This paper analyzes the theoretical underpinnings of high-frequency repayment, a feature in nearly all microfinance contracts that has been largely overlooked by theorists. The pervasive belief among practitioners that frequent repayment is critical in achieving high repayment rates is puzzling....

Unifying theory and research to contribute to poverty reduction This paper argues that with the development and increasing use of randomized experiments in development research, we now have a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between these two strands of research, the need to use existing...

An interesting puzzle is that trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has been associated with a sharp increase in the skill premium in both developed and developing countries. This is in contrast with neoclassical theory, according to which trade should increase the relative return of the...

We look at an economic environment where borrowers have some information about the nature of each other's projects that lenders do not. We show that joint-liability lending contracts, similar to those used by credit cooperatives and group-lending schemes, will induce endogenous peer selection in...

Financial interlinkage, in the form of cross-holding of equity and debt between firms, characterize business groups in many countries. We suggest that such financial interlinkage can be viewed as a way to solve credit rationing caused by asymmetric information. If firms possess better...

We study an economy where agents are heterogeneous in terms of observable wealth and unobservable talent. Adverse selection forces creditors to ask for collateral. We study the two-way interaction between rationing in the credit market and the wages offered in the labour market. Both pooling and...

Financial interlinkage, in the form of cross-holding of equity and debt between firms characterize business groups in many countries. We suggest that such financial interlinkage can be viewed as a way to solve credit rationing caused by asymmetric information. If firms possess better information...

This paper reports results of a household survey in Singur, West Bengal concerning compensation offered by the state government to owners of land acquired to make way for a car factory. While on average compensations o.ered were close to the reported market valuations of land, owners of high...

This paper studies the interaction of incentive pay and social distance in the dissemination of information. BREAD Working Paper No. 380. URL: [http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/bread/papers/working/380.pdf].

This paper addresses the question of how farmers displaced by acquisition of agricultural land for the purpose of industrialization ought to be compensated. Prior to acquisition, the farmers are leasing in land from a private owner or local government with a legally man-dated sharecropping...