This paper evaluates the effect of the Rural Capacity Building Project, which aimed at promoting growth by strengthening the agricultural service systems in Ethiopia and by making them more responsive to smallholders' needs. The project intended to increase the outreach of agricultural extension...

This study looks at how a community event—adolescent womens economic and social empowerment—and a family factor—sibling sex composition—interact in shaping gender differences in preferences for competition. To do so, a lab-in-the-field experiment is conducted using competitive games...

This paper evaluates a program targeted to adolescent girls in Tanzania that aims to empower them economically as well as socially. The program was found to be highly successful in Uganda in terms of economic, health, and social outcomes. In contrast, this evaluation finds that the program did...

An established literature finds that those exposed to conflict are more pro-social later in life. This paper builds on this work in two directions using a sample of 4,200 women born during the Sierra Leonean civil war and surveyed 14 years later. First, the paper introduces the notion of...

Microfinance in general and microcredit programs in particular have attracted much attention among interest groups concerned with poverty eradication and are seen by many as highly promising means in order to alleviate poverty. More recently, the spotlight has turned increasingly on the...