Consumer behaviour

This report discusses why the government might want to intervene to reduce obesity, and what policy instruments are available.

This paper analyses the impact of informality on growth and wages in developing countries.

Sharp nonparametric bounds are derived for Hicksian compensating and equivalent variations. These 'i-bounds' generalize earlier results of Blundell, Browning and Crawford (2008). We show that their e-bounds are sharp under the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference (WARP). They do not require transitivity. The new i-bounds are sharp under the Strong Axiom of Revealed Preference (SARP). By requiring transitivity they can be used to bound welfare measures. The new bounds on welfare measures are shown to be operationalized through algorithms that are easy to implement.

We use an RCT to analyze the impact of microcredit on poverty reduction, child and teenage labour supply, and education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This working paper uses a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to analyse the impact of microcredit on poverty reduction in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Article published in the Journal of Development Economics, 99(1):68-79

This paper investigates life cycle patterns of demand for services from household durables using UK panel data.

This paper compares consumption and income as measures of households’ living standards using UK data.

This commentary gives a detailed examination of the behavioural insights for tax and benefit policy.

Parallels are increasingly being drawn between current economic circumstances and those of the 1970s. In this Briefing Note we take the opportunity to reflect on a few of the ways in which economic life has changed since the Silver Jubilee year.

Microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending to individual lending. This EBRD Impact Brief presents some such evidence from a recent randomised field experiment in Mongolia.