This paper investigates the crowding out of informal support among peers by the introduction of formal insurance. We show that the availability of insurance changes people's intrinsic motivation to support others. We report results from a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Cambodia. Half...

We examine the role of intergenerational co-residence for female labour supply in a patrilocal society. To account for the endogeneity of women's co-residence with parents or in-laws, we exploit a tradition in Central Asia, namely that the youngest son of a family usually lives with his parents....

We investigate horizontal inequality between two conflictive ethnic groups, the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, by employing the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. This technique has a long tradition in labour economics but has not been used in the literature that links ethnic inequality and...

We study how international migration changes the private transfers made between households in the migrant sending communities of developing countries. A priori, it is indeterminate whether migration and remittances strengthen or weaken the degree of private transfers in these communities. From a...

In recent years, a debate about the potential of decentralization for poverty alleviation has set off among academics and policy-makers. It is often claimed that decentralization can be effective for improvements in welfare and hence the reduction of poverty. For example, the World Bank explains...

This paper argues that the study of the demand for financial services in developing countries leaves out part of the story if it looks at only one of the three elements of the so-called finance trinity - that is, savings products, loans and insurance - as is largely done in the literature. In...

This article investigates the understandings and perceptions of (micro)insurance among low income people in southern Ghana, using evidence from four focus group discussions. It analyzes how the focus group participants think about various types of insurance – among them a micro life insurance...

This article investigates the understandings and perceptions of (micro)insurance among lowincome people in southern Ghana, using evidence from four focus group discussions. It analyzes how the focus group participants think about various types of insurance - among them a micro life insurance...