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Abstract

This thesis comprises three essays on Kyrgyz households focusing on farmers, families with migrants abroad, and bereaved families with children of young age. I start by studying the effect of international trade on the well-being of farmers. Specifically, by constructing a measure of demand shock for agricultural commodities produced and sold by the farm households and interacting it with a measure of natural trade openness, production and consumption channels of the effect of trade on poverty are explored. I find that trade has a big impact on Kyrgyz farmers, but the sign and the magnitude of the effect crucially depend on the level of farmers’ integration to markets. In the second essay, I address the behavioral aspects of money perception: I test the assumption of fungibility of income and examine whether there are significant differences in the patterns of spending remittance versus other sources of income. The results indicate that money does have labels, so remittance income and other income are not fungible in the eyes of Kyrgyz households and there are significant differences in how they are spent. In my third essay, I explore how bereavement affects nutritional outcomes of children of young age. I find that loss has both economic and psychological costs, with more severe implications for children’s nutritional status in the short run. Besides, whenever bereavement effects work through the economic channel, burial costs seem to be one of the biggest sources through which economic resources are diverted away from children.

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