Database on Developing Economies To Change Economics

Published:  October 9, 2008
The most comprehensive set of data gathered on Thailand's developing economy is now available free online.

The Townsend Thai Data, which economist Robert M. Townsend and his colleagues gathered, is available at http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/rtownsend.

The site includes 10 years of consecutive data, which will be updated with new information as it becomes available. The resource gives users not only a snapshot of economic life at a particular time, but a constantly evolving portrait of Thailand's economy at different levels.

"Here we have rich data from which academics and policy-makers alike could better understand household activities and behavior, as well as their relationship to the broader regional and national economy," said Townsend, a research professor at the University of Chicago and the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor at MIT.

The Townsend Thai data not only includes the traditional socioeconomic information on households, but it also features data on lending, borrowing, migration and family networks. The Thai Project has used state-of-the-art technology to measure environmental conditions for crop land, such as soil analysis, plot photos, daily rainfall, soil moisture, water chemistry and other bi-weekly water measurements.

Combining the Thai data with a broad range of data from national surveys and macroeconomic indicators, Townsend and his collaborators have come to better understand the role of individuals in creating national-level growth.

Combining the Thai data with a broad range of data from national surveys and macroeconomic Researchers have found that poverty in Thailand has decreased by more than 60 percent in the past 35 years and that households play a key role in changing economic conditions. The data shows that 80 percent of the growth in productivity at the national level is due to entrepreneurial activity at the household level, along with an expanding formal financial sector.

Lessons from the Thai data go beyond simply understanding the Thai context to provide broader lessons for developing economies across the globe, Townsend said. Economic models used on the data have provided important insights on global issues like rural development, microfinance, poverty, inequality, entrepreneurship, risk, financial systems, economic theory and policy evaluation.

The research needed to develop the information began when Townsend set out to determine a way to gather precise data on villages in Thailand. His journey not only led him to the field, where he visited families and talked with village leaders, but it also connected introduced him to Khun Sombat Sakuntasathhien, now local director of the project.

 Together, they designed and implemented a survey in 1997 of nearly 3,000 households in four different provinces. Townsend has since led the Townsend Thai Project, an initiative that has been collecting monthly and annual data for more than a decade from thousands of farm and non-farm households in Thailand.

The Townsend Thai Project and Database Archive had the support of NORC, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Link:  http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1455