Rural inhabitants of developing countries face extraordinarily risky environments, and decision-making under risk has crucial implications for the welfare of the rural poor. Therefore, obtaining a better understanding of the behaviour under risk of low-income populations is a vital step in the comprehension of human behaviour, and is important for effective policy design and evaluation, as well as for shedding light on production, investment and technology adoption decisions. In Chapter One, I analyze data collected from a laboratory experiment involving poor subjects in rural Ethiopia, in order to determine which decision models (and corresponding risk preferences) best describe the decision-making under risk of inhabitants. I find that expected utility theory (EUT) does not provide a good overall description of the decisions made by participants in the experiment; instead, there is evidence of probability weighting and loss aversion, implying that rank-dependent and reference-dependent choice models are more likely to represent the true latent decision-making process of subjects. In Chapter Two, I analyze combined experimental and survey data from rural Ethiopia in order to evaluate the determinants of risk preferences as well as assess the degree of asset integration in experimental decisions. Analyzing both EUT and non-EUT decision models and using an instrumental variable strategy, I find that household wealth negatively affects both risk aversion and loss aversion, but independent background risk has no effect on risk preferences. Further, I find evidence of narrow framing, as opposed to asset integration, suggesting that participants make decisions in the experiment in isolation from outside wealth. In Chapter Three, I analyze experimental data from Brazil to evaluate whether subjects understand decision problems that use the complex Multiple Price List (MPL) elicitation procedure, and to determine which decision models best describe observed choices. I find that the MPL decision problems of the experiment enable a finer characterization of risk preferences as compared to Ordered Lottery Selection problems (used in the Ethiopian experiment). However, I find that a significant fraction of choice patterns in the MPL problems are intransitive, and the evidence indicates that subjects did not properly understand the decision problems and thus observed choices do not reveal true risk preferences. Therefore, the relatively complex MPL procedure may not be suitable for experiments conducted with poorly-educated subjects in developing country settings. Chapter Four presents a theory outlining the relationship between rational demand for index insurance – for which the net transfer between insurer and policyholders depends only on a publicly verifiable index – and wealth. Further, the validity of this theory is tested using the experimental data from Ethiopia. In line with the theoretical model presented, due to basis risk and actuarially unfair premiums, demand for index insurance is hump-shaped – first increasing then decreasing – in wealth. The results indicate that the low take-up of this product observed among the poorest (and most risk averse) individuals in recent field studies may result from rational choice rather than credit constraints or poor decision-making.

Discourse for the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (Development Planning) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, / A definition of development includes improving living conditions and the quality of life. There is an interrelationship between health and social and economic development. "Health Leads to and at the same time is dependant on a progressive improvement in conditions and quality of life". (World Health Organisation). Therefore a dIscussion on health has to take into account the socio-economic and political context. In assessing the health profile of the homeland populations one finds them to be the least healthy. The problem is that the level of health of the rural population is low and the health care situation follows that of a developing society, where poverty-related diseases and infant mortality rates are high and life expectancies are unacceptably low. The rationale of this discourse is to express the need of action by governments, and health Bnd development workers, to protect and promote health. The aim is to examine the primary health care approach in Q sample area and see how it can be used to achieve an acceptable level of health. Background on the state of health will be addressed. The health services under apartheid is discussed in the first section, with attention given to statistical information and health indicators. / AC2017

Este texto faz uma re-leitura do modelo dual proposto por Lewis em 1954 (1) adicionando considerações sobre a competição entre firmas, o progresso tecnológico e sobre alguns outros elementos do comportamento mercado de trabalho (mobilidade, qualificação e dinâmica salarial). O texto tem como objetivo é propor elementos à serem incorporados a dinâmica original, de forma a tentar entender se, em uma dinâmica de desenvolvimento como esta, existe possibilidade de que excessos de oferta de mão-de-obra persistam, resistindo a acumulação de capital. / This dissertation reviews the dual economy model presented by Lewis in 1954 (1), adding to the discussion aspects about the competitive dynamics between firms, technological progress, and other elements of the labor market (labor mobility, qualification and wage dynamics). Its goal is to propose new elements that could, once incorporated into the original model, explain the possibility of a persistent labor surplus (a surplus that would be resistant to the accumulation process).

