Lack of access to finance is often cited as a key reason why poor people remain poor. This paper uses data on the Indian rural branch expansion program to provide empirial evidence on this issue. Between 1977 and 1990, the Indian Central Bank mandated that a commercial bank can open a branch in...

Lack of access to finance is often cited as a key reason for why poor people remain poor. This paper uses data on the Indian rural branch expansion program to provide empirical evidence on this issue. Between 1977 and 1990, the Indian central bank mandated that a commercial bank can open a...

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the potential impact of oil revenues on the economy of Sudan and the challenges facing the Government in policy making, particularly trade policy and allocation of oil revenues for long-run development and diversification of the production and...

Economic synergy is essential in functional polycentric metropolitan regions due to their high collaborative potential between area centers and subcenters, which results in greater competition. Our results indicate that, based on the theory of economic geography, economic activities in...

Are occupations that are well diversified across sectors less volatile, and less susceptible to external shocks? Most external shocks (e.g. manufacturing offshoring, oil shocks) impact the labor market along sectoral lines, i.e. they impact product and output markets; consequently, they affect...

We use mean-variance analysis with short selling constraints to diagnose the effects of the recent global financial crisis by evaluating the potential benefits of international diversification in the search for ‘safe havens’. We use stock index data for a sample of developed,...

This paper investigates the efficiency of household investment decisions in a unique dataset containing the disaggregated wealth and income of the entire population of Sweden. The analysis focuses on two main sources of inefficiency in the financial portfolio: underdiversification of risky...

In the context of falls in extractive commodities prices since 2011, this paper examines the history of thinking about the interplay between extractives and economic development. Just as 'the resource curse' fails as a generic explanation on account of the huge diversity in country contexts, so...

While climate change is likely to increase weather risks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households’ risk-management through...

In recent years economists have come to see rich natural resource endowments as a ?curse? or ?precious bane? that inevitably undermines development and slows economic growth. Resource-based development undeniably involves important risks. Nonetheless, the resource curse - if it exists - is at...