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... Read more>>

This paper studies the efficiency of competitive equilibria in environments with a moral hazard problem and unobserved states, both with retrading in ex post spot markets. The interaction between private information problems and the possibility of retrade... Read more>>

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... Read more>>

Many risks are present in rural developing economies: illness, weather, the sudden need to finance an investment opportunity, etc. Yet for many households in rural developing economies, consumption and investment are insured against short-term, idiosyncratic... Read more>>

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... Read more>>

A nation’s economic geography can have an enormous impact on its development. This paper shows that for Thailand, a high concentration of enterprise in an area predicts high subsequent growth in and around that area. Felkner and Townsend also find spatially... Read more>>

Kaboski and Townsend use a structural model to understand, predict, and evaluate the impact of an exogenous microcredit intervention program, the Thai Million Baht Village Fund. They model household decisions in the face of borrowing constraints, income... Read more>>

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... Read more>>

Townsend and Pawasutipaisit use detailed income, balance sheet, and cash flow statements constructed for households in a long monthly panel in an emerging market economy, as well as contributions in economic theory, to document and better understand the... Read more>>

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... Read more>>

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... Read more>>

A number of papers argue that the misallocation of resources can explain large cross-country TFP differences. This argument is underpinned by empirical evidence documenting substantial dispersion in the marginal products of resources, particularly capital... Read more>>

This investigation proposes a conceptual framework for measurement necessary for an analysis of household finance and economic development. Samphantharak and Townsend build on and, where appropriate, modify corporate financial accounts to create balance... Read more>>

Townsend and Urzua study the impact that financial intermediation can have on productivity through the alleviation of credit constraints in occupation choice and/or an improved allocation of risk. They bring together both static and dynamic structural... Read more>>

This paper evaluates crop yield impacts from likely climate changes for Southeast Asia. To do so, the authors link soil science crop modeling, weather simulators, and global climate change modeling into an integrated economic model of multistage rice... Read more>>

Several studies report interest rate elasticities for money demand below one half, the value predicted by economic models. It is also widely documented that money holdings decrease as new technologies to economize in the use of cash are introduced. This... Read more>>

This paper examines the responses of prices and inflation to monetary shocks in an inventory-theoretic model of money demand. The authors show that the price level responds sluggishly to an exogenous increase in the money stock because the dynamics of... Read more>>

Madeira and Townsend create a dynamic theory of endogenous risk sharing groups, with good internal information, and their coexistence with relative perfomance, individualistic regimes, which are informationaly more opaque. Inequality and organizational... Read more>>

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... Read more>>

This paper examines the three distinct arguments about the special economic role of the middle class that are traditionally made. In one, new entrepreneurs armed with a capacity and a tolerance for delayed gratification emerge from the middle class and... Read more>>

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... Read more>>

Theories rationalizing joint liability lending are rich in implications for repayment rates; this paper exploits this fact to test four diverse models. Ahlin and Townsend show that the models’ repayment implications do not always coincide. For example... Read more>>

Lenders may choose to encourage borrower side contracting using group, or cosigned, loans or discourage it using individual loans, so as to make relative performance comparisons. In this context wealth of the agents relative to outsiders, and wealth inequality... Read more>>