Households in developing countries use a variety of informal mechanisms to cope with risk, including mutual support and risk-sharing. These mechanisms cannot avoid that they remain vulnerable to shocks. Public programs in the form of food aid distribution and food-for-work programs are meant to...

In order to assess the effect of jumps on realised variance calculations, we study some of the econometric properties of time-changed Levy processes. We show that in general we can derive the second order properties of realised variances and use these to estimate the parameters of such models....

We apply the set up of limited commitment model to empirically test the role of informal risk-sharing ntworks using panel data on informal credit transactions from rural Ethiopia. The empirical estimates provide convincing evidence for the belief that enforcement problem limits the direct role...

Functional Signal plus Noise (FSN) time series models are introduced for the econometric analysis of the dynamics of a large cross-section of prices in which contemporaneous observations are functionally related. A semiparametric FSN model is developed in which a smooth, cubic spline signal...

This note determines the precise connection between an agent`s attitude towards income risks and his attitude over risks in the underlying consumption space. Our results follow a general mathematical theory connecting the curvature properties of an objective function with the ray-curvature...

OLS estimation of an impulse-indicator coefficient is inconsistent, but its variance can be consistently estimated. Although the ratio of the inconsistent estimator to its standard error has a t-distribution, that test is inconsistent: one solution is to form an index of indicators. We provide...

This paper revisits the contested issue of the impact of agricultural extension on farm productivity. Often studies in this …eld su¤er from a bias either due to self-selection of the best farmers for the extension services or to endogenous placement of the programme. The panel dataset...

Following an electoral dispute, the central highlands of the island of Madagascar were subjected to an economic blockade during the Þrst half of 2002. After the blockade ended in June 2002, user fees for health services and school fees were progressively eliminated. This paper examines the...

Overseers’ vested interests played an important role in shaping local poor relief provision under the Old Poor Law. In the industrial town of Bolton the Relief Order books for the 1820s reveal an unusual emphasis upon the payment of paupers’ rent by the parish. This...

This article scrutinises the claim that the residual claimant in English agriculture was the fixed-rent tenant farmer rather than the landlord. Examination of methods of agricultural insurance and risk management indicates that the income risks of farming were sizeable, not straightforward to...