Esta tese apresenta três ensaios empíricos sobre a relação entre comércio internacional e crescimento, utilizando modelos empíricos não lineares. No primeiro ensaio, os autores propõem o modelo MR-STVEC (Multiple Regime Smooth Transition VEC), para uma amostra de quatro países desenvolvidos (Estados Unidos, Canadá, Japão e Alemanha), na perspectiva de avaliar de que modo as exportações influenciam a produtividade total dos fatores (PFT). Os resultados indicam que as exportações possuem um mecanismo de reverter possíveis choques negativos de produtividade. Adicionalmente, para o Canadá e Alemanha, quando há um movimento de ascensão da produtividade, proveniente de um eventual choque positivo, as exportações também agem, mas de modo a restringi-lo. O segundo ensaio verifica a relação de causalidade entre variáveis de comércio internacional (exportações e importações) e a taxa de crescimento do produto, aqui mensurado pela produção industrial. Neste caso, a amostra é composta de vinte nações com diferentes níveis de renda. Uma abordagem empírica alternativa, denominada entropia de transferência (ET), é aplicada, com a vantagem de não assumir a priori qualquer tipo de especificação paramétrica. Os resultados mostram que o comércio internacional é um importante fator para melhor entender crescimento, em termos do conceito de redução de incertezas futura, com destaque para as exportações quando são considerados países em desenvolvimento. Entretanto, o sentido de causalidade reversa é predominante na amostra, em especial para países mais ricos. Por fim, o último ensaio segue o argumento de Hausmman et al (2007) e avalia se o grau de especialização das exportações e importações cria uma possível não linearidade entre abertura comercial e renda per capita. Em outras palavras: a composição da pauta de exportação e importação pode alterar a capacidade que a abertura comercial tem em explicar o diferencial de renda entre nações? Para verificar esta hipótese, aplica-se o modelo de painel com transição suave para 110 países, seguindo o mesmo procedimento Frankel e Romer (1999), evitando assim o problema de endogeneidade. Os resultados empíricos indicam que quando as exportações são especializadas em commodities e as importações são diversificadas, a abertura não é capaz de influenciar a renda. Por outro lado, se as exportações são mais diversificadas, independentemente do grau de especialização que as importações venham apresentar, a abertura torna-se relevante em explicar o diferencial de renda entre as nações. / The present dissertation is composed of three essays that study the relations between economic growth and international trade through nonlinear empirical models. In the first essay, the author uses Multiple Regimes Smooth Transition Vector Error-Correction Models (MR-STVEC) for a sample of developed countries (United States, Canada, Japan and Germany) in order to evaluate how exports may affect productivity. The results indicate that exports may reverse a drop of productivity. Furthermore, in particular for Canada and Germany, exports are able to restrict productivity when there is an ascent movement. The second essay examines the causality between foreign trade variables (exports and imports) and output growth, as measured by industrial production. Here, the sample is composed of twenty nations with different income levels. An alternative time series empirical approach called transfer entropy (ET) is applied; it does not impose any aprioristic parametric function. The results show that trade is an important factor for the understanding of output growth, particularly exports when we focus on some developing countries. However, the reverse causality is also observed and, in general, is preeminent. Finally, the last essay follows the arguments of Hausmman et al (2007) in order to verify if sectorial specialization of exports and imports creates nonlinearities between the degree of openness of an economy and its per capita income. In other words: the compositions of exports and imports can change the capacity that the economic degree of openness has to explain the income differentials among countries? In order to address this issue, the third essay applies a Panel Smooth Transition Model for 110 countries, following the same procedure of Frankel e Romer (1999) to avoid endogeneity problem. Results indicate that when exports are specialized in commodities and imports are diversified, openness do not influence income. Otherwise, if exports are diversified, independently of the levels of import\'s specialization, openness turns out to be relevant to explain per capita income.

