Does relative income have an impact on subjective well-being among extremely poor people? Contrary to the findings in developed countries, where relative income has shown a significant and negative impact on subjective well-being, this study (based on different definitions of reference groups) suggests that relative income does not affect subjective well-being among the very poor people in northern Ethiopia.

The burden of typhoid fever remains high in impoverished settings, and increasing antibiotic resistance
is making treatment costly. One strategy for reducing the typhoid morbidity and mortality is vaccination
with the Vi polysaccharide vaccine.We use awealth of neweconomic and epidemiological data to evaluate
the cost-effectiveness of Vi vaccination against typhoid in sites in four Asian cities: Kolkata (India), Karachi
(Pakistan), North Jakarta (Indonesia), and Hue (Vietnam). We report results from both a societal as well

This paper proposes that ethnicity coupled with ethnic nepotism may reduce interpersonal generalised trust.

We use the 2001 wave of the World Values Survey data for eight African countries to test this claim, and show that while ethnicity and ethnic nepotism are each important in affecting generalised trust levels, their interaction has a self-reinforcing and negative effect on trust levels. The results underscore the importance of institutions in controlling ethnic nepotism and thus partly in mitigating the adverse effects of ethnicity on trust.

This study measured the discount rates of 262 farm households in the Ethiopian highlands, using a time preference experiment with real payoffs. In general, the median discount rate was very high and varied systematically with wealth and risk aversion. Our findings, however, warn that rates-of-time preferences (RTPs) and risk aversion reinforce each other and are easily confused. Because the RTPs were so high, what seem like profitable investments from the outside might not seem so from the farmers’ perspectives.

The effects of stake size on cooperation and punishment are investigated using a public goods experiment.

The effects of stake size on cooperation and punishment are investigated using a public goods experiment. We find that an increase in stake size does neither significantly affect cooperation nor the level of punishment.

Objectives: To estimate household willingness to pay (WTP) for cholera vaccines in a rural area of Bangladesh, which had participated in a 1985 oral cholera vaccine trial. Methods: A contingent valuation study was undertaken in Matlab, Bangladesh in summer 2005. All respondents (N= 591) received a description of a cholera vaccine that was 50% effective for 3 years and had negligible side effects. Respondents were asked how many vaccines they would purchase for their household at randomly pre-assigned prices.

The empirical analysis in this paper shows that production risk plays a significant role in sustainable land-management technology adoption in the Ethiopian highlands.

Analysis of the differences in firms’ responsiveness to PROPER (Indonesia’s successful public disclosure program for industrial pollution control) showed that foreign-owned firms and firms in densely populated areas were more likely to respond to public environmental ratings. Firms with bad environmental performances felt pressure to improve, but this incentive diminished after the initial abatement steps.

This artefactual experiment in Ethiopia tested the hyperbolic discounting hypothesis by comparing time discounting over cash and consumption goods, using real payoffs. It found no difference in elicited time preferences between cash and consumption goods (tradable or final), which could be the result of missing markets in rural Ethiopia, and there was some evidence of time-inconsistent preferences.