Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, with low‐income countries being disproportionately impacted. However, these countries often face market frictions that hinder their ability to adopt effective adaptation strategies. In this paper, I explore the role of credit market failures in limiting adaptation. To achieve this, I collaborate with a large microfinance institution and offer a randomly selected group of farmers access to guaranteed credit through an “Emergency Loan” following a negative climate shock. I document three key results. First, farmers who have access to the emergency loan make less costly adaptation choices and are less severely affected when a flood occurs. Second, I find no evidence of adverse spillover effects on households that did not receive the Emergency Loan. Finally, I demonstrate that providing the Emergency Loan is profitable for the microfinance institution, making it a viable tool for the private sector to employ in similar circumstances.

Many workers are evaluated on their ability to engage with customers. We measure the impact of gender-based customer discrimination on the productivity of online sales agents in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a novel framework that randomly varies the gender of names presented to customers without changing worker behavior, we find the assignment of a female-sounding name leads to 50 percent fewer purchases. Customers also lag in responding, are less expressive, and avoid discussing purchases. We show similar results for customers around the world and across workers. Removing customer bias, we find women would be more productive than their male coworkers.

Employment may be important to well-being for reasons beyond its role as an income source. This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial value of employment in refugee camps in Bangladesh. We involve 745 individuals in a field experiment with three arms: a control arm, a weekly cash arm, and an employment arm of equal value. Employment raises psychosocial well-being substantially more than cash alone, and 66 percent of the employed are willing to forgo cash payments to continue working temporarily for free. Despite material poverty, those in our context both experience and recognize a nonmonetary, psychosocial value to employment.