This paper explores the extent of consumption smoothing between 1981 and 1985 in rural Burkina Faso. In particular, we examine the extent to which livestock, grain storage and interhousehold transfers are used to smooth consumption against income risk. The survey coincided with a period of...

In Cote d'Ivoire, as in much of Africa, husbands and wives farm different crops on separate plots. These different crops are differentially sensitive to particular kinds of rainfall shocks. We find that conditional on overall household expenditure, the composition of expenditure is sensitive to...

Empirical evidence on three assertions commonly-made by populationpolicy advocates about the relationships among population growth, humancapital formation and economic development is discussed and evaluated inthe light of economic-biological models of household behavior and of itsrelevance to...

In this paper, we describe and utilize methods to estimate theconsequences for children's schooling and birthweight of the exogenousvariability in the supply of births in one low income country, Malaysia. Themethod utilizes information on contraceptive techniques employed by couples toestimate...

In this paper we assess the importance of heterogeneity and selectivefertility in altering estimates and interpretations of the determinants ofthe human capital of children. We set out a sequential model of humancapital investments in children incorporating endogenous fertility andheterogeneity...

The principal objective of this paper is to compare the real output and labour productivity of Chinese and Indian manufacturing from 1980 to 2002. Using an industry-of-origin approach, purchasing power parities (PPPs) for the benchmark year 1985 are derived from the Chinese and Indian industrial...