A recurring theme in development economics is that risk affects individual production, consumption, exchange, and investment behaviors in ways that ultimately shape income and wealth distributions. Arrow's Decreasing Absolute Risk Aversion conjecture implies that the poor prefer low return, low...

The effective design and implementation of interventions that reduce vulnerability and poverty require a solid understanding of underlying poverty dynamics and associated behavioral responses. Stochastic and dynamic benefit streams can make it difficult for the poor to learn the value of such...

The future is inherently more uncertain than the present. Existing literature has shown that people act impatiently or in a time-inconsistent manner at least partly because of their aversion to future risk. While such intuition could be fully captured by standard economic models, the current...

Natural disasters give rise to loss and damage and may affect subjective expectations about the prevalence and severity of future disasters. These expectations might then in turn shape individuals’ investment behaviors, potentially affecting their incomes in subsequent years. As part of an...