The paper develops a new approach to measuring the impact of government cash transfers on poverty alleviation that takes into account endogenous reactions and consumption smoothing of households. We use the methodology to study the impact of changes in government cash benefits on poverty rates...

Using a survey approach, we ask consumers to reveal their preferences over pricing schemes that may differ in terms of the average price of consumption, the amount of price variation, and the probability of being rationed. We find that consumers dislike pricing schemes that vary prices more but...

Pricing schemes that vary prices in response to demand shocks may antagonize consumers and reduce demand. At the same time, consumers may take advantage of the opportunities offered by price changes. Overall, the net impact of varying price on demand is ambiguous. We investigate the issue...

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we investigate Vickrey’s conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth both predictable and unpredictable demand shocks. Our evidence shows that increasing the responsiveness of price to demand conditions reduces the magnitude of...

Numerous authors have pointed out the importance of taking into consideration the intra-household distribution of resources in the analysis of poverty. Most empirical studies of poverty, however, assume an equal sharing of resources between all household members. There is a growing body of...

This paper characterizes the nature of poverty from a dynamic life-cycle perspective. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that 40% of young Americans experienced at least one year of poverty, and most of these experienced one or two years. A significant...

This paper traces the links from trade shocks to poverty in developing countries. It considers the determinants of household and individual welfare (including potential differences between household members) and then identifies six trade-to-poverty links: the extent to which prices change and...

Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past three decades. However, over this period the racial gap in well-being has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well-being...

Using a tried and tested measure of management practices which has been shown to predict firm performance, we survey nearly 250 departments across 100+ UK universities. We find large differences in management scores across universities and that departments in older, research-intensive...