Using detailed trader surveys in Benin, Madagascar, and Malawi, this paper investigates the presence of increasing returns in agricultural trade. After analyzing margins, costs, and value added, we find little evidence of returns to scale. Motorized transport is found more cost effective for...

This paper develops a theoretical model of land leasing that includes transaction costs of enforcing labor effort, risk pooling motives and non-tradable productive inputs. We test the implications of this model compared to those of the - Marshallian - (unenforceable labor effort) and "New...

Using detailed survey data from Nepal, this paper examines the determinants of child labor with a special emphasis on urban proximity. We find that children residing in or near urban centers attend school more and work less in total but are more likely to be involved in wage work or in a small...

In poor societies, asset accumulation serves as insurance. It also opens the door to wider inequality. Many societies prohibit certain types of accumulation, such as land sales or indenture contracts. This paper investigates the theoretical relationship between risk sharing, asset accumulation,...

SMS information campaigns are increasingly used for policy. We conduct a field experiment to study information sharing through mobile phone messages. Subjects are rural households in Mozambique who have access to mobile money. In the baseline intervention, subjects receive an SMS containing...

We evaluate the impacts of a randomized job-fair intervention in which jobseekers and employers can meet at low cost. The intervention generates few hires, but it lowers participants' expectations and causes both firms and workers to invest more in search as predicted by a theoretical model;...

Many studies have used self-reported dyadic data without exploiting the pattern of discordant answers. In this paper we propose a maximum likelihood estimator that deals with mis-reporting in a systematic way. We illustrate the methodology using dyadic data on inter-household transfers (gifts...