We follow 3,512 (of 1.4 million) applicants to a government lottery that randomly allocated visas to Bangladeshis for low-skilled, temporary labor contracts in Malaysia. Most lottery winners migrate, and their remittance substantially raises their family's standard of living in Bangladesh. The...

This paper sets out a framework for estimating household preferences over a broad range of housing and neighborhood characteristics, some of which are determined by the way that households sort in the housing market. This framework brings together the treatment of heterogeneity and selection...

This paper explores ways of enlarging the measurement and understanding of Human Development (HD) beyond the relatively reductionist Human Development Index. From the extensive literature on well-being, we derived eleven categories of HD. Within each category, we then identified a potential set...

This paper adopts a more expansive definition of Human Development than that encompassed by the Human Development Index in order to explore diverse country patterns of behavior in relation to these broadened dimensions. We proceed by first identifying the dimensions to be investigated and...

Why did Victorian Britain invest so much capital abroad? We collect over 500,000 monthly returns of British and foreign securities trading in London and the United States between 1866 and 1907. These heretofore-unknown data allow us to better quantify the historical benefits of international...

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using a...

Migration of the unskilled clearly benefits the origin country, mainly due to the flow of remittances but also if the departure of some raises the ability of others to migrate. This depends on whether trade is a complement or a substitute for migration. The impact of such flows on the...

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. Our model of endogenous migration...