The purpose of the proposed research is to investigate the role of the family, inclusive of the extended family and networks of friends and relatives, in providing insurance and credit to its members, to understand and quantify that role in the larger village, regional, and national context, and to understand that role relative to that or more formal institutions, e.g., village level funds and national level banks. The specific investigation in Thailand takes advantage of recent and ongoing advances in economic theory and of substantial variation over region, the semi arid northeast versus the highly developed regions near Bangkok, and substantial variation over time, e.g., the high growth period and the recession and recovery of the Asian crisis. The idea is to study the family or extended networks as a collection of individuals gathered together into a """"""""collective"""""""" organization which provides insurance and credit to its members, to understand the nature and boundaries of such collective organizations, and to understand the interaction of such collective organizations with each other directly, with other more formal institutions, and with the larger market. The family, community level institutions, formal national level institutions, and markets will be understood in the context of models with private information, limited communication, limited enforcement capabilities, transactions costs, and, and exogenously incomplete markets. The investigators also seek to measure using the standards suggested by these models the welfare impact of these informal and formal organizations, and their evolution in the context of the larger national economy. In this project, the investigators seek to understand the test various hypotheses, e.g., with the rise of formal substitutes over the long term, the informal sector may be less essential, especially in developed regions, or, alternatively, the informal sector may continue to play a crucial role as a more flexible and find-tuned complement to formal sector insurance and credit, especially in times of severe stress. To support our theoretical work, the investigators intend to field (only) two more rounds of the annual cross-sectional survey and to continue (on a reduced scale) the ongoing monthly survey, in order to ensure sufficient data for statistical significance of the various tests and to see the Thai economy on into the period of recovery and resumed (high) growth. The project data and other data would be organized in an innovative web-based archive for public release.
| Moll, Benjamin; Townsend, Robert M; Zhorin, Victor (2017) Economic development, flow of funds, and the equilibrium interaction of financial frictions. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 114:6176-6184 |
| Karaivanov, Alexander; Townsend, Robert M (2014) Dynamic Financial Constraints: Distinguishing Mechanism Design from Exogenously Incomplete Regimes. Econometrica 82:887-959 |
| Gruber, Jonathan; Hendren, Nathaniel; Townsend, Robert M (2014) The Great Equalizer: Health Care Access and Infant Mortality in Thailand. Am Econ J Appl Econ 6:91-107 |
| Alem, Mauro; Townsend, Robert M (2014) An Evaluation of Financial Institutions: Impact on Consumption and Investment Using Panel Data and the Theory of Risk-Bearing. J Econom 183:91-103 |
| Chiappori, Pierre-André; Samphantharak, Krislert; Schulhofer-Wohl, Sam et al. (2014) Heterogeneity and Risk Sharing in Village Economies. Quant Econom 5:1-27 |
| Cole, Shawn; Giné, Xavier; Tobacman, Jeremy et al. (2013) Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India. Am Econ J Appl Econ 5:104-135 |
| Samphantharak, Krislert; Townsend, Robert M (2012) Measuring the Return on Household Enterprise: What Matters Most for Whom? J Dev Econ 98:58-70 |
| Kaboski, Joseph P; Townsend, Robert M (2012) The Impact of Credit on Village Economies. Am Econ J Appl Econ 4:98-133 |
| Felkner, John S; Townsend, Robert M (2011) The Geographic Concentration of Enterprise in Developing Countries. Q J Econ 126:2005-2061 |
| Kilenthong, Weerachart T; Townsend, Robert M (2011) Information-Constrained Optima with Retrading: An Externality and Its Market-Based Solution. J Econ Theory 146:1042-1077 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 20 publications
