Despite their explicit focus on reaching the poor, many community driven development (CDD) projects have been found to be only mildly pro-poor in their funding allocations. This paper presents evidence of an explanation that has been overlooked in the CDD literature to date: the requirement that...

An extensive multi-disciplinary literature examines the effects of learning one's HIV status on subsequent risky sexual behaviors. However, many of these studies rely on non-experimental designs; use self-reported outcome measures, or both. This study investigates the effects of a randomly...

This paper formalizes the design of experiments intended specifically to study spillover effects. By first randomizing the intensity of treatment within clusters and then randomly assigning individual treatment conditional on this cluster-level intensity, a novel set of treatment effects can be...

The diffusion of cost-effective life saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of the developing world. Income gains may also play a direct, protective role in ensuring child survival, although the empirical findings to date on this issue have been mixed. This paper assembles data...

This study examines the medium-term effects of a two-year cash transfer program targeted to adolescent girls and young women. Significant declines in HIV prevalence, teen pregnancy, and early marriage among recipients of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) during the program evaporated quickly...

Empirical research on the relationship between economic inequality and crime has focused on income inequality, despite the fact that income is not easily observed. We extend this literature by shifting the focus from income to its visible manifestation – conspicuous consumption. Using...

We examine the impact of early marriage across a wide range of outcomes for women in rural western Kenya. The timing of physical maturation in girls has been shown to influence marriage timing in a quasi-random manner, and we find that each additional year that menarche is delayed is associated...

This paper analyzes bilateral foreign aid flows over the period 1973-2010 to investigate whether the gender composition of legislatures in donor nations affects the aid response to recipient country crises. Our findings suggest that donors with higher shares of women in office provide larger...

This paper investigates whether the gender composition of national legislatures in donor countries impacts the level, composition, and pattern of foreign aid. We provide evidence that the election of female legislators leads countries to increase aid both in total and as a percentage of GDP....