A fundamental puzzle about human behavior is the low level of household investment in preventive health inputs. We conducted a field experiment testing advertising devices designed to increase demand for a life-saving health technology characterized by low uptake. Our results reveal highly elastic demand with respect to factors that lie outside of standard consumer demand models of health behav...

Many developing countries use food price subsidies or price controls to improve the nutrition of the poor. However, subsidizing goods on which households spend a high proportion of their budget can create large wealth effects. Consumers may then substitute towards foods with higher non-nutritional attributes like taste, but lower nutritional content per unit currency, weakening or perhaps even ...

This paper provides the first real-world evidence of Giffen behavior, i.e., upward sloping demand. Subsidizing the prices of dietary staples for extremely poor households in two provinces of China, we find strong evidence of Giffen behavior for rice in Hunan, and weaker evidence for wheat in Gansu. The data provide new insight into the consumption behavior of the poor, who act as though maximiz...

In recent years, the international community has expanded efforts in programme evaluation to improve the accountability of development projects. This paper presents approaches to implementing state-of-the-art evaluations in rural electrification projects, taking into account specific challenges that researchers face in such interventions. Furthermore, it suggests a particular approach to assess...

The analysis of land investment and tenure security usually assumes land scarcity. However, some developing countries have communities with land abundance. This article therefore examines the effects of land abundance for investment and tenure security. The paper develops a formal test of land abundance and estimates a system of three simultaneous equations. The empirical analysis uncovers sign...

This paper studies the strategic interaction between a foreign direct investor and a host country. We analyze how the investor can use his control rights to protect his investment if he faces the risk of “creeping expropriation” once his investment is sunk. It is shown that this hold-up problem may cause underinvestment if the bargaining position of the investor is too weak and overinvestment i...

A transition toward a sustainable circular bioeconomy requires drastic changes across broad range of industries and their stakeholders. The current slow pace with which society tries to avert the transgression critical thresholds planetary system is worrying. However, historical case shipping industry in 19th century shows how suddenly whole can change after long period low innovation activity ...

We show that reputational effects may explain differences in economic performances of dictatorial or authoritarian governments. A good reputation convinces citizens that the dictator will exert high effort in economic performance. With replacement, a dictator exerts high effort only if its foregone rent is not too large. Without replacement, the dictator succeeds in convincing the citizens of i...