This article proposes an original theory of marriage payments based on insights gained from firsthand information collected in the Senegal River valley. This theory postulates that decisions about the bride-price, which are made by the bride's father, take into account the likely effects of the...

The negative relationship between women's education and fertility is one of the strongest empirical regularities in social science, yet there are few empirical studies that identify the mechanisms through which education affects fertility. This article goes beyond the usual interpretation of...

We investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural Nepal, using 1995-96 and 2002-3 World Bank Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) data. We incorporate village fixed effects, endogenous censoring, measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of...

This article considers index-based safety nets aimed at assuring participants a minimum income at the village level, set by a prespecified poverty line. The participating villages collectively manage a pooled budget, offering an index-based per capita indemnity to the villages financed from a...

Formal village organizations can be classified into market-oriented (MO) and community-oriented (CO) organizations, with the former aimed at raising members' incomes and the latter at delivering local public goods. This study investigates the role of community conservatism in opposing economic...

Heterogeneity in time discounting may reinforce the existing barriers to save and invest faced by rural populations in developing countries. We elicit a subjective discount rate for a varied sample of Ugandan villagers. In accordance with other studies, we have found the discount rate to...

This study explores the consequences of conflating social learning and social influence concepts and of the widespread use of proxy-reported behavioral data for accurate understanding of learning from others. Our empirical analysis suggests that proxy reporting is more accurate for new...

This article uses conventional Engel curve demand analysis, as well as a double hurdle model, to explore whether there are intrahousehold differentials in the allocation of education expenditure between boys and girls in rural Sri Lanka. Contrary to the case in most developing countries, in Sri...

Several studies have found that plant turnover contributes to productivity growth. This evidence seems to be consistent with the idea that by reducing protection granted to inefficient firms, economic liberalization would generate productivity gains associated with resource reallocation from...

Using 10 nationally representative surveys conducted between 1993 and 2005, we assess the extent to which the vulnerability of orphans to poorer educational outcomes has changed over time as the AIDS crisis deepens in South Africa. In line with the existing literature, we find that at every...