There is a burgeoning literature highlighting asymmetric information among household members. However, little is known about the source of the asymmetry and its effect on efficiency. Using a unique survey of Ghanaian households, we examine the accuracy of spousal cross-reports and the effect of discrepancies on farm production. We find that information problems pertain to scale, the quantity of...

We present unitary and sharing rule models of the household that explicitly account for three parental concerns that may lead to gender bias in the allocation of resources to children—equity, efficiency, and preferences. Deaton’s test of the effect of household composition on adult good expenditures is employed using data on fathers’ and mothers’ nutrient intake from the China Health and Nutrit...

I analyze the impact of food price inflation on parental decisions to send their children to school. Moreover, I use the fact that food crop farmers and cotton farmers were exposed differently to that shock to estimate the income elasticity of school enrolment. The results suggest that the shock-induced loss in purchasing power had an immediate effect on enrolment rates. Instrumental variable e...

Connecting private dwellings to the water main is expensive and typically cannot be publicly financed. We show that households’ willingness to pay for a private connection is high when it can be purchased on credit, not because a connection improves health but because it increases the time available for leisure and reduces interand intra-household conflicts on water matters, leading to sustaine...

We study the interaction between product quality, prices and demand in a dynamic model of asymmetric information. Sellers choose between producing high quality goods which gives low profits today but increases probability of future survival in the market and low quality ones which gives higher returns today but lowers future survival. However, demand depends on expected quality. Multiple steady...

In this paper we address the question of farm-nonfarm linkages at the household level for a case-study in Senegal. We examine whether increasing off-farm employment opportunities for rural households – resulting from increased horticulture exports and associated agro-industrialization – has benefitted the smallholder farm sector through investment linkages. We use data from a household survey i...

This paper demonstrates a method for estimating treatment effects in spatial tests, utilizing a second control group to measure unexplained spatial phenomena. The technique is implemented on two innovations in Ugandan microfinance, and we measure the ways in which concurrent shocks such as an ebola outbreak and a contentious presidential election altered outcomes differentially across regions. ...

Migration decision-making in developing economies is addressed from the perspective of status in the labor force (unemployed or unemployed) and traditional concerns with utility maximization are expanded to include the role of assets and access to capital markets. A dynamic model is formulated and the results reveal that the migration mechanism is efficient when workers have access to borrowing...

Thinking about population as a driver of agricultural development provides insights into induced technical and institutional change, whether it be Esther Boserup’s declining fallow period, modern crop varieties, or the specialization pyramid that arises in laborintensive agriculture. The non-convexities of research and development, infrastructure investments, and specialization imply that modes...

This paper analyzes the effects of a potential spillover on technology transfer of a multinational enterprise and on the host country policy. In particular, we examine how both parties’ incentives can be controlled through the ownership structure in an international joint venture. In contrast to existing arguments we show that spillovers must not always have negative effects on technology trans...