Firms in many developing countries cite macroeconomic instability and political uncertainty as major constraints to their growth. Economic theory suggests uncertainty can cause firms to delay investments until uncertainty is resolved. We conduct a randomized experiment in post-revolution Egypt...

Accurate measurement of stock levels, turnover, and profitability in microenterprises in developing countries is difficult due to the fact that the majority of these firms do not keep detailed records. We test the use of RFID tags as a means of objectively measuring stock levels and stock flow...

Until recently rigorous impact evaluations have been rare in the area of finance and private sector development. One reason for this is the perception that many policies and projects in this area lend themselves less to formal evaluations. However, a vanguard of new impact evaluations on areas...

Jensen and Miller (2001) have recently demonstrated rice and noodles to be Giffen Goods among the poor in South and North China respectively. We examine whether tortillas, the main staple in Mexico, are also a Giffen Good. The large income change due to the 1995 Peso Crisis and the large...

How much do migrants stand to gain in income from moving across borders? Answering this question is complicated by non-random selection of migrants from the general population, which makes it hard to obtain an appropriate comparison group of non-migrants. New Zealand allows a quota of Tongans to...

The impact of migration on food security and child health is likely to differ depending on whether children themselves migrate or whether they remain behind while other household members migrate. However, existing studies have not been able to examine how impacts differ in these two scenarios...

Skills and Jobs in Brazil: An Agenda for Youth is a new report focusing on the challenge of economic engagement among the Brazilian youth. In the context of a fast aging population, Brazil's greatest economic opportunity is to increase its labor productivity, especially that of youth. This...

This paper studies the effect of enforcing labor regulation in an economy with a dual labor market. The analysis uses data from Brazil, a country with a large informal sector and strict labor law, where enforcement affects mainly the degree of compliance with mandated benefits (severance pay and...