This paper uses data from the Russian Longitudinal Survey that span the two recent economic recessions of 1998 and 2008 to study the effect of declining incomes on household composition. We hypothesize that individuals face a tradeoff between taking advantages of economies of scale and...

Using two rounds of nationally representative household survey data in this study, we measure the impact on poverty in Nepal of local and international migration for work. We apply an instrumental variables approach to deal with nonrandom selection of migrants and simulate various scenarios for...

This paper presents asymptotic theory and Monte-Carlo simulations comparing maximum-likelihood bivariate probit and linear instrumental variables estimators of treatment effects in models with a binary endogenous treatment and binary outcome. The three main contributions of the paper are (a)...

We analyse the subjective perceptions of poverty in Madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators. We base our analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions. We extend the existing empirical methodology for estimating subjective poverty...

This paper models household demand for childcare and mothers' labour force participation in Romania. The model estimates the effects of the price of childcare, mothers' wages, and household characteristics on household behaviour with respect to childcare and maternal employment. We find that...

Although poverty lines are widely used as deflators for inter-group welfare comparisons, their internal consistency is rarely given close scrutiny. A priori considerations suggest that commonly used methods cannot be relied on to yield poverty lines that are consistent in terms of utility, or...

This paper assesses the impact of work-related migration by males on the labor market behavior of females in Nepal. Using data from the 2004 Nepal household survey, the authors apply the Instrumental Variable Full Information Maximum Likelihood method to account for unobserved factors that could...

The authors use data from a large nationally representative survey in Russia to analyze the distributional and welfare implications of draft avoidance as a common response to Russia's highly unpopular conscription system. They develop a simple theoretical model that describes household...

Can self-assessed health be relied on to identify the true socioeconomic gradients in health status? The self-assessed health of Russian adults in 2002 shows remarkably little gradient with respect to economic welfare. The authors document this finding and assess its robustness to the...

Using two rounds of nationally representative household survey data in this study, the authors measure the impact on poverty in Nepal of local and international migration for work. They apply an instrumental variable approach to deal with nonrandom selection of migrants and simulate various...