O presente trabalho analisa algumas obras de Prebisch, escritas entre o final da década de 40 e início da década de 60, do ponto de vista do comércio internacional e do desenvolvimento econômico da América Latina. Procura-se identificar em suas obras um componente crítico sobre essas questões, tendo em vista a conjuntura internacional no início do século XX, que deixa evidente a situação periférica latino-americana na divisão internacional do trabalho. Essa se expressa e ao mesmo tempo tem suas raízes em uma estrutura interna desigual e subdesenvolvida. Além disso, essa posição crítica do autor é vista como resultado de uma busca pela explicação para os problemas latino-americanos, cujas respostas não podiam ser encontradas no arcabouço teórico da corrente de pesquisa tradicional sobre comércio internacional. Ao tratar os países como tendo estruturas homogêneas, a teoria neoclássica faz simplificações que, na visão de Prebisch, deixa de lado uma questão essencial: as assimetrias no plano internacional. Para o autor a incorporação dessa questão na análise é importante devido ao impacto exercido sobre o desenvolvimento latino-americano, e pela forma como condiciona as perspectivas futuras da América Latina. E, mostra-se como essa forma de pensar e estruturar suas idéias levou a defesa de políticas a serem adotadas pela América Latina, que diferem das defendidas pela teoria neoclássica. Mas, analisam-se as obras de Prebisch, levando em consideração o próprio desenvolvimento intelectual do autor, através do qual há uma ampliação de sua análise e a formação de idéias integradas sobre a situação periférica. Neste trabalho é mostrado como o pensamento de Prebisch implica na incorporação de variáveis sociais e políticas para construir uma abordagem econômica que priorize a conciliação teórica com as circunstâncias históricas e com a realidade latino-americana. Conclui-se, através da análise dessas questões, que a observação sobre a especificidade latino-americana, e a ausência desta inclusão na teoria tradicional, levou Prebisch a formar uma nova abordagem para as questões sobre comércio internacional e desenvolvimento econômico, no qual o objetivo deveria ser sempre a busca por uma maior homogeneidade internacional. / The following work analyses some of Prebisch?s work, written between the end of the 40s and beginning of the 60s, from the point of view of international trade and development economics in Latin America. Its intention is to identify a critical component in regard to these issues, in light of the international conjuncture in the beginning of the XX century, which reveals the peripherical situation of Latin America in the international division of labor. This is expressed and at the same time has its roots in an unequal and underdeveloped internal structure. In addition to that, this critical position of the author is seen as a result of his search for an explanation for Latin America problems, for which the answers couldn?t be found in the theoretical framework of the traditional research school of international trade. By treating countries as having homogeneous structures, the neoclassical theory, has done simplifications that, in Prebisch?s view, do not take in consideration an essential question: the asymmetries in the international sphere. For the author the incorporation of this matter is important due to its impact over Latin Americas development, and also because of the way it affects Latin Americas future perspectives. And, this work shows how this way of thinking and of structuring his ideas led him to defend policies to be adopted by Latin America, that differ from the ones defended by the neoclassical theory. But, it analyses Prebisch?s works, taking in consideration his own intellectual development, through which his analysis gets wider and he builds integrated ideas in relation to the peripherical situation. In this work it?s showed how Prebisch?s ideas implies that social and political variables should be incorporated in order to build an economic approach that gives a priority to the conciliation of theory with the historical circumstances and with Latin America reality. The work concludes through the analyses of these questions, that the observation of Latin America specificities, and the lack of inclusion of it in the neoclassical theory, led Prebisch to establish a new approach to the questions about international trade and economic development, in which the main goal should be the search for a bigger international homogeneity.

