in the aggregate, despite some bright spots, and poverty reduction was...

We construct a dedicated web interface and use it to conduct a laboratory experiment to study willingness to lend and preference over borrowers in micro-finance lending. We distinguish between perceptions of transaction-related factors, such as neediness and trustworthiness, and identity-related...

Dal Bó, Foster and Putterman (2010) show experimentally that the effect of a policy may be greater when it is democratically selected than when it is exogenously imposed. In this paper we propose a new and simpler identification strategy to measure this democracy effect. We derive the...

This study examines disparities in health and nutrition among native and Syrian-refugee children in Turkey. With a view toward understanding the need for targeted programs addressing child well-being among the refugee population, we analyze, in particular, the Turkey Demographic and Health...