While a large literature has established that migration experience among an individual's family and community networks tends to encourage migration, there is little research investigating the mechanism by which networks exert such effects. This paper aims to determine the relative importance of...

This paper presents the first laboratory study of risk-sharing without commitment. Our experiment captures the main features of a simple model of voluntary insurance between two agents. In the model, two individuals interact over a potential infinite horizon and suffer random income shocks....

A single principal interacts with several agents, offering them contracts. The crucial assumption of this paper is that the outside-option payoffs of the agents depend positively on how many free agents there are (these are agents who are not under contract). We study how such a principal,...

This paper examines the pattern of health care demand in rural Tanzania. We distinguish between hospital and clinic-based care, in both the public and private sector using a two-level nested multinomial logit model. Own price elasticities of demand for all health care options are high, although...

If people's labor-supply decisions are taken at the level of the household, it is natural to expect aggregate demand and unemployment to influence the supply curve of labor. An increase in unemployment could prompt households to send more workers out in search of work to insure against the risk...

Is there an impact of female property rights on male and female suicide rates in India. Using state level variation in legal changes to women's property rights, it is shown that better property rights for women are associated with a decrease in the difference between female and male suicide...

In pre-industrial and developing economies, it is common to find (i) entire families, including children, working together in family farms or urban factories; and (ii) a positive link between a person's consumption and her productivity. This paper argues that there is a natural reason for the...

The supply behavior of labor often depends on the demand conditions prevailing in the labor market. If demand is inadequate, households may send additional household members, who otherwise would not have worked, to look for work, for fear the main income earner may lose his job. The authors...

Guest-worker programs have been providing rapidly growing economies with millions of temporary foreign workers over the last couple of decades. With the duration of stay strictly limited by program rules in most of the host countries and wages paid to guest workers often set at sub-market...