This paper develops a dynamic, stochastic, general-equilibrium model to analyze and derive simple budget rules in the face of volatile public revenue from natural resources in a low-income country like Niger. The simulation results suggest three policy lessons or rules of thumb. When a resource...

Linked sharecropping and credit contracts are common in less developed economies. In these the landlord provides consumption and/or production credit. This paper studies the rationale for interlinking under uncertainty and endogenous effort and the terms of the optimal contract. Unlike previous...

The authors investigate nutrition and expenditure in rural Maharashtra in India. They estimate that the elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to total expenditure is 0.3-0.5, a range that is in accord with conventional wisdom. The elasticity declines only slowly with levels of living...