"This paper evaluates the outreach and impact of two microfinance "village bank" programs that target the poor in Northeast Thailand. It controls for endogenous self-selection and program placement, using data from a unique survey conducted in 1995-1996. Results indicate that even prior to...

We argue that China's rising shadow banking was inextricably linked to potential balancesheet risks in the banking system. We substantiate this argument with three didactic findings: (1) commercial banks in general were prone to engage in channeling risky entrusted loans; (2) shadow banking...

We analyze an oligopolistic microcredit market characterized by asymmetric infirmation and institutions that can offer only one type of contract. We study the effects of competition on contract choice when small entrepreneurs can borrow from more than one institution due to the absence of credit...

The paper is a follow-up to an article published in Technique Financière et Developpement in 2000 (see the appendix to the hardcopy version), which portrayed the first results of a new strategy in the field of development finance implemented in South-East Europe. This strategy consists in...

Information asymmetries make it difficult for banks to assess accurately whether specific entrepreneurs are able and/or willing to repay their loans. This leads to implicit interest rate ceilings, i.e. banks refuse to increase their interest rates beyond this ceiling as this would lower their...

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...

We study the impact of loan regulation in rural India on child labor with an overlapping-generations model of formal and informal lending, human capital accumulation, adverse selection, and differentiated risk types. Specifically, we build a model economy that replicates the current outcome with...

The success of joint liability programs depends on nature and composition of borrowing groups. Group formation is a costly process and in our model these costs vary with the social identity of group partners. We show that risk heterