Using date from a field experiment conducted in seventy Colombian municipalities, we investigate who pools risk with whom when risk pooling arrangements are not formally enforced. We explore the roles played by risk attitudes and network connections both theoretically and empirically. We find...

This paper describes and analyzes the results of a unique field experiment especially designed to test the effects of the level of commitment and information available to individuals when sharing risk. We find that limiting exogenously provided commitment is associated with less risk sharing,...

This paper uses a 13-year panel of individuals in Tanzania to assess how adult mortality shocks affect both short and long-run consumption growth of surviving household members. Using unique data which tracks individuals from 1991 to 2004, we examine consumption growth, controlling for a set of...

A funeral is a costly occasion. This paper studies indigenous insurance institutions developed to cope with the high costs of funerals, based on evidence from rural areas in Tanzania and Ethiopia. These institutions are based on well-defined rules and regulations, often offering premium-based...

This paper presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long-run for health and education outcomes, in a region of Northwestern Tanzania. We study a sample of 718 nonorphaned children surveyed in 1991-94, who were traced and reinterviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19...

Most risk-sharing tests on developing country data are conducted at the level of the village; generally, the full risk-sharing hypothesis is rejected. This paper uses detailed data on all insurance networks within a village in Tanzania; networks are not clustered but largely overlapping. We test...