Should the law restrict liability of defaulting borrowers? We abstract from possible benefits arising from limited rationality or risk-aversion of borrowers, contractual incompleteness, or lender moral hazard. We focus instead on general equilibrium implications of liability rules with moral...

Most analyses of the recent ¯nancial crisis in the US focus on the consequences of the dramatic slump in housing prices that started in the mid-2000s, which led to rising mortgage defaults, shrinking home equity credit and liquidity in the banking system. Yet these accounts do not explain what...

It is generally presumed that stronger legal enforcement of lender rights increases credit access for all borrowers because it expands the set of incentive compatible loan contracts. This result relies on an assumption that the supply of credit is innitely elastic. In contrast, with inelastic...

It is generally presumed that strengthening legal enforcement of lender rights increases credit access for all borrowers, by expanding the set of incentive compatible loan contracts. This is based on an implicit assumption of infinitely elastic supply of loans. With inelastic supply,...

Should the law restrict liability of defaulting borrowers? We abstract from possible benefits arising from limited rationality or risk-aversion of borrowers, contractual incompleteness, or lender moral hazard. We focus instead on general equilibrium implications of liability rules with moral...

Most analyses of the impact of community management of common property resources are based on cross-sectional comparisons in case studies or small samples, perception-based measurement of resource conditions, and absence of controls for unobserved community characteristics and non-random...

This paper provides evidence concerning political participation (turnout, awareness, attendance at meetings, campaign involvement, voting) and its relation to local governance (targeting of public services) in a developing country, based on a rural household survey in West Bengal, India. With...

This paper assesses the relation between living standards and forest degradation in the Indian mid-Himalayas, and related policy questions. It is based on detailed household, village and ecology surveys in a sample of 165 villages in Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh. Our prior fieldwork in this...