Are ostensibly demand-driven public works programs with high levels of safeguards nonetheless susceptible to political influence? This conjecture is investigated using expenditure data at the local level from India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Focusing on one state where...

A large national farm panel from India covering a quarter century (1982, 1999, and 2008) is used to show that the inverse farm size-yield relationship weakened significantly over time, despite an increase in the dispersion of farm sizes. Key reasons are substitution of capital for labor in...

This paper examines the impact of a large supply-side education intervention in the Philippines, the Third Elementary Education Project, on students' national achievement test scores. It finds that the program significantly increased student test scores at grades 4 to 6. The estimation indicates...

This paper examines the long-term impacts of improved school quality at the elementary school stage on subsequent schooling investments and labor market outcomes using unique data from a recent survey that tracked students in the Philippines. The empirical results, which are based on a...

This paper uses a three-round 4,000-household panel from Andhra Pradesh together with administrative data to explore short and medium-term poverty and welfare effects of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Triple difference estimates suggest that participants significantly increase...

Rapid population growth in many developing countries has raised concerns regarding food security and household welfare. To understand the consequences of population growth in a general equilibrium setting, this paper examines the dynamics of population density and its impacts on household...

Using a new, nationally representative sample of Chinese households, this paper studies how social capital affects access to credit and its implications for consumption levels. The paper focuses on two specific forms of social capital: private social networks and membership in the Communist...

While the literature on consumption insurance is growing fast, little research has been conducted on how rural consumption insurance is affected by democracy. In this paper the authors examine how consumption insurance of Chinese rural residents is affected if the local leader is democratically...

Using a new and representative data set of Chinese household finance, this paper documents household access to and costs of finance, along with their correlates. As in most developing countries, informal finance is a crucial element of household finance, and wealth tends to be associated with...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the degree of co-movement among the nominal price returns of 11 major energy, agricultural and food commodities based on monthly data between 1970 and 2013. A uniform-spacings testing approach, a multivariate dynamic conditional correlation model...