Robert M. Townsend of MIT talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about development and the role of financial institutions in growth. Drawing on his research, particularly his surveys of households in Thailand, Townsend argues that both informal networks and arrangements and formal financial institutions...

Economist’s study shows how the poor in developing countries become wealthier. Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office January 10, 2011 For all the detailed tools developed to study finance in past decades, relatively few scholars have brought those methods to bear on a pressing social question: How do poor people...

"We actually are the ones being trained by the successful individuals who are out there -- we learn from them, from what they do, and how they overcome obstacles." That is the modest analysis offered by Professor Robert M. Townsend of the ambitious program over which he is presiding, funded...

Published: Jan / Feb 2008 Along a narrow gravel road in central Thailand’s Lopburi province stands a two-story house with a corrugated-steel roof. On a hot day last August a family of three sat cross-legged on the cobalt-tiled floor and talked about their life and work with interviewers from the Thai...

Published: March 20, 2008 The John Templeton Foundation has provided a $3.3 million grant for a new project to focus on wealth creation and poverty reduction in developing countries by bringing together some of the nation’s leading economists and scholars to form The Enterprise Initiative, based at the...