Low aspirations can limit households’ investments and contribute to sustained poverty. Vice versa, increased aspirations can lead to investment and upward mobility. Yet how aspirations are formed is not always well understood. This paper analyzes the role of social interactions in determining...

This paper validates a recently proposed method to estimate intra-generational mobility through repeated cross-sectional surveys. The technique allows the creation of a "synthetic panel" - done by predicting future or past household income using a set of simple modeling and error structure...

While climate change is likely to increase weather risks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households' risk-management through income...

Interventions aimed at increasing the income generating capacity of the poor, such as vocational training, micro-finance or business grants, are widespread in the developing world. How to target such interventions is an open question. Many programs are self-targeted, but if perceived returns...

Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and noncognitive abilities appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic...

Using individual level employment data from Bangladesh, this paper presents empirical evidence on the relative importance of farm and urban linkages for rural nonfarm employment. The econometric results indicate that high return wage work and self-employment in nonfarm activities cluster around...