Limited attention has been paid to how well social mobility measures debated and used to study industrial countries perform in analysis of low-income settings. Following brief, selective reviews of the axiomatic and econometric literatures, three mobility concepts illustrate how properties that...

Economists have not perceived children as potential economic agents. This neglect may distort analyses of child labor supply, educational attendance and intrahousehold allocations in developing countries. Among child labor migrants from rural Karnataka boys outnumber girls and exhibit more...

The usufruct mortgage has received little attention from economists. This paper develops and analyzes a theoretical framework in which the borrower, who mortgages out, and the lender, who mortgages in, a parcel of land reach their decisions in a risky environment when credit and land markets...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate why poor people make decisions that at first sight appear irrational. The author stays within the realms of classical consumption theory, and investigates preference-based explanations. The author studies the case of rickshaw rental versus...

Was the Maoist influence during the insurgency in Nepal stronger in districts with high rates of poverty and inequality? In contrast to previous studies, we limit the analysis to the hill/mountain districts as very few terai (plains) districts were classified as Maoist. And we conduct separate...

A family survey was conducted in Nepal to investigate whether female empowerment leads to more education, in particular for girls. The relative economic power of the male and female side of the extended family was used as an instrument for female empowerment. The findings indicate, however, that...

We study the deep determinants of occupational choice, with a focus on what appears to be a particularly profitable pathway out of poverty, overseas labor migration. To what extent is this choice constrained by access to economic resources, in contrast to variation in preferences, or...

A unique family survey was conducted in Nepal to investigate the economic consequences of having a first-born girl. Women get more children, but we find no causal effect of number of children on economic outcomes. But independently of the number of children there is a positive effect on boys'...

We investigate whether historic land distribution determines stagnation or development of Indian villages. The empirical analysis is motivated by the Banerjee and Newman (1993) model of occupational choice and economic development. Family histories are collected for a random sample of 800...