This paper builds predictive models for the incidences of neonatal and infant mortality using multiple parametric and non-parametric Machine Learning (ML) techniques. The consensus of the top predictors from the interpret-able ML algorithms (that we use) serve as leading indicators of neonatal...

Abstract This paper examines income convergence across U.S. regions for the period 1929-2002 using unit root and cointegration techniques. The findings suggest it is difficult to reject non-convergence in per capita incomes across regions even when endogenous breakpoints are included....

This paper examines how risk sharing is shaped by moral hazard and enforcement concerns. The existing literature mostly looks at each concern in isolation and misses out on an interesting tradeoff between insurance and production (effort) that is introduced by jointly incorporating moral hazard...

In this paper, we examine the aid-growth-poverty relation by using quantile regression, which enables us to estimate the impact of growth and growth enhancing policies at different quantiles in the conditional distribution of poverty. The coefficient estimates in a quantile regression capture...

This paper aims not only to measure the relative efficiency of government spending in seven Asian countries but also to investigate the factors that influence government performance using annual data covering the period 1986–2007. Four hypotheses are tested: (i) the effect of private sector...

This paper tests the full insurance and related hypotheses using data from urban households in Ethiopia. Whereas consumption insurance tests have focused on rural areas of developing countries, much less is known about the urban poor who remain precariously positioned in terms of consumption...