Climate change is associated with an increasing frequency of extreme weather events, which can severely reduce people's welfare, especially in the Global South. Here, we analyse the impacts of rainfall shocks - including lacking and excessive rains - on economic and social outcomes, using...

Many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are experiencing a nutrition transition from traditional diets to high-energy, processed foods, increasing non-communicable disease risks. Digitalization of food systems plays a significant role in shaping this transition. This paper investigates the...

While agriculture remains a key source of livelihoods in rural Africa, employment in other economic sectors is gaining in importance. However, details of the labor conditions are under-researched. Here, we examine labor conditions in different sectors of the rural economy using survey data from...

Following Sen's (1973) characterization of the Gini coefficient as a ratio between a measure of aggregate income-based stress ("depression" in Sen's terminology) and aggregate income, we transform the Gini coefficient into a social welfare function rather than having the Gini coefficient feature...

Competition for land is a key challenge for decarbonized energy transitions. Open-space solar energy farms are gaining in importance but have large land requirements and displace agricultural production. Agrivoltaics offers a compromise, integrating solar panels into existing farming operations....

This study examines the nexus among production diversity, market participation, and consumption diversity in smallholder households. It identifies the main factors that influence smallholder farm households' decision to diversify production and evaluates the effect of production diversity and...

The Gini coefficient features prominently in Amartya Sen's 1973 and 1997 seminal work on income inequality and social welfare. We construct the Gini coefficient from social-psychological building blocks, reformulating it as a ratio between a measure of social stress and aggregate income. We...

Parents who experience poverty and who want to provide their children with an escape route can be expected to encourage and support their progeny's education. The evidence that Roma parents behave differently is unsettling. In this paper we test empirically an explanation for that behavior. The...

In many countries, schools have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by splitting up classes. While the purpose of dividing classes is clearly health-related, the process of doing so poses an interesting question: what is the best way to divide a class so as to maximize the incentive for students...

This paper analyses the effect of migration of men from rural areas in Pakistan on children in households "left behind" by the migrants. Left-behind households' expenditure on children's education and the gendered distribution of these expenditures are two outcomes of main interest. First, it is...