The 2014 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa is the largest to date by far. Ebola Virus Disease causes disproportionate mortality among the working-age population, resulting in far more mortality for parents of young children than other health crises. This paper combines data on the age...

This paper uses a new data set of 12,000 firms in China to estimate the returns to research and development investment and its spillover effects, and investigates how the returns to research and development depend on firm incentives. For the firms in the sample, the results show that on average...

Parental involvement in matchmaking may distort the choice of spouse because parents are willing to substitute love for market and household production, which are more sharable between parents and their children. This paper finds supportive evidence in a survey of Chinese couples. In both rural...

This study seeks to understand how materials scarcity and competition from alternative uses affects the potential for widespread deployment of solar electricity in the long run, in light of related technology and policy uncertainties. Simulation results of a computable partial equilibrium model...

Despite regulatory efforts designed to make it easier for firms to formalize, informality remains extremely high among firms in Sub-Saharan Africa. In most of the region, business registration in a national registry is separate from tax registration. This paper provides initial results from an...

This paper tests experiential learning as a debiasing tool against gambling and lottery behavior in South Africa. The study implemented a simple, interactive dice game that simulates worsening winning odds of rolling sixes as more dice are added to the game. The analysis exploits two levels of...

This paper investigates the causal consequences of Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) -- the strongest tropical storm ever to strike Guatemala since rainfall records have been kept -- on household welfare. The analysis reveals substantial negative effects, particularly among urban households. Per...

Singapore has been a powerful magnet for foreign direct investment and in recent years has also made significant investments abroad, especially in developing countries and increasingly in services. This paper analyzes the determinants of Singapore's investment using the Knowledge-Capital Model...

This paper describes how Latin America and the Caribbean has been integrating financially with countries in the North and South since the 2000s. The paper shows that the region is increasingly more connected with the rest of the world, even relative to gross domestic product. The region's...

Does the same question asked of the same population yield the same answer in face-to-face interviews when other parts of the questionnaire are altered? If not, what would be the implications for proxy-based poverty measurement? Relying on a randomized household survey experiment implemented in...