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Risk and Return in Village Economies
Townsend, Robert M.; Samphantharak, Krislert - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
We present a framework for the study of risk and return of household enterprise in developing economies. We make predictions from two polar benchmarks: (1) an economy with Pareto optimal allocations under full risk sharing, and (2) an economy in which each autarky household absorbs risk in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010821669
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The Diffusion of Microfinance
Duflo, Esther; Jackson, Matthew O.; Banerjee, Abhijit; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
We examine how participation in a microfinance program diffuses through social networks. We collected detailed … demographic and social network data in 43 villages in South India before microfinance was introduced in those villages and then … first informed about the program, "the injection points". Microfinance participation is higher when the injection points …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009397139
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Pay-for-Performance Incentives in Low- and Middle-Income Country Health Programs
Miller, Grant; Babiarz, Kimberly Singer - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013
This chapter surveys experience with performance pay in developing country health programs. In doing so, it focuses on four key conceptual issues: (1) What to reward, (2) Who to reward, (3) How to reward, and (4) What unintended consequences might performance incentives create. We highlight that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010692208
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The Unofficial Economy in Africa
La Porta, Rafael; Shleifer, Andrei - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011
We examine the productivity of informal firms (those that are not registered with the government) in 24 African countries using field work and World Bank firm level data. We find that productivity jumps sharply if we compare small formal firms to informal firms, and rises rapidly with the size...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008855530
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Instruments of Commerce and Knowledge: Probe Microscopy, 1980-2000
Mody, Cyrus C. M. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2006
Longstanding debates about the role of the university in national culture and the global economy have entered a new phase in the past decade in most industrialized, and several industrializing, countries. One important focus of this debate is corporate involvement in academic scientific...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005777662
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Social Structure and Institutional Design: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in the Field
Breza, Emily; Chandrasekhar, Arun G.; Larreguy, Horacio - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
In settings with poor formal contract enforcement, profitable investments are likely unrealized. While social closeness can mitigate contractual incompleteness, we examine how to improve the preponderance of cases where contracting parties cannot rely upon social ties. We ask if a community can...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010821816
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Risk, Insurance and Wages in General Equilibrium
Rosenzweig, Mark; Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
We estimate the general-equilibrium labor market effects of a large-scale randomized intervention in which we designed and marketed a rainfall index insurance product across three states in India. Marketing agricultural insurance to both cultivators and to agricultural wage laborers allows us to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010796570
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A Personal Touch: Text Messaging for Loan Repayment
Karlan, Dean; Zinman, Jonathan; Morten, Melanie - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
We worked with two microlenders to test impacts of randomly assigned reminders for loan repayments in the "text messaging capital of the world". We do not find strong evidence that loss versus gain framing or messaging timing matter. Messages only robustly improve repayment when they include the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011188547
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Financing Smallholder Agriculture: An Experiment with Agent-Intermediated Microloans in India
Motta, Alberto; Maitra, Pushkar; Mitra, Sandip; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
Recent evaluations of traditional microfinance loans have found no significant impacts on borrower incomes or …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011085479
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Gossip: Identifying Central Individuals in a Social Network
Duflo, Esther; Jackson, Matthew O.; Banerjee, Abhijit; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014
Can we identify the members of a community who are best- placed to diffuse information simply by asking a random sample of individuals? We show that boundedly-rational individuals can, simply by tracking sources of gossip, identify those who are most central in a network according to "diffusion...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951208