Using data from a field experiment conducted in seventy Colombian municipalities, we investigate who pools risk with whom when risk pooling arrangements are not formally enforced. We explore the roles played by risk attitudes and network connections both theoretically and empirically. We find that pairs of participants who share a bond of friendship or kinship are more likely to (1) join the sa...

There is increased awareness that success among small scale entrepreneurs in developing countries requires more than microfinance, and that an important limiting factor for business growth is the level of human capital among the entrepreneurs. The present paper uses a randomized control trial to evaluate a business training program in Tanzania. Our results show that there is a positive average ...

The drivers of educational attainment have been the subject of much research both in the developed and the developing world. Yet, nothing is known about the effect of birth registration on schooling outcomes. Birth registration is not only a fundamental human right but also a requirement to obtain additional documents of legal identity and access many government benefits. Using data for the Dom...

Background and Purpose The cause of cerebral and peripheral embolism remains undetermined in a significant number of patients. An atherosclerotic thoracic aorta has thus far been considered to be an uncommon one. Methods To define the potential role of the ascending thoracic aorta as an embolic source, intraoperative ultrasonic aortic imaging was performed in 1200 of 1334 consecutive patients a...

Much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented: the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of ...

Article history: Received 17 September 2012 Received in revised form 12 September 2013 Accepted 14 September 2013 Available online 26 September 2013 This paper aims at an important gap in the literature, which has not modeled the effect of social learning in a real option context and examined uncertainty-reduction measures through social learning. This paper addresses the gap by modeling social...

Recent studies have linked transfers from Mexican conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades (formerly PROGRESA) to improvements in child development (Fernald, Gertler, and Neufeld 2008, 2009) but this work has been criticized as failing to account for endogeneity of the transfers. We create an exogenous instrument for the amount of transfers and use it to test program and transfer effects...

This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme, whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold inputs on loans that ...

Entrepreneurship Programs in Developing Countries: A Meta Regression Analysis This paper provides a synthetic and systematic review on the effectiveness of various entrepreneurship programs in developing countries. We adopt a meta-regression analysis using 37 impact evaluation studies that were in the public domain by March 2012, and draw out several lessons on the design of the programs. We ob...

Child Labor and Household Wealth: Theory and Empirical Evidence of an Inverted-U Some studies on child labor have shown that greater land wealth leads to higher child labor, thereby casting doubt on the hypothesis that child labor is caused by poverty. This paper argues that the missing ingredient is an explicit modeling of the labor market. We develop a simple model which suggests an inverted-...