One cannot study poverty in Tanzania without understanding the agricultural sector, which employs more than two-thirds of the population and accounts for nearly a quarter of national GDP. This thesis examines three themes that focus on the difficulties that rural Tanzanians face in achieving a reasonable livelihood: the adverse legacy of a failed historical policy, a difficult climate, and market failures. The first empirical chapter examines the legacy of the villagization program that attempted to transform the predominantly agricultural and rural Tanzania. Between 1971 and 1973, the majority of rural residents were moved to villages planned by the government. This essay examines if the programs e↵ects are persistent and have had a long-run legacy. It analyzes the impact of exposure to the program on various outcome measures from recent household surveys. The primary finding of this study is that households living in districts heavily exposed to the program have worse measures of various current outcomes. The second empirical chapter examines the role of reliability of rainfall, which is important in Tanzania as agriculture is predominantly rain-fed and a small fraction of plots are irrigated. This chapter investigates if households cope with this major risk to income by re-allocating their labor supply between agriculture, wage labor, and self-employment activities. This chapter combines data on labor allocation of households within and outside of agriculture from the National Panel Survey with high-resolution satellite-based rainfall data not previously used in this literature. The primary finding of this study is that households allocate more family labor to agriculture in years of good rainfall and more labor to self-employment activities in years of poor rainfall. Market failures are often cited as a rationale for policy recommendations and government interventions. The third chapter implements four tests of market failures suggested in the literature, all of which rely on the agricultural household model but di↵er in how market failures are manifested. The common finding of these tests is that market failures exist in agricultural factor markets in Tanzania, although significant heterogeneity exists. Markets are more likely to fail in rural areas, remote locations, and are more likely to affect female-headed households. Households are also more likely to face market failure when they try to supply labor to the market than when they try to hire labor from the market.

This research sets out to explore the interface between the new politics of localisation and the political process in India. Governments and donors have increasingly emphasised the locality as the primary unit of development and politics. This new trajectory has been manifest in the increase of community-based organisations and mechanisms of participatory governance at the local level. From the late 1990s, the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh emerged as one of the most important examples of this new developmental politics and this research sets out to explore how local dynamics changed as a result. Political economy approaches tend to focus on state-periphery relations in terms of interest groups or vote banks. By contrast, this research found the village to be an enduring unit in the political system through which political identity manifests itself through three features. First, participation in local elections is driven by common forces of politics of parties, caste and corruption but its outcome is dependent on the specific context at the village level. Second, new participatory institutions created through state policy were found to merge with informal practices at the local level and produce a complex interplay between the new local and state identities. Third, analysis of leadership found evidence of a well-defined system of organisation within party groups at the village level, which were shaped not by party institutions but by the inner workings of village politics. These findings give cause to reassess the way in which we understand policy and political change. I do so by expanding on Skocpol's polity approach, which focused attention on the dynamic interplay of policy and social structure. Drawing on elements of the 'political development' theory, the concept of a ‘developing polity' approach is elaborated on, to better explain the complex interplay between local and higher level politics. These findings have implications for understanding both political change in India and development strategy. The macro-perspective on the decay of political institutions is contrasted with a local perspective that finds evidence of the vitality of party politics at the village level. This has a number of important implications for development, both in terms of the way in which we analyse participation and the way in which participatory development can be translated into political change

