This article examines the substitutability, efficiency, and evolution of an important nonmarket institution in agrarian societies ? labor sharing. From analyses of field-level data on forest clearing through time among shifting cultivators in the Peruvian Amazon, we find: (1) no productivity...

This paper empirically examines whether and how experiencing climate-related disasters can improve the rural poorfs adaptation to climate change through community-based resource management. Original household survey data in Fiji capture the unique sequence of a tropical cyclone and the...

This paper examines how forest and marine resources serve as insurance against a tropical cyclone using original household data gathered in rural Fiji. The fixed-effects estimator for a censored dependent variable controls for unobservable household heterogeneity that can cause bias. I propose a...

This paper investigates targeting of cyclone relief within the village in Fiji. We focus on two issues, the link of relief allocation with informal risk sharing and elite capture, both of which are directly related to kinship. We find the following. First, food aid is first targeted toward kin...

This paper demonstrates that the Fijian kava ritual emerges as insurance against cyclone risk, as women's production of ritual handicraft gifts is linked with risk sharing. The cyclone tightens female-heads' constraints on intra-household male labor allocation in the gendered Fijian society....

This paper examines the allocation of natural disaster reconstruction funds among cyclone victims in rural Fiji. During post-emergency periods, when good information about cyclone damage is available, do local elites, a powerful minority, capture housing construction materials? With effective...

Although economists have extensively studied private transfers exchanged among households within a network, those exchanged directly with groups to which the household belongs ? such as ritual gifts, communal work, and church donations --- have received very limited attention. Using original...

Rapidly decreasing gender gaps in schooling in developing countries can be a result of a gendered division of child farm labor as a coping response to increased natural disasters. This paper makes a case for this conjecture by analyzing original household survey data from rural Fiji. Boys, not...

How disaster aid is allocated within poor villages is little understood. This paper examines risk-sharing institutions and social hierarchies as village self-allocation mechanisms. Original survey data from Fiji contain rich information about cyclone damage, traditional kin status, and aid...

This chapter reviews farm-level economic models of shifting cultivation and those of deforestation and soil conservation related to shifting cultivation. Although economists have made significant progress in modeling shifting cultivation over the last two decades, extant economic models neither...