In this paper, we address the broad question of where to locate authority for tropical biodiversity conservation. In so doing, we advance four claims. First, the current fashion for CBNRM overreaches the indisputable place of local communities in tropical conservation efforts. An unfortunate...

This paper introduces a new market analysis methodology based on maximum likelihood estimation of a mixture distribution model incorporating price, transfer cost, and trade flow data. Not only does this method obviate statistical problems associated with conventional price analysis methods, it...

This paper studies the causal mechanisms behind poverty traps, building on evidence of nonlinear wealth dynamics among a poor pastoralist population, the Boran from southern Ethiopia. In particular, it explores the roles of adverse weather shocks and individual ability to cope with such shocks...

This paper explores the consequences of nonlinear wealth dynamics on the formation of informal insurance networks. Building on recent empirical work among a poor population that finds evidence consistent with the hypothesis of poverty traps, and using original primary data on social networks and...

Poverty traps and resource degradation in the rural tropics appear to have multiple and complex, but similar, causes. Market imperfections, imperfect learning, bounded rationality, spillovers, coordination failures and economically dysfunctional institutions all play a role, to varying degrees...