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Mental health disorders are a substantial portion of the global disease burden, yet their determinants are understudied, particularly in developing countries. We find that temperature shocks in utero increase depressive symptoms in adulthood in Africa. A ten percent increase in heat exposure increases our depression indices .05 to .07 standard deviations. We find no evidence that the effects of these shocks are smaller for more recent birth cohorts, nor do shocks predict greater treatment of depressive symptoms. Temperature fluctuations, increasingly frequent due to climate change, worsen the mental health disease burden and health care systems in Africa do not mitigate these impacts.

We study the adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting in garment factories around Bangalore, India. Combining daily production line–level data with weather data, we estimate a negative, nonlinear productivity-temperature gradient. We find that LED lighting raises productivity on hot days. Using the firm's costs data, we estimate that the payback period for LED adoption is less than one-third the length after accounting for productivity co-benefits. The average factory in our data gains about $2,880 in power consumption savings and about $7,500 in productivity gains.

Smallholder agricultural commodity suppliers in developing countries are often vulnerable to global commodity price fluctuations. Using panel data on farmers from an area of Tanzania where most farmers grow coffee, this study finds that global coffee prices matter for household outcomes, through their effects on farmgate prices, coffee sales and revenues, and household expenditures. The article documents that households cope with coffee price busts by increasing enterprise ownership, an effect that is greater for households without access to other means of coping. Comparisons of mean outcomes of enterprises operated by coper households (which operated an enterprise only in periods of low coffee price) with those of stayer households (which operated an enterprise throughout the sample period) indicate that the former are less likely to be profitable or to hire workers.

The role of cultural distance in market integration, particularly in the developing world, has received relatively little attention. Using prices from more than 200 South Asian markets spanning 1861 to 1921, we show that linguistic distance correlates negatively with market integration. A one-standard-deviation increase in linguistic distance predicts a reduction in the price correlation between two markets of 0.121 standard deviations for wheat, 0.181 for salt, and 0.088 for rice. While factors like genetic distance, literacy gaps, and railway connections are correlated with linguistic distance, they do not fully explain the correlation between linguistic distance and market integration.

Water is a necessity for the survival of all living beings. Even though 71% of the Earth’s surface is water, there is still an acute shortage of potable water in many countries, as approximately 97.5% of Earth’s water is saltwater in the oceans and only 2.5% is freshwater in groundwater, lakes, and rivers. Thus, access to clean drinking water is a major issue that needs to be tackled immediately and efficiently. Currently, existing technologies for water purification such as multistage flash, multiple effect, vapor compression, reverse osmosis (RO), ion exchange, electrodialysis, and capacitive deionization (CDI) require a lot of energy, leading to environmental pollution caused by the consumption of fossil fuels. It is also found that 70% of water supplied as input to these technologies is wasted, while methods such as RO remove important minerals, and hence, World Health Organization (WHO) standards do not deem this fit. The desalination of saline water using solar stills is an effective solution to overcome these problems. Solar energy is abundant, everlasting, economical and does not cause emission of greenhouse gases. Combining this worldwide availability and inexhaustible nature of solar energy with a desalination process, a water purification system is designed and operated. This paper proposes the design and application of a water purification system which will be beneficial for localities such as residential buildings and bungalows in densely populated cities where the rise in energy consumption has led to an increase in the carbon footprint, reduction in electric power supply, and higher energy costs along with the depletion of fossil fuels and other exhaustible energy sources. This design can be further modified and installed in arid regions and villages where grid electricity is not a feasible option to meet energy demands and water scarcity is prevalent.

Water is eminent for all living beings and is a basic requirement. Even though 71% of the Earth’s surface is water-covered, there is still an acute shortage of drinking water in many countries, as approximately 97.5% of Earth’s water is saltwater in the oceans and only 2.5% is fresh water in groundwater, lakes, and rivers. Thus, access to clean drinking water is a major issue that needs to be tackled immediately and efficiently. The existing water purification technologies like reverse osmosis (RO), electrodialysis, multistage flash, multiple effect, and vapor compression require a lot of energy and fuels, leading to environmental pollution. It is also found that 70% of water supplied as input to these technologies is wasted, while RO also removes important minerals, and World Health Organization (WHO) standards do not deem this fit. The desalination of saline water using solar stills is an effective solution to overcome these problems. Combining the worldwide availability and inexhaustible nature of solar energy, a still that requires only solar energy as the input ensures a sustainable and environmentally friendly method to produce potable water with minimal energy conversions. This paper reviews the performance of a solar still by varying parameters that affect the production of output distillate. The results obtained are studied and presented.

The allocation of decision rights within organizations influences resource allocation, expansion decisions, and ultimately outcomes. Using a newly constructed dataset, I estimate the effects of an earned autonomy program for State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in India. The program gave managers (the board of directors) of profitable SOEs more autonomy over strategic decisions such as capital expansion and the formation of joint ventures. I find that autonomy allows SOEs to increase their capital stock and form more strategic partnerships which leads to greater sales and profits. I also find that the likelihood that a manager subsequently joins a board of a private firm is greater for managers of those SOEs which were granted autonomy, indicating that career concerns is a consistent explanation for these managerial decisions. Taken together, these results indicate that large gains in SOE performance are possible without privatization (by policies like earned autonomy) and may occur partly through managers' career concerns.

We study how managers mitigate the negative impacts of environmental shocks. Pairing productivity data from a garment firm with granular measures of air pollution, we show that productivity suffers...

We use a difference in differences approach to show that the adoption of High Yielding Varieties (HYV) reduced infant mortality in India. This holds even comparing children of the same mother. The effects of HVY adoption on mortality are larger for rural children, boys, and low-caste children. While we are not able to explore mechanisms in depth, our evidence points to a limited role played by increased investments in early childhood health or selection into childbearing in response to HYV adoption.\ud \ud

We evaluate the causal impacts of on-the-job soft skills training on the productivity, wages, and retention of female garment workers in India. The program increased women’s extraversion and communication, and spurred technical skill upgrading. Treated workers were 20 percent more productive than controls post-program. Wages rise very modestly with treatment (by 0.5 percent), with no differential turnover, suggesting that although soft skills raise workers’ marginal products, labor market frictions are large enough to create a substantial wedge between productivity and wages. Consistent with this, the net return to the firm was large: 258 percent eight months after program completion.

African societies exported more slaves in colder years. Lower temperatures reduced mortality and raised agricultural yields, lowering slave supply costs. Our results help explain African participation in the slave trade, which predicts adverse outcomes today. We use an annual panel of African temperatures and port-level slave exports to show that exports declined when local temperatures were warmer than normal. This result is strongest where African ecosystems are least resilient to climate change. Cold weather shocks at the peak of the slave trade predict lower economic activity today. We support our interpretation using the histories of Whydah, Benguela, and Mozambique.\ud \ud