Essays on Family Behavior in Developing Settings

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the economic behavior of families in developing settings. Utilizing uniquely rich, longitudinal survey data from Indonesia, it demonstrates the complexity of market environments facing rural households, as well as the importance of extended family networks in determining the health and well-being of young children. These essays serve as an illustration of advances in development economics that are possible when fundamental models are revisited and examined with new longitudinal data. The results of these exercises are important not only for updating economic models of behavior, but for what they reveal about the complexities of decision making, and for the effective design and evaluation of development policy around the world.