1) The increasing migration and larger remittance flows in developing countries have both drawn attention to their roles in influencing economic development. However, the body of empirical evidence on how remittances affect investment in child education is mixed because their theoretical positive impact may be offset by the adverse influence of family members being absent. Moreover, the magnitude of this negative impact depends significantly on migrant characteristics. Specifically, given that parents play an irreplaceable role in their children's education, parental migration not only leads to a labor shortage in the household but also results in insufficient parental input. Thus, investigating the impact of remittances without taking account of migrant heterogeneity may produce misleading results. Based on this gap in the body of knowledge, we derive data from the Cambodian Socio- Economic Survey in 2009, which provides a sufficient sample size for three self-selected migration types: parental migration, non-parental migration, and no migration. Estimating each subsample enables us to disentangle the net impact of remittances from that of migration and measure the impact of remittances given the differences in migrant characteristics. The presented results are consistent with the theoretical prediction that remittances positively affect child education, whereas migration has a negative impact, and may even offset the positive impact of parents sending home remittances from the migration destination.
2) While the role of risks in technology adoption is a classical topic, its effects beyond adoption have not been examined well enough despite the frequent occurrence of technology dis-adoption. This paper examines the role of risk preferences and an exogenous shock on the survival of farmers for a case of export pineapple industry in Ghana. Employing hazard analyses, we find that risk preferences indeed matter for the survival and the hazard of exit increased significantly in the period after the occurrence of the exogenous shock. We also find that education has an effect of increasing the resilience of farmers against risks.