Do remittances sent by overseas migrants serve as insurance for recipient households? In a study of how remittances from overseas respond to income shocks experienced by Philippine households, changes in income are found to lead to changes in remittances in the opposite direction, consistent...

A basic theoretical result is that if there is a Pareto-efficient allocation of risk across individual entities (in this case, individual household members) in a risk-sharing arrangement, individual consumption should not be affected by idiosyncratic income shocks. Data and Sample Construction...

Do remittances sent by overseas migrants serve as insurance for recipient households? This paper examines how remittances sent by overseas migrants respond to income shocks experienced by Philippine households. Because household income and remittances are jointly determined, we exploit rainfall...

This paper analyzes firm panel data to examine how export demand shocks associated with the 1997 Asian financial crisis affected Chinese exporters. We construct firm-specific exchange rate shocks based on the pre-crisis destinations of firms’ exports. Because the shocks were unanticipated and...

Can governments successfully combat bureaucratic corruption by “hiring integrity” from the private sector? This paper examines the impact of hiring private firms to collect information for government anti-corruption efforts. In the past two decades, a number of developing countries have...

Increased enforcement can lead crime to be displaced to alternative lawbreaking methods. In theory, crime displacement should respond positively to the size of profits threatened by enforcement. If enforcement displaces crime towards lawbreaking methods with lower variable costs, the overall...

Millions of households in developing countries receive financial support from family members working overseas. How do the economic prospects of overseas migrants affect origin-household investments—in particular, in child human capital and household enterprises? This paper examines Philippine...