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This thesis addresses Indian household behaviour towards savings and explores the effects of economic growth on poverty and inequality. In the second chapter, using data from the Indian Household Consumer Expenditure survey, I show that vulnerable Indian households do not treat gold jewellery as a luxury good, but as a substitute to for savings. Households in rural locations, with irregular income, with illiterate heads and with casual or agricultural labour as the main source of income have higher expenditures on gold. This can be explained by the Permanent Income Hypothesis. Households mitigate future uncertainty by accumulating gold to smooth out future income shocks. I test two alternative hypotheses for high levels of spending on gold in India. I find limited support for an alternative hypothesis that high levels of gold expenditure simply reflect expenditures on dowries, a form of cultural preferences stemming from religion. I find no evidence of a second alternative hypothesis, namely that intra-household bargaining power, measured by the by wife's relative education level, influences gold purchases. Finally, using Engel curves, I examine whether these results are due to anomalies in the Indian data by examining expenditures on food, a normal good. In the third chapter, I deal with non-random sampling of the Indian Household Consumer Expenditure Survey, by adjusting the median annual per capita consumption. While comparing absolute and relative methodologies for calculating poverty rates in India, I show that the World Bank methodology produces higher absolute poverty rates than the relative 60% of the median annual consumption methodology; spatial analysis used for robustness, confirms that neighbouring states present very different poverty rates, emphasising the effects of local legal and welfare systems in every Indian state. I then use a logit maximum likelihood model to show how 5-Year Indian GDP growth, preceding the 2009-2010 Household Consumer Expenditure Survey used for this chapter, has had a lagged effect on enhancing the chances of poverty in Indian households. This is more prominent in the case where the relative methodology is used for estimating poverty. Furthermore, I show how households in Indian states that have experienced Services-led GDP growth in particular, are more prone to be poor, both in the case of 5-year and 3-year growth, where the absolute methodology is used to draw poverty lines. Where the relative methodology is used, shorter-term Services-led growth seems to benefit Urban households only, in relation to poverty. In the fourth chapter I use the economic growth observed in India in the 2000s, to assess its impact on inequality amongst urban households. I also deal with non-random sampling in Round 66 of the Household Consumer Expenditure surveys, by assigning probability weights. I find that inequality has decreased overall from 1994-95 to 2009-10, while the difference in inequality between the bottom and top of the expenditure distribution amongst urban population has increased. Using intra-decile analysis, I find that inequality within the bottom 10% of the urban population has decreased, while at the same time inequality within the lower middle class has increased. I test the effect of economic growth on inequality, within the Marginal Productivity Theory model; I find no support at State level. I find that States with high percentage of casual labour, as part of their urban population, are more likely to experience in increase in inequality, while there is also some support around growth in the Services sector to have a positive effect on increasing inequality, within the 5-year time frame. Finally, I find no support for Social Security and Welfare government spending to have an impact on inequality, at State level.

Between 2000 and 2015 the Millennium Development Goals were the focus of much global attention and activity. They were selected in light of astounding poverty, with over 1 billion people at the time living on less than $1 per day. In a sense the MDGs were morally undeniable. The focus of this study is MDG2, universal primary education. It sets out to establish how and why MDG2 came to be selected. Whilst its selection seems obvious, for years developing countries complained about the short-sightedness of prioritising primary over secondary and tertiary education (Klees 2008). A task force commissioned by the World Bank and UNESCO at the time showed that the Bank’s rate of return analysis on primary education was flawed. It argued that developing countries need highly educated people to be economic and social entrepreneurs, develop good governance, strong institutions and infrastructure. In this way MDG2’s selection is problematic. Using case study method, first the literature is examined. Three hypotheses are generated: one based on a rational synoptic theory, one on critical theory and one on world society theory. A range of data are used to establish findings and test hypotheses. The study then considers implications of the findings for theory and the policy process. The findings show that priorities promoting more equal opportunities, such as MDG2, were gradually preferred. Whereas priorities promoting more equal outcomes, such as elimination of trade barriers, were gradually excluded. The study finds no evidence that the General Assembly ever voted on the list of 8 MDGs. Rather, the MDGs were selected by elite policy actors, addressing multiple interests. The study considers the assertion that marginalization of the poor does not happen because people harbor ill will toward them, rather because “The poor have no friends among the global elite” (Pogge 2011, p. 62).

