This dissertation comprises three essays on economic development and resilience in rural Nepal. The essay summarized in chapter 3 uses an RCT to evaluate program impacts of Heifer Internationals flagship intervention in Nepal after 18 months. In the spring of 2015 central Nepal was rocked by a severe earthquake and a series of significant aftershocks; the second and third essays consider the household coping response to the earthquake. The essay in chapter 4 uses panel data collected before and after the earthquake, and combines a first- difference model with matching methods to test a version Townsends (1995) full consumption insurance hypothesis. The essay in chapter 5 considers households in the earthquake area who did belong to Heifer programs, and uses propensity score matching to identify the effect of a special, one-off zero-interest loan directed at earthquake-affected households.