There is a well-known debate about the roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross-country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot...

This paper provides the first direct evidence on the determinants of link formation among immigrants in the host society. We use a purposely-designed survey on a representative sample of Sri Lankan immigrants living in Milan to study how migrants form social links among them and the extent to...

This paper argues that the level of financial services provision determines the risk management strategies among the poor. The paper estimates the determinants of the household’s use of one, two or all three types of microfinancial services applying ordered probit models and additionally...

Microinsurance is an emerging concept protecting households from the potentially catastrophic expenditures associated with family related shocks. Therefore, this paper presents evidence on the determinants of insurance participation using probit models on household survey data from Sri Lanka,...

We are the first to provide a comparative empirical analysis of non-farm entrepreneurship in rural Africa, using the World Bank's unique LSMSISA dataset. This dataset covers six countries over the period 2005 to 2012. We find that rural enterprises tend to be small, informal household...

The productivity of non-farm enterprises in rural Africa may be associated with the productivity of other spatially proximate farm and non-farm enterprises. To test for the presence and significance of such spatial autocorrelation we use data from the geo-referenced 2011 Ethiopian Rural...

Although non-farm enterprises are ubiquitous in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, little is yet known about their productivity. In this paper we contribute to filling this gap by providing estimates of labor productivity in enterprises for Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda. Using the World Bank's...

Africa is not only the poorest and most rural continent, it is also the most youthful continent in terms of population. Given the large number of young job seekers that will enter the labor market over the next decade, we need a better understanding of rural non-farm entrepreneurship,...

This paper uses regression discontinuity design to provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of a tax credit program targeted at rural areas in France, including corporate and payroll tax exemptions. We find no impact of the program on total employment or the number of businesses, and...

Natural and agricultural resources for which there is a substantial black market, such as coca, opium, and diamonds, appear especially likely to be exploited by the parties to a civil conflict. Even legally traded commodities such as oil and timber have been linked to civil war. On the other...