We examine the impact of incomplete risk-sharing on growth and welfare. The source of market incompleteness in our … economy is private information: a household's idiosyncratic productivity shock is not observable by others. Risk …-sharing between households occurs through long-term contracts with intermediaries. We find that incomplete risk- sharing tends to …

Households in developing countries use a variety of informal mechanisms to cope with risk, including mutual support and … risk-sharing. These mechanisms cannot avoid that they remain vulnerable to shocks. Public programs in the form of food aid … impact of negative shocks, taking into account informal risk-sharing arrangements. Using panel data from Ethiopia, we find …

We apply the set up of limited commitment model to empirically test the role of informal risk-sharing networks using … belief that enforcement problem limits the direct role of credit transactions in risk-sharing arrangements between rural ….These results, therefore, imply that full risk- sharing does not appear to materialize at the village level. …

We study the issue of project choice when a risk-averse agent must choose whether to invest in two projects of the same … speed of learning (ii) the type-specific risk and (iii) his risk- aversion and investment horizon. We show that, contrary to … intuition, an increase in type-specific risk may lead to a decrease in diversification. Our theory is applicable to occupational …

Most risk-sharing tests on developing country data are conducted at the level of the village; generally, the full risk … clustered but largely overlapping. We test whether full risk-sharing occurs within these networks. We find that even within … these smaller networks risk is not fully shared. In the event of a health shock, households reduce overall consumption: they …

Policy towards speculative bubbles is examined in a model of a finite horizon 'greater fool' bubble, with rational … only in 'strong bubbles,', where all private agents know the asset is overpriced, this tends to reduce welfare. This is …