We investigate whether available enforcement mechanisms affect who shares risk with whom in sub-Saharan Africa, by applying dyadic regression analysis to data from a lab-type experiment, surveys, and a genealogical-mapping exercise. During the experiment, participants were invited to form...

Despite growing wealth and a strengthening commitment from the government to provide quality education, a significant share of students across rural China still have inadequate access to micronutrient-rich regular diets. Such poor diets can lead to nutritional problems, such as iron-deficiency...

In African countries, children often combine school and work. This article exploits Senegalese panel data to assess the relationship between child labor and learning, measured by test scores. Test scores from the beginning of primary school control for children’s cognitive abilities, and...

The question of the role of statutory law in social environments permeated by custom and traditional norms is particularly important when the statutory law aims to correct social inequalities embedded in the customs. The conventional view is that formal law often fails to take root in...

Despite increasingly large scale social protection programs in Africa, we have limited evidence on the local political economy of their allocation. We investigate community-based processes for food aid allocation and the role of political and social networks, using the case of Ethiopia in the...

This article examines the incomes of individuals who have joined self-help groups in poor neighborhoods of Nairobi. Self-help groups are often advocated as a way of facilitating income pooling. We find that incomes are indeed more correlated among individuals in the same group than among...