This thesis is composed of three empirical essays that analyse different development and labour economics issues about Mexico and its emigrant population residing in the United States. The first essay examines the role of occupational segregation in explaining the low wages among first, second and third generation Mexican immigrants in the United States. Mexican-Americans earn lower wages than blacks mainly because they possess less human capital. With respect to whites, their lower wages are also a product of their smaller rewards for skills and underrepresentation at the top of the occupational structure. Occupational segregation constitutes an important part of the wage gap between natives and Mexican-born immigrants. For subsequent generations, the contribution of occupational segregation to the wage gap varies significantly between groups and according to the decomposition used. The second essay examines whether Seguro Popular, a free-of-charge publicly provided health insurance program for otherwise uninsured households, crowded-out private transfers in Mexico. Using data from the National Household Income and Expenditure Survey, the effects of Seguro Popular are identified using the spatial variation in the program's coverage induced by its sequential roll-out throughout Mexico. The results show that Seguro Popular reduced on average a household's probability of receiving private transfers by 5.55 percentage points. This finding appears to be driven by domestic private transfers, since the program's effects are only statistically significant for private transfers originating within Mexico. In addition, Seguro Popular had a weak and not statistically significant negative effect on the amount of private transfers received. Failure to take into account possible changes in private behaviour induced by Seguro Popular may overstate the program's potential benefits or distributional impacts. Finally, the third essay studies the effect of students' exposure to violent crimes on educational outcomes. Driven by drug-trade related crimes, homicide levels in Mexico have dramatically increased since 2007. Using school level data, a panel of Mexico's primary and secondary schools from 2006 to 2012 is constructed to analyse the effect of exposure to homicides on standardised test scores and grade failure rates. The results show that a one-unit increase in the number of homicides per 10,000 inhabitants reduces average test scores between 0.0035 and 0.0142 standard deviations. This effect is larger in secondary schools, stronger if the homicide occurs closer to the examination date, and is stable when using either total homicides or drug-trade related homicides to measure crime. Higher homicides rates are also associated with an increase in the grade failure rate. Early exposure to homicides has potential long-term consequences since it may affect educational attainment levels and future income streams.

Este texto faz uma re-leitura do modelo dual proposto por Lewis em 1954 (1) adicionando considerações sobre a competição entre firmas, o progresso tecnológico e sobre alguns outros elementos do comportamento mercado de trabalho (mobilidade, qualificação e dinâmica salarial). O texto tem como objetivo é propor elementos à serem incorporados a dinâmica original, de forma a tentar entender se, em uma dinâmica de desenvolvimento como esta, existe possibilidade de que excessos de oferta de mão-de-obra persistam, resistindo a acumulação de capital. / This dissertation reviews the dual economy model presented by Lewis in 1954 (1), adding to the discussion aspects about the competitive dynamics between firms, technological progress, and other elements of the labor market (labor mobility, qualification and wage dynamics). Its goal is to propose new elements that could, once incorporated into the original model, explain the possibility of a persistent labor surplus (a surplus that would be resistant to the accumulation process).

La reducción pobreza es un tópico importante en la agenda de país que tiene Perú, sin embargo, para 2017 la pobreza aumento un punto porcentual. Del mismo modo, el gasto en programas sociales ha ido en aumento, pero la variación porcentual en el número de hogares pobres ha ido reduciéndose. Esto podría significar que el efecto positivo que estos deberían tener , como lo propone Sachs (2005), está siendo mitigado o eliminado por otro proceso subyacente que no está siendo observado. Este proceso subyacente podría ser síntoma de trampa de la pobreza, para determinar la veracidad de esta afirmación se utilizará como base el trabajo de Carter y Barret (2006), adaptándolo para la base datos de la ENAHO panel. Dicha metodología propone el uso de un índice que mida el nivel de activos de un hogar, y mediante la observación de la dinámica de la función resultante se puede determinar la existencia de una trampa de pobreza a nivel de activos. Los resultados de las estimaciones muestran que no existe una trampa de pobreza, pero la sensibilidad de los datos con respecto a la especificación índice de activos hace que sea necesario una extensión del trabajo con métodos econométricos más recientes. / Poverty reduction is an important topic in Peru's country agenda, however, by 2017 poverty increased by one percentage point. Similarly, spending on social programs has been increasing, but the percentage variation in the number of poor households has been decreasing. This could mean that the positive effect that these should have, as proposed by Sachs (2005), is being mitigated or eliminated by another underlying process that is not being observed. This underlying process could be a symptom of the poverty trap, to determine the veracity of this statement, the work of Carter and Barret (2006) will be used as a basis, adapting it to the database of the ENAHO panel. This methodology proposes the use of an index that measures the level of assets of a household, and by observing the dynamics of the resulting function, the existence of a poverty trap at the asset level can be determined. The results of the estimates show that there is no poverty trap, but the sensitivity of the data with respect to the asset index specification makes an extension of work with more recent econometric methods necessary. / Trabajo de investigación