Three essays on development economics

This dissertation contains three essays on development economics, addressing trade liberalization and inequality in Brazil, a large-scale child health intervention in Indonesia, and conceptual and methodological aspects of measuring household economic well-being. The three consider different aspects of household welfare and its determinants. The first chapter examines the effect of a macroeconomic policy on household welfare; the second chapter studies the effect of a microeconomic intervention on a component of household welfare, that of children; the final chapter explores how we might conceive of and measure household welfare itself. Using nationally representative, economy-wide data, the first chapter investigates the relative importance of trade-mandated effects on industry wage premiums, industry and economy-wide skill premiums, and employment flows in accounting for changes in the wage distribution in Brazil during the 1988-1995 trade liberalization. Unlike in other Latin American countries, trade liberalization appears to have made a significant contribution towards a reduction in wage inequality. These effects have not occurred through changes in industry-specific (wage or