It has been widely recognized that the poor spends a significant proportion of their income on social spending even at the expense of basic consumption. What are the motives behind the observed lavish social spending among the poor? We attempt to test three competing explanations at the social...

Despite the fact that there is a substantial literature on the analysis of volatility spillovers between stock returns and domestic exchange rates, surprisingly, little empirical research has examined volatility spillovers between oil prices and emerging economies, where a clear gap of research...

Though social spending facilitates risk-pooling in the impoverished regions, too many resources devoted to social occasions may impose negative externalities and hinder efforts to alleviate poverty for households living close to subsistence. Conducting three waves census-type panel survey in...