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...

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...

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,...

In summary, the effects of decentralization on corruption and government accountability are complex and cannot be summarized by simple, unconditional statements. This applies equally to theoretical analyses, cross-country regression results and more detailed empirical studies of specific...

A traditional view of markets is that they equalize wealth across individuals. A more recent literature suggests that markets are inherently disequalizing. A third viewpoint argues that initial history is crucial in determining whether inequalities persist or not. By constructing a theory of...

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...