The use of group lending for poverty alleviation is a widespread feature of modern microfinance. The structure of joint-liability credit - if one member defaults the others are held financially responsible - produces a natural tension between a borrower's social and economic interests. This study integrates theory from economics, sociology, and behavioural experiments to address the question, "How do social and economic mechanisms interact to shape a microcredit group's financial behaviour?" The empirical analysis involves an original dataset from a microfinance institution in Sierra Leone. The total dataset includes 7,025 joint-liability borrowers involved in 47,931 repayment transactions from 2005 to 2011. The empirical methods used are diverse: ethnographic fieldwork, GPS spatial analysis, social affiliation survey design, and multilevel statistical analysis of loan performance data. The original work is structured as three distinct papers. In the first paper, I examine social collateral, the formal use of a borrower's relationships as security against loan default. How does a group's spatial structure affect the efficacy of social collateral? Spatial concentration improves a group's economic performance up to a certain level after which the effect reverses and performance declines. The relationship is driven by a social trade-off between ability and willingness to enforce the loan. Further, groups that consist of multiple spatial fragments produce worse performance. Spatially fragmented groups are prone to splitting into social factions. In the second paper, I question what drives the self-selection process of microcredit group formation. The results show that group leaders prefer members with pre-existing social ties, who are spatially proximate, and have matching business types. The preference for socio-spatial factors is likely motivated by reducing the risk of strategic default by group members. In the third paper, I explore how economic cooperation in small groups evolves over years of repeated interaction. Despite the selective retention of better performing groups, average cooperation rates consistently decline, in terms of contribution and effort. Further, variance across groups continues to increase over 30 months of repeated interaction, suggesting that convergence to a stable cooperation rate has not occurred. Given that group lending exhibits many of the factors found to promote cooperation in laboratory experiments, it is surprising to find such a marked decline in this field setting. Overall, this thesis contributes to economic sociology by dissecting the difficult trade-offs between social and economic motives in group lending and offers policy implications for microfinance institutions regarding group formation heuristics, contract design, and loan management.

The dissertation is a compilation of three essays on Turkey's poverty alleviation programs. The first paper focuses on the welfare impact of the global financial Crisis on Turkish households. The second paper considers the protective impact of the Green Card non-contributory health insurance program in Turkey during the Crisis in 2008-2009. The third paper uses experimental data from the field in eastern Turkey, to look at patterns of agricultural technology diffusion in a rural development program implemented in a post-conflict setting.

Morocco is oftentimes praised by academics, development workers, and women’s rights activists as a trailblazer for the empowerment of women in the Middle East and North African region. Its reforms in the realm of family legislation and progress made in human development place the country at the helm of liberalising Arab Muslim-majority societies, even more so after the Arab Spring and Morocco’s peaceful transition to a ‘new’ constitutional order. However, a closer look at women’s rights discourses, legal reforms, its texts and implementation, and the public attitudes towards the enhancement of women’s rights reveals a less empowering situation. The purported goals of the Family Code, as the extolled document showcasing Morocco’s attempt at ameliorating (married) women’s rights, of ‘doing justice to women’ while ‘preserving men’s dignity’ mask the reformed law’s reconsolidation of patriarchal family relations. Many legal grey areas within this particular law, as well as clashing principles emanating from other laws such as the Penal Code, allow judges and the ʿaduls (religious notaries) to exercise discretion and apply the law as they see fit and, to a large extent, as it conforms to their and the community’s vision of the ideal moral order. Moreover, because ‘doing justice to women’ affects men’s and family’s honour, the project of the enhancement of women’s rights has had as a result retraditionalisation of family relations and hierarchical gender structures. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the status of educated single adult girls from provincial areas. They may be poster girls for the development community, but they are pitied by their own communities because they fail to become complete women––married (non-employed) mothers. The story of Morocco’s professed progress is a story of empowering its citizens, but one which does so on paper only. It is also a story which hides the salient details of poorly written reformed laws, obstructed access to justice, continuing widespread misogyny, material poverty and social marginalisation, and cohesive socio-economic programmes, which are rarely followed through.

