Return on assets (ROA) from household enterprise is crucial for understanding the well being and productivity of households in developing economies. Yet the definition and measurement of household enterprise ROA remain inconsistent or unclear. This paper illustrates potential measurement problems with...

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...

This paper evaluates the short-term impact of Thailand's Million Baht Village Fund program, among the largest scale government microfinance initiative in the world, using pre- and post-program panel data and quasi-experimental cross-village variation in credit-per-household. Kaboski and Townsend...

Unique in its approach and in the variety of methods and data employed, this book is the first of its kind to provide an in-depth evaluation of the financial system of Thailand, a proto-typical Asian developing economy. Using a wealth of primary source qualitative and quantitative data, including survey...

This review provides a common framework for researchers thinking about the next generation of micro-founded macro models of growth, inequality, and financial deepening, as well as direction for policy makers targeting microfinance programs to alleviate poverty. Townsend covers topics such as the treatment...

In this paper, Townsend and Ueda address the controversial issue of financial liberalization. Using data from Thailand from 1976 to 1996, the authors find sizable welfare gains from liberalization, though the gain in economic growth is ambiguous. They take the view that financial liberalization is a...

This paper evaluates two well-known models of growth with inequality that have explicit micro underpinnings related to household choice. With incomplete markets or transactions costs, wealth can constrain investment in business and the choice of occupation and also constrain the timing of entry into...

In this in-depth look at theories of wealth creation, the authors develop a method of growth accounting based on the integrated use of transitional growth models and micro data to explain the sources of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. TFP growth is measured as a residual, so the authors seek...