We play a one-shot public good game in rural India between farmers connected to an exogenous star network.  Contributions by the centre of the star reach more players and have a larger impact on aggregate payoffs than contributions by the spoke players.  Yet, we find that the centre player...

The holding of elections has become universal but only about half of all elections have been free and fair.  Electoral malpractice not only distorts the quality of representation but has implications for political, social and economic outcomes.  Existing datasets either provide broad...

We use data from Ethiopia Rural Household Survey and the Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency to demonstrate a set of techniques for estimating optimal investment allocation in smallholder farming.  The approaches treat farming tasks, constraints, and investments as a portfolio problem,...

We run a novel field experiment to link managers of African manufacturing firms.  The experiment features exogenous link formation, exogenous seeding of information and exogenous assignment to treatment and placebo.  We study the impact of the experiment on firm business practices outside of...

There are substantial learning gaps across countries on standardized international assessments.  In this paper, I use unique child-level panel data from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam with identical tests administered across these countries to children at 5, 8, 12 and 15 years of age to ask...

The present study employs recent World Bank data to shed light, in a global context, on the transformation of income and inequality changes to poverty reduction for a large number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).  The study begins by shedding light on SSA's progress on poverty.  Next,...

We introduce a new 'supply-push' instrument for foreign aid, to be used together with an instrumental variable estimator that filters out interactive fixed effects.  We use this instrument to study the effects of aid on macroeconomic ratios, and especially the ratios of consumption, investment,...

We gave US$1,000 cash prizes to winners of a business ideas competition in Africa.  The competition, entitled 'Aspire' is intended to attract young individuals aspiring to become entrepreneurs.  Participants were ranked by panels of judges composed of established entrepreneurs.  Each panel...

Job creation is a central part of the policy of almost all African countries.  The problems are particularly acute in Nigeria where over the period of the early 2000s there was a substantial decline in the number of private wage jobs.  While policy discussion focuses on the extent of...

I develop a unique database of international fossil-fuel subsidies by examining country-specific patterns in carbon emission-to-GDP ratios, known as emission-intensities.  For most but not all countries, intensities tend to be hump-shaped with income.  I construct a model of...