This thesis is an investigation into the microeconomic mechanisms that govern some of the occupational choices faced by workers in Sub-Saharan Africa, and into the monetary and non-monetary returns to their decisions. Chapter 1 begins by exploring the decision process that leads workers to allocate themselves to different occupations within the economy. In particular, I investigate the role of risk-aversion in the allocation of workers between formal and informal jobs in Ghana, hence attempting to explain a fundamental dimension of duality through an investigation into workers' preferences. In my model of sectoral allocation risk-averse workers can opt between entering the free-entry informal sector and queuing for formal occupations. Conditional on identifying the riskier option, the model yields testable implications on the relationship between risk-aversion and workers' allocation. My testing strategy proceeds in two steps. First, using the first three waves of the Ghana Household Urban Panel Survey (GHUPS) dataset, I estimate expected income uncertainty and find it considerably higher in the informal sector than in formal employment. Second, using experimental data to elicit risk-attitudes I estimate the effect of risk-aversion on occupational choices and I find that, in line with the first result, more risk-averse workers are more likely to queue for formal jobs and less likely to be in the informal sector. The conclusion of the first chapter is that attitudes to risk should feature more prominently in models of sector allocation and in the design of labour market policies, in particular when those policies aim to impact workers' vulnerability to risk and uncertainty. Chapter 2 focuses on the largest occupational category in the Developing world, self-employed workers with small productive activities, and it tries to estimate the returns to different productive assets, namely physical capital, labour and human capital. These are the workers that form most of the informal sector analysed in chapter 1, which allows me to draw a direct link with the analysis so far. The chapter begins by specifying a model for the income-generating process grounded in the literature on firms' production and hence abridging the gap between the analysis of individual earnings and the study of firms' value added. Identification in the empirics is achieved by means of panel estimators that are suitable to address the endogeneity of input choices, which derives from both time-varying and time-invariant unobservable heterogeneity. The use of these estimators is made feasible by the length of the Ghanaian Household Urban Panel Survey dataset at CSAE. I also explore issues of endogeneity in the selection of different technologies, defined by their relative capital and labour intensity. Finally, I analyse the shape of returns to capital, with the aim to detect potential non-convexities in technology. The results show that capital and work-experience play the strongest role in income-generation, while the shares of value added attributed to labour and to formal schooling are low. Marginal returns to investment are high at low capital levels and they decrease very rapidly, pointing against the existence of non-convexities due to minimum scale requirements, but implying that real income gains resulting form micro-investment are modest. Chapter 3 returns to the issue of earnings uncertainty and risk-aversion explored in Chapter 1, but it now takes the allocation choice as given and explores the direct welfare implications of income uncertainty for worker's well-being. Namely, the chapter explores the relationship between income and welfare, with a particular attention on the link between income vulnerability and happiness. Using unique longitudinal data on life-satisfaction and labour market outcomes, I estimate an individual measure of vulnerability (defined as the probability of falling below a low-income threshold) and investigate its effect on well-being. After controlling for unobservable individual fixed effects, work-satisfaction, relative income and other relevant worker characteristics, I find a sizable impact of vulnerability, over and above the income effect. When I explore the mechanisms behind my results, I find that aspiration adaptation to current income may result in a transitory income effect. Moreover, using my direct measure of attitudes to risk from field-experiments (already used in chapter 1), I can test directly the hypothesis that more risk-averse agents suffer more heavily from a given increase in income vulnerability. Overall, my findings support policy interventions that aim to reduce vulnerability, as I expect such policies to have a 'direct' impact on agents' happiness given the prevailing attitudes to risk and uncertainty in the population. Finally, from the point of view of overall social welfare, my results suggest that non-Rawlsian growth models, whereby 'someone may be left behind', may fail to enhance general welfare, for high enough levels of risk-aversion in the population, if the risk of falling behind is sufficiently widespread.

