Intuitively, the approach of dynamic programming can be understood by recalling the theme of indirect utility from basic static consumer theory or a reduced form profit function generated by the optimization of a firm. This reduced form representations of payoffs summarizes information about the optimized value of the choice problems faced by households and firms. As we shall see, the theory of...

This paper examines the relationship between domestic water use and socioeconomic, environmental, and spatial parameters at the household level in a small rural village in northern Minas Gerais State. Five methods are used – direct observation, household interviews, self-reporting by households, regression analysis, and statistical mapping. Results show that water use is characterized by 1) gen...

Satellite imagery is increasingly available at high spatial resolution and can be used for various purposes in public health research and programme implementation. Comparing a census generated from two satellite images of the same region in rural southern Zambia obtained four and a half years apart identified patterns of household locations and change over time. The length of time that a satell...

This paper uses international household-level data to assess the impact of financial integration on welfare across countries and across households. The analysis uses two balanced panels of more than 17,000 and 31,000 households from up to 22 European countries over the periods 1994-2000 and 2004-2008. The dependent variable is a household’s personal assessment of its ability to make the ends of...

An important dimension of poverty is access to food. Household food security implies access to the food needed for a healthy and productive life. Lack of access to and/or impaired utilization of food contribute to household food insecurity. This study compares the utility of a standardized food security scale for determining the food insecurity status of rural and urban households in Bangladesh...

This paper presents evidence describing how a single player typing game, designed for use on a low-cost (~US$10) computing platform, was utilized as a computer-supported collaborative learning activity. The group computer interaction was found to consistently induce verbal language experiences that extended the potential educational utility of the highly limited 8-bit computing platform. Buildi...

This paper describes the current estate and gift tax rules that apply to intergenerational transfers in the US. It summarizes the incentives for inter vivos giving, gifts from a donor to a recipient while the donor is alive, as a strategy for reducing estate tax liability. It shows that the current level of intergenerational transfers is much lower than the level that would be implied by simple...

PROBLEM Traditional random sampling at community level requires a list of every individual household that can be randomly selected in the study community. The longitudinal demographic surveillance systems often used as sampling frames are difficult to create in many resource-poor settings. APPROACH We used Google Earth imagery and geographical analysis software to develop a sampling frame. Ev...

We evaluated the utility of electronic loggers to measure the effects of a simple intervention designed to influence the rates of hand washing with soap within enclosed toilets and bathrooms in low-income urban households in Kerala, India. 58 households were given three items with embedded electronic loggers for a period of 2-5 days. Two logged soaps tracked hand and body washing in the bathroo...

IN HIS THEORETICAL STUDY on the demand for life insurance R.A. Campbell [I], has derived simple demand-for-insurance equations in an attempt to relate households' optimal responses to human capital uncertainty. One major conclusion of his paper is that for households characterized by risk aversion, the optimal amount of human capital insurance is a decreasing function of the "load factor," A, w...