Food programs are large and expensive components of social safety nets in developing countries. For agricultural households, hunger is more acute in annual lean seasons, but food policies typically do not adapt to seasonality. There is limited research on this because of a paucity of panel data...

People across the developing world join rotational savings and credit associations (roscas) to fund repeated purchases of nondivisible goods. When the scope for punishment is weak, there is a natural question about why agents do not defect from these groups. I model a rosca as a commitment...

Why do individuals borrow and save money at the same time? I present a model in which sophisticated time-inconsistent agents, when faced with a future investment opportunity, rationally choose to save their wealth and then borrow to fund the investment. The combination of savings and a loan...