This paper reports results from a field experiment in Uganda. The proportion of children five years and younger who slept under a mosquito net was 20 percent higher when nets were distributed for free compared to when an equivalent cash transfer could be used to purchase nets. This effect is...

Many important food quality and safety attributes are unobservable at the point of sale, particularly in informal markets with weak reputation effects. Through a framed field experiment conducted in western Kenya, we show that farmers place a large premium on maize they have grown themselves,...

How can food safety be provided in the absence of regulatory enforcement? What can explain heterogeneous responses to unenforced regulation across firms when certain food safety characteristics are unobservable to the consumer? Using data from over 900 maize flour samples representing 23...

The lack of a reliably safe food supply in developing countries imposes major costs on both public health and market performance. This paper addresses the question of whether and why food processing firms voluntarily invest in food safety in the absence of effective regulatory enforcement. Using...