Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries stand out in international comparisons of de jure obstacles to female employment and entrepreneurship. These obstacles manifest themselves in low rates of female labor participation, entrepreneurship, and ownership. Recent research suggests a...

The economies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have always been characterized by economic volatility and social disparities. The recent ‘Arab Spring’ wave of protests has increased political uncertainty and instability in the region, and this timely book provides an...

In part as a response to the recent financial crisis, the relationship between access to finance and international trade has received much attention in the recent years. This article reviews trade finance, its role and functioning. It discusses the relevance of the more general concept of access...

Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries stand out in international comparisons of de jure obstacles to female employment and entrepreneurship. These obstacles are mirrored in low female labor rate participation and low entrepreneurship and ownership rates. Recent research suggests a...

This paper investigates the accuracy of recall data by comparing administrative records with retrospective, self-reported survey responses to income and asset questions for a sample of self-employed households from coastal India. It finds that the magnitude of the recall error increases over...

Weather variations crucially affect the wellbeing of farmers in developing countries. I develop and estimate a dynamic stochastic optimization model to assess the impact of weather insurance on the consumption, investment, and welfare for farmers in developing countries. The parameters of the...

The collapse of trade during the financial crisis can be tied, for the most part, to a drop in demand. Less talked about, however, is the role of financing—or lack thereof.

For decades, earnings from farming in many low-income countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduce national and global economic...

Farmers in rural Bangladesh face multiple sources of uninsured risk to agricultural production and household assets. In this paper, we present results from an experimental demand-elicitation exercise in rural Bangladesh to shed light on smallholder farmers’ interest in formal insurance...

Farmers in developing countries face a wide array of risks. Yet they often lack formal financial instruments to protect against risks. This paper examines the impact on consumption, investment, and welfare of the separate provision of three financial products: weather insurance, savings, and...