We exploit an expansion in social protection to middle-income households to provide evidence on how middle-income households cope with economic shocks and how to build their resilience. We use a regression discontinuity design around the eligibility cutoff for a program that delivered monthly...

A key challenge for policymakers is how to design methods to select beneficiaries of social programs when income is volatile and the target population is dynamic. We evaluate a traditional static proxy-means test (PMT) and three policy-relevant alternatives. We use a unique panel dataset of a...

In this study, I use the timing and eligibility criteria of a large-scale conditional cash transfer program in Bolivian public schools to identify the efect of the program on adults’ labor supply. I find that adult females increase their labor supply due to the program, mostly through...

Limited borrower information may create targeting distortions in credit markets. Community-based lending programs may reduce these distortions by exploiting information transmitted in local networks, but connections may create asymmetries in power. This paper analyzes how local leaders balance...

Decreases in labor supply among cash-transfer recipients are often cited as potential drawbacks of social-assistance programs. However, cash transfers can also increase employment. Using variation across cohorts and over time in the eligibility criteria of a nationwide conditional cash-transfer...

This paper uses willingness to pay (WTP) data from a field experiment in Hyderabad, India in 2013 to determine whether non-monetary prices better target health products to the poor than monetary prices. Monetary WTP is increasing in income and non-monetary WTP is weakly decreasing in income....

This paper uses willingness to pay (WTP) data from a field experiment in Hyderabad, India in 2013 to determine whether non-monetary prices better target health products to the poor than monetary prices. Monetary WTP is increasing in income and non-monetary WTP is weakly decreasing in income....