This paper estimates the short-and-medium-run effects of participating in a subsidized vocational training program aimed at improving labor market outcomes of women residing in low-income households in a developing country. We combine pre-intervention data with two rounds of post-intervention...

Microfinance groups often engage in a variety of collective activities not directly related to credit. Groups can sanction members who default on their loans by excluding them from these activities. Our experiment is designed to explore the effectiveness of such sanctions in improving repayment...

This paper reports the results from a laboratory microfinance experiment of group lending in the presence of moral hazard and (costly) peer monitoring. We compare peer monitoring treatments in which credit is provided to members of the group to individual lending treatments with lender...

Microfinance groups often engage in a variety of collective activities not directly related to credit. Groups can sanction members who default on their loans by excluding them from these activities. Our experiment is designed to explore the effectiveness of such sanctions in improving repayment...

Most problems with formal sector credit lending to the poor in developing countries can be attributed to the lack of information and inadequate collateral. One common feature of successful credit mechanisms is group-lending, where the loan is advanced to an individual if he/she is a part of a...

In this paper we use child level data from Pakistan to estimate the probability of child mortality. We find that overall girls have a higher probability of surviving and when we look at disaggregated data we find that relative to boys, girls have a significantly lower probability of dying in the...

Evidence from many developing countries suggests that parents have a preference for sons over daughters. This has been referred to as son preference. This paper uses individual level unit record data to test the son preference hypothesis in South Africa. We use an accelerated hazard model to...

Evidence from most developing countries suggest that parents have a preference for sons over daughters. This is know as son preference. This paper uses individual level unit record data to test the son preference hypothesis in South Africa. We use an accelerated hazard model to estimate the...

A rapid rise in women's education levels, an increase in the age at marriage and an increase in the age at which they have their Þrst child are key features of demographic transition in any country. Education is considered to be an essential component in this process because increases in...