Village Economic Accounts: Real and Financial Intertwined

Archawa Paweenawat and Robert M. Townsend. American Economic Review. Forthcoming.

This paper proposes a framework to generate village economic accounts and village balance of payments accounts from a micro-level household survey. Using the Townsend-Thai data, Paweenawat and Townsend create village economic and balance of payments accounts for rural villages in Thailand. They then examine village economies through the lens of international economics, both real and financial. This includes openness and growth; risk sharing across countries; trade, capital flows, and financial frictions; trade and productivity. LINK