Many countries adopted safety net programs to deal with the food crisis of 2008. However, such programs are often beset with targeting errors, inefficiencies, and fraud. Despite this, there is no systematic comparative analysis of safety nets. The objective of this paper is to identify generic...

In recent years, microfinance institutions have expanded into group lending with individual liability, leaving out the joint liability clause which was an important feature in earlier lending contracts. Recent experimental evidence indicates that group lending may yield benefits, specifically...

Informal groups cannot rely on external enforcement to insure that members abide by their obligations. It is generally assumed that these problems are solved by social sanctions and reputational effects. The present paper focuses on roscas, one of the most commonly found informal financial...

This paper is intended to bridge the theoretical literature describing efficient intra-household behaviour and the development literature that collects empirical regularities pointing toward the existence of strategic decision-making among spouses. It examines the key elements of the collective...

This paper analyzes the possibility of investment coordination leading to outcomes which dominate non-investment equilibria in the presence of monopolistic competition. We establish when complementarity leads to investment coordination failures and explore the welfare implications of coordinated...