We use panel data from a household survey conducted in Vietnam to analyze the effectiveness of informal risk sharing arrangements in protecting household consumption from idiosyncratic income shocks. We focus on the effects of reported harvest shocks and of estimated shocks to agricultural revenues on adult equivalent consumption. The full-insurance allocation is tested against a […]

In this paper, we analyze a complete demand system to estimate the price elasticity for cigarette demand in Vietnam. Following Deaton (1990), we build a spatial panel using cross sectional household survey data. We consider a model of simultaneous choice of quantity and quality. This allows us to exploit unit values from cigarette consumption in […]

We use the Vietnam Living Standard Survey conducted in 1993 and in 1998 to analyze the determinants of private transfers among rural farmers. Private transfers are widespread and important relative to pre-transfer income levels of recipients in both years. Conducting parametric and semiparametric analysis of single-index models for transfer status, we find that private transfers […]