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Abstract

This thesis comprises three standalone papers broadly in the field of development economics. The topics explored here range from domestic violence and workfare; immigration and conflict; and the burden of malaria and economic growth. The unifying strand for the first two papers is the focus on how people cope with exogenous shocks such as droughts and violent conflict. Vulnerable members of society bear the brunt of such shocks and my research looks at how peoples' capacity to absorb and adapt to them need to be reinforced through effective policies. The common theme between the first and third paper is the focus on epidemiological issues and their relationship with economic variables. While my first paper looks at the social health issue of spousal abuse and its link with household income shocks, the third paper is a cross-country analysis of the effect of malaria on income per capita. All my papers use different methods and data sources for exposition. My first paper exploits the phased implementation of India’s workfare program (MGNREGA) to find that the program mediates the effect of adverse rainfall shocks on domestic violence. This occurs via its function as social insurance with limited effects on women’s say within the household. Using queuing theory, the second chapter of this thesis models the choice between legal and illegal channels of immigration during periods of conflict and mass migration. Empirical estimations using the generalized method of moments shows that violent conflict significantly increases undocumented immigration and has no impact on legal immigration. The final and coauthored chapter of my thesis is a re-visit to links between health and economic outcomes following the highly cited work of Gallup and Sachs (2001). Using panel and instrumental variables methods, we find a decrease in malaria incidence is associated with significant increases in levels and growth of income per capita via a potential channel of labour productivity.

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