The Origin and Evolution of Chinese Lineages

I aim to understand variation in an important and historically novel socio-political institution, the Chinese lineage. There is extensive geographic variation in the historical prominence and relevance of lineages. Using ethnographic and historical-economic evidence, I construct a theory explaining lineages as risk-pooling institutions, which provide lineage members with access to land. More so, variation in regional demand for risk-pooling and/or access to land likely stems from well-studied rice-wheat agroeconomicdifferences. I test this hypothesis by examining whether lineage activity is associated with landholding size, precipitation predictability, and historically documented precipitation disasters and find support for my hypothesis.

Friendship, kinship and social risk management strategies among pastoralists in Karamoja, Uganda

This paper describes risk-pooling friendships and other social networks among pastoralists in Karamoja, Uganda. Social networks are of critical importance for risk management in an environment marked by volatility and uncertainty. Risk management or risk pooling mainly takes the form of “stock friendships”: an informal insurance system in which men established mutually beneficial partnerships with unrelated or related individuals through livestock transfers in the form of gifts or loans. Friends accepted the obligation to assist each other during need, ranging from the time of marriage to times of distress. Anthropologists and economists claim that social networks are critical for recouping short-term losses such as food shortage, as well as for ensuring long-term sustainability through the building of social capital and rebuilding of herds. To this end, I present ethnographic data on friendship, kinship, and other networks among male and female pastoralists in Karamoja. Using qualitative and quantitative data on these relationships and norms of livestock transfers and other mutual aid, I show the enduring importance of social networks in the life of Karamoja’s pastoralists today. I also demonstrate how exchange networks were utilized by participants during a drought. On this basis, I argue that appreciating historical and traditional mechanisms of resilience among pastoralists is vital for designing community-based risk management projects. I discuss how traditional safety net systems have been used successfully by NGOs to assist pastoralists in the wake of disaster, and how the same can be done by harnessing risk-pooling friendships in Karamoja.

Need-Based Transfers Enhance Resilience to Shocks: An Agent-Based Model of a Maasai Risk-Pooling System

Maasai and other Maa-speaking pastoralists in Kenya and Tanzania have a risk-pooling system that they refer to by their word for the umbilical cord (osotua). Gifts from one osotua partner to another are contingent on the recipient’s need and do not create any debt. We refer to such gifts as need-based transfers. Maa-speakers also have a system of debt-based transfers (esile) in which gifts must be repaid. We designed an agent-based model to compare the impacts on herd survival of need-based and debt-based transfers on networks of varying topologies and sizes and with different degrees of temporal correlation of shocks felt by the agents. We found that the use of need-based rather than debt-based transfers, greater network modularity, greater network size, and decreased correlation among shocks were associated with increased rates of survival.

Is there Consumer Risk-Pooling in the Open Economy? The Evidence Reconsidered

We revisit the evidence on consumer risk-pooling and uncovered interest parity. Widely used single-equation tests are strongly biased against both. Using the full-model, Indirect Inference test, which is unbiased and has Goldilocks power according to Monte Carlo experiments, we find that both the risk-pooling hypothesis and its weaker UIP version are generally accepted as part of a full world DSGE model. The fact that the risk-pooling hypothesis, with its implication of strong cross-border consumer linkage, has passed this test with generally the highest p-value, suggests that it deserves serious attention from policy-makers looking for a relevant model with which to discuss international monetary and other business cycle policies.