In this paper we focus on the timing of marriages of women, whose marriages are associated with bride wealth payments, which are transfers from (the family of) the groom to the bride's family. Unmarried daughters could therefore be considered assets who, at times of need, can be cashed in. We...

The test on the presence of full insurance that is commonly employed does not take intoaccount that households also rely on buffer stocks to shield their consumption from incomeshocks. In this paper a test is developed that deals with this omission. It is shown that in thepresence of partial...

A model is developed for peasant households in land abundant areas who choose between two technologies for land preparation: a manual one and one using draught animals. For draught a minimum number of animals is required so that a technological non convexity exists. It follows that certain...