Most risk-sharing tests on developing country data are conducted at the level of the village; generally, the full risk-sharing hypothesis is rejected. This paper uses detailed data on all insurance networks within a village in Tanzania; networks are not clustered but largely overlapping. We test...

We examine the effect of shocks to teacher inputs on child performance in school. We start with a household optimization framework where parents spend optimally in response to teacher and other school inputs. This helps to isolate the impact of teachers from other inputs. As a proxy measure for...

Usage of health facilities in Ethiopia is among the lowest in the world; raising usage rates is probably critical for improving health outcomes. The government has diagnosed the principal problem as the lack of primary health facilities and is devoting a large share of the health budget to...

The paper examines the effects of reform and structural adjustment on the urban labour market in Ethiopia using a combination of cross-section and panel data based on surveys conducted both pre- and post- reform. During this period Ethiopia has seen impressive growth in GDP but little in the way...

Standard poverty analysis makes statements about deprivation after the veil of uncertainty has been lifted. Nonetheless, the term `vulnerability` has been used as a tool to remark that uncertainty and risk do matter. In this paper, we define `vulnerability to poverty` as the magnitude of the...

This paper provides evidence from one of the poorest countries of the world that the institutions of property rights matter for efficiency, investment and growth. With all land state-owned, the threat of land redistribution never appears far off the agenda. Land rental and leasing have been made...

Most studies fail to find an impact of school inputs on outcomes such as test scores. We argue that this might be a consequence of ignoring the possibility that households respond optimally to changes in school inputs and thus obscure the real effect of such provision on cognitive achievement....

This paper examines the contractual practices of African manufacturing firms using survey data collected in Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Descriptive statistics and econometric results are presented. They show that contractual flexibility is pervasive and...

This paper uses a 13-year panel of individuals in Tanzania to assess how adult mortality shocks affect both short and long-run consumption growth of surviving household members. Using unique data which tracks individuals from 1991 to 2004, we examine consumption growth, controlling for a set of...