Development Field Exam
January 11, 2012
Please answer all four questions. Each question will be graded equally. You have three
hours to complete the exam.
Question 1
Consider a collection of villages indexed by v= 1, . . . , V . The vth village has Nvpeople,
each belonging to one of Mv≤Nvhouseholds; the number of people in the ith household in
village vis given by nv
i. You have data on basic demographic characteristics of all of these
people, and a panel of data collected over T > 1 years on income (yv
it) and expenditures (cv
it)
collected at the level of the household. The data collection is on-going.
Your initial investigation of the data reveals an interesting pattern: If you make a his-
togram of consumption growth rates for different households (e.g., of (cv
iT −cv
i1)/cv
i1) there’s
a pronounced bimodality, with one group of households evidently having significantly higher
rates of growth than the other.
1. Briefly describe three different models that might explain these differences in consump-
tion growth.
2. For each of these three hypotheses, describe an empirical strategy which would allow
you to test the model.
Question 2
Analyze and contrast the positions of Foster and Rosenzweig; Duflo, Kremer, and Robinson;
and Suri, on the importance of profitability for the adoption of fertilizer and improved seeds
in Africa. For each of these papers
1. State the main position of the authors.
2. Explain with precision how they support their position, reporting in detail on empirical
evidence if it applies. Discuss these empirical findings, pointing to their limitations or
weaknesses.
3. Explain how the authors argue against the theoretical or empirical studies that con-
tradict their position in the debate.
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