Numerous national transfer programs around the world are designed with uniform benefit schedules imposed by central governments, but implemented by local governments. The Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia, the second largest safety net in Sub Saharan Africa, is one such program....

This paper builds a model determining optimal capacities of diversion dams or water transfer projects. The model incorporates stochastic inflows to the dams and the role of the dam capacity in reducing overflows, and gives a closed-form expression of the marginal benefit of capacities....

We estimate the impact of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Program using an economywide approach. We find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two-fifths of total benefits. Due to these indirect benefits, the cutoff at which lower fertilizer yield...

This paper exploits a liquidity shock from a large-scale welfare program in Brazil to investigate the importance of credit constraints and informal financial assistance in explaining entrepreneurship. Previous research focuses exclusively on how liquidity shocks change recipients’ behavior...

Entrepreneurs base their decision to start a business on a range of factors, from age, education and assets to macroeconomic conditions. While the majority of these factors have a well-understood impact on entering and exiting self-employment, the effect of macroeconomic conditions is less...

Despite growing concern about the effect of environmental degradation on human health, little effort has been made to quantify the effect of ecosystem damage on public health indicators such as the incidence and burden of infectious diseases. Using village-level panel data and satellite data on...

There is some empirical evidence that access to daycare increases the incomes of households with young children, particularly through the expansion of female labor force participation in the extensive and intensive margins. Whether this boost persists even as children grow and enroll in school,...

Following Hurricane Katrina, the United States government provided $45 billion in loans and rebuilding funds to individuals and businesses for the purpose of repairing the damage caused by the hurricane. However, it is not yet clear what impact this assistance had on small businesses in affected...