This paper explores the question whether and to what extent the economic relations between the Netherlands and its former colony Indonesia could be crucial to explaining `metropolitan' economic development and `peripheral' underdevelopment. It first surveys the literature on economic...

This Paper uses a survey of 3,300 firms in 25 transition countries to shed light on the factors that influence restructuring by firms and their subsequent performance as measured by growth in sales and in sales per employee over a three-year period. We begin by surveying what a decade of...

Education and human capital accumulation are essential components of eco- nomic development. This paper attempts to identify some of the individual and household level characteristics that affect the demand for schooling in Bangladesh. We examine (1) current enrolment status of children aged 6 -...

The relationship between wealth and child labor has been widely examined. This paper uses three rounds of time-series, cross-sectional data to examine the relationship between wealth and child labor and schooling. The paper finds that wealth is crucial in determining a child's activities, but...

Large-scale randomized interventions have the potential to uncover the causal effect of programs applying to a large population, thereby improving on the insights gained from currently dominant smaller randomized studies. However, the external validity gained through larger interventions...

This paper presents rigorous and direct tests of two assumptions relating to limited commitment and asymmetric information that current underpin current models of risk pooling. A specially designed economic experiment involving 678 subjects across 23 Zimbabwean villages is used to solve the...

It has been argued that the use of personal networks in the hiring process has a positive influence on the wages of referred individuals. However, the value of recommendations to the employer varies according to the type of vacancy to be filled and the provider of information on job applicants....

This paper explores potential channels through which information technology (IT) affects economic development. The channel emphasized here is the reduction of transaction costs through the use of information technology. We discuss the nature of transaction costs, their possible impacts on...

In most transition economies, agricultural reforms have led to the emergence of family farms and household food production and to the decline of corporate farms. This study explores the extent of that trend for the case of Lithuania based on secondary information and primary survey data. The...

Usage of health facilities in Ethiopia is among the lowest in the world; raising usage rates is probably critical for improving health outcomes. The government has diagnosed the principal problem as the lack of primary health facilities and is devoting a large share of the health budget to...