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作者：Baland, Jean-Marie; Somanathan, Rohini; Wahhaj, Zaki
作者单位：University of Namur; Delhi School of Economics; University of Delhi; University of Oxford
摘要：Group loans with joint liability are a distinguishing feature of many microfinance programs. While such lending benefits millions of borrowers, major lending institutions acknowledge its limited impact among the very poor and have shifted towards individual loans. This paper attempts to explain this trend by exploring the relationship between borrower wealth and the benefits from group lending when access to credit is limited by strategic default. In our model, individuals of heterogeneous wea...
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作者：Brueckner, Markus; Gradstein, Mark
作者单位：National University of Singapore; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
摘要：This paper presents instrumental variables estimates of the effects of GDP per capita volatility on the size of government. We show that for a panel of 157 countries spanning more than half a century, rainfall volatility has a significant positive effect on GDP per capita volatility in countries with above median temperatures. In these countries rainfall volatility has also a significant positive reduced-form effect on the GDP share of government. There is no significant reduced-form effect in...
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作者：Hanushek, Eric A.; Link, Susanne; Woessmann, Ludger
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; University of Munich; IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要：Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed systems but detrimental in low-performing systems. We construct a panel dataset from the four waves of international PISA tests spanning 2000-2009, comprising over one million students in 42 countries. Relyin...
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作者：Capasso, Salvatore; Jappelli, Tullio
作者单位：Parthenope University Naples; University of Naples Federico II
摘要：We provide a theoretical and empirical study of the relation between financial development and the size of the underground economy. In our theoretical framework agents allocate investment between a low-return technology which can be operated with internal funds, and a high-return technology which requires external finance. Firms can reduce the cost of funding by disclosing part or all of their assets and pledging them as collateral. The disclosure decision, however, also involves higher tax pa...
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作者：Lee, Soohyung; Malin, Benjamin A.
作者单位：University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis
摘要：We explore education's role in improving the allocation of labor between China's agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and measure the portion of China's recent growth attributable to this channel. Using detailed micro-level data and an empirical model that allows for the endogenous selection of education and sector of employment, we estimate the relationship between an individual's educational attainment, sector, and income. We find that about 11% of aggregate growth in output per worker f...
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作者：Rai, Birendra; Sengupta, Kunal
作者单位：Monash University; University of Sydney
摘要：Parents in several cultures 'discipline' their daughters to inculcate the supposedly feminine virtues and improve their prospects in the marriage market. This process invariably involves imposing restrictions on their behavior, movement, and social relations. We refer to such practices as pre-marital confinement and provide a unified game-theoretic framework which encompasses the different arguments that have been advanced by social scientists to explain pre-marital confinement The proposed fr...
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作者：Hoxha, Indrit; Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem; Vollrath, Dietrich
作者单位：Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Houston System; University of Houston
摘要：The literature has shown that the implied welfare gains from financial integration are very small. We revisit these findings and document that welfare gains are substantial if capital goods are not perfect substitutes. We use a model of optimal savings where the elasticity of substitution between capital varieties is less than infinity, but more than the value that would generate endogenous growth. This production structure is consistent with empirical estimates of the actual elasticity of sub...
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作者：Bertoli, Simone; Fernandez-Huertas Moraga, Jesus
作者单位：Universite Clermont Auvergne (UCA); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Institut d'Analisi Economica (IAE)
摘要：The rate of migration observed between two countries does not depend solely on their relative attractiveness, but also on the one of alternative destinations. Following the trade literature, we term the influence exerted by other destinations on bilateral flows as Multilateral Resistance to Migration, and we show how it can be accounted for when estimating the determinants of migration rates in the context of a general individual random utility maximization model. We propose the use of the Com...
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作者：Deb, Rahul; Sun, Tavneet
作者单位：University of Toronto; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：Access to credit is important for the productivity and overall welfare of farmers in developing countries. We present a theoretical framework which shows that a change in the mode of shipping (from air to sea) in the Ghanaian pineapple industry made it profitable for pineapple exporters to provide myopic farmers with both in-kind loans (to improve productivity) and cash loans (for consumption smoothing) despite being unable to monitor farmers or enforce repayment. The innovative theoretical re...
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作者：Binzel, Christine; Fehr, Dietmar
作者单位：Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg
摘要：While strong social ties help individuals cope with missing institutions, trade is essentially limited to those who are part of the social network. We examine what makes the decision to trust a stranger different from the decision to trust a member of a given social network (a friend), by comparing the determinants of these two decisions for the same individual. We implement a binary trust game with hidden action in a lab-in-the-field experiment with residents of an informal housing area in Ca...
