Proxy means test (PMT) poverty targeting tools have become common tools for beneficiary targeting and poverty assessment where full means tests are costly. Currently popular estimation procedures for generating these tools prioritize minimization of in-sample prediction errors; however, the...

The availability of weather data from remotely sensed Earth observation data has reduced the cost of including weather variables in econometric models. Weather variables are common instrumental variables used to predict economic outcomes and serve as an input in modeling crop yields for rainfed...

There is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time. This variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types...

When measuring inequality of opportunity, researchers usually opt to eliminate within-type variation. Provided that in practice it is impossible to observe all circumstances, this implies that the researcher estimates a lower bound of the true level of inequality of opportunity. By using data...

Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for women's agency measurement -- both disorganized and partial -- provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints...

This paper discusses the challenges associated with collecting time-use data in developing countries. The paper suggests potential solutions, concentrating on the two most common time-use methods used in development settings: stylized questions and time diaries. The paper identifies a...

This paper uses data from eight different consumption questionnaires randomly assigned to 4,000 households in Tanzania to obtain evidence on the nature of measurement errors in estimates of household consumption. While there are no validation data, the design of one questionnaire and the...

This paper reports on a randomized experiment conducted among Malawian agricultural households to study nonclassical measurement error in self-reported plot area and farmers' responses to new information (the objective plot area measure) that was provided to correct nonclassical measurement...

The degree of mobility in incomes is often seen as an important measure of the equality of opportunity in a society and of the flexibility and freedom of its labor market. But estimation of mobility using panel data is biased by the presence of measurement error and non-random attrition from the...

Theories of poverty traps stand in sharp contrast to the view that anybody can make it through hard work and thrift. However, empirical detection of poverty traps is complicated by the lack of long panels, measurement error, and attrition. This paper shows how dynamic pseudo-panel methods can...