This thesis explores learning and formation of cognitive and non-cognitive skills within formal and non-formal environments, as well as the impact of migration on fertility behaviour in three separate empirical studies. In two of the papers (Chapters 2 and 4) I utilise a 13 year individual-level panel data-set from rural Tanzania, while the third one (Chapter 3) is based on cross-sectional data that I collected in urban Bombay slums in 2007. I consider skill acquisition and learning in a number of spheres. First, I adopt the conventional notion of school-based learning and examine the role of income shocks in evolution of schooling inequalities, in rural Tanzania. I find evidence of shock-induced permanent changes in the schooling of those affected by the shocks in later childhood (age 7-13), 10-13 years later. Further, I find suggestive evidence that the household short-term labour response may to be one of the mechanisms for these long-term effects. Next, I broaden the definition of learning to include acquisition of non-cognitive skills. Although there is growing recognition of the importance of these, there is no evidence, within a developing country context, on effectiveness of interventions targeting them. The second paper is an evaluation of a long-term non-formal schooling intervention in Bombay slums, which works on raising non-cognitive skills, including self-esteem, a sense of agency, and aspirations of children. It shows that, like cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills can be effectively raised through sustained intervention, offering evidence of substantial positive programme effects. The final paper turns to examining the impact of migration among young women on fertility behaviour. Econometric panel data methods are combined with an instrumenting strategy to offer evidence of a causal positive impact of migration on the age at which women start having children, which is shown to be likely to have permanent effects on total fertility. The findings are most consistent with the presence of temporary post migration disruption effects.

Non-economic factors like culture and politics, as well as the socio-economic background, matter significantly in directing economic development endeavours towards social wellbeing. Therefore, the current narrow definition of economic development must be extended to include overall wellbeing. As one of the primary forms of physical capital constituting a regional economy, transport investments have played a significant role in development plans. Given that accessibility to social infrastructure is a basic need, certain levels of infrastructure are essential. How these investments have an impact on different groups of individuals has kept many scholars busy for a long time. However, the economic spillover effects of these investments into female labour markets have remained largely unexplored. Situating the implications of development initiatives, including transport investments, for female labour markets in social and cultural contexts requires an integrated view of the regional economy. Although economic geography and existing development theories provide extensive conceptual models to elucidate the links between transport, labour markets and culture, the methodological implications are obscure; hence, the empirical evidence remains weak. This thesis explores the economic and non-economic dynamics of regional economies to clarify the links between transport infrastructure, labour markets, and social and cultural conditions. In particular, the association between female labour forces and development efforts, in the form of transport infrastructure development, is conceptually and empirically examined. This thesis conducts a case study on Turkey. With the extensive infrastructure investment that has been made since 2002 and the extremely low rates of female labour force participation (around 25%), compared to EU-15 and OECD averages of around 65%, Turkey serves as an illuminating case. Theoretically, the study shows that the focus of transport economics on the economic growth effect of investments is not consistent with current efforts to extend economic development objectives: transport research requires a broader view to assess its development implications. The study demonstrates how the interactions between the economic, physical, political, cultural and socio-economic attributes of regions significantly affect how individuals benefit from the investments. The overarching policy implications of the study are useful for regional development policy with a gender focus: complementary policy interventions in human capital development and the consideration of social and cultural attitudes should strengthen the positive impacts of physical investments on female labour markets.