The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System.

Emerging markets are fast-growing developing countries that are creating not only a rapidly expanding segment of middle class and rich consumers but also have a sizable segment of Bpoor^consumers. This paper presents an inter-disciplinary perspective integrating insights from quantitative and behavioral marketing, social psychology, industrial organization, and development economics with the purpose of generating and answering research questions on emerging markets. We organize our discussion around three themes. First, there is substantial heterogeneity in the social, cultural, economic, and institutional environments as well as rapid change in these characteristics. Coupled together, the heterogeneity and dynamics increase the scope of variables and interrelationships that have traditionally been investigated. Second, emerging markets continue to have sizeable Bpoor^and rapidly growing Bnew rich^populations, requiring marketers and researchers to understand how to market to the poor and the Bnew rich.^Exploiting these features in research can help deepen our theoretical understanding of markets and marketing. Third, from a methodological perspective, differences in types of available secondary data and the lower cost of collecting primary data create opportunities to develop new approaches for addressing research questions. We also encourage scholars to move beyond crosscountry regressions offering broadbrush exploratory insight, to country-industry-specific research that exploits unique characteristics of a particular emerging market. This article emerged out of presentations and discussions among the authors in a session titled BEmerging Markets^at the 9th Invitational Choice Symposium hosted by Erasmus University in the Netherlands in 2013.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Policy Research Working Paper 9165 Many economists believe that the returns to migration are high. However, credible experimental estimates of the benefits of migration are rare, particularly for low-skilled international migrants and their families. This paper studies a natural experiment in Bangladesh, where low-skilled male migrant workers to Malaysia were selected via a large-scale lottery program. This study tracked the households of lottery applicants and surveyed 3,512 lottery winners and losers. Five years after the lottery, 76 percent of the winners had migrated internationally compared with only 19 percent of the lottery losers. Using the lottery outcome as an instrument, the paper finds that the government intermediated migration increased the incomes of migrants by over 200 percent and their household per capita consumption by 22 percent. Furthermore, low-skilled international migration leads to large improvements in a wide array of household socioeconomic outcomes, including female involvement in key household decisions. Such large gains arise, at least in part, due to lower costs of government intermediation.

Our research in Indonesia took as its focus the concept of the lean season, that is, predictable times of scarcity which contribute to large drop offs in productivity, consumption and caloric intake for an affected region and its people. For this research, we partnered with students from Universitas Hasanuddin (UnHas) in Makassar to leverage their knowledge of the local language and broader cultural context. They proved to be invaluable colleagues as we met with the various constituencies across South Sulawesi. We conducted first-person interviews with village leaders, as well as agricultural workers and city employers. Through these formal interactions – and impromptu meetings and conversations too – we were able to get a sense of the viability of a temporary migration scheme like the ones implemented in Bangladesh and Timor by Dr. Mobarak and his team. We made serious effort to embark on lines of questioning which were open-ended instead of suggestive and, when appropriate and possible, conducted our interviews with individuals as opposed to groups to ward off collectivist thinking. In particular, our questions were meant to illuminate the lived experience of locals around four broad areas of concern: the agricultural calendar, coping mechanisms, migration history and employer insights. The coming pages spell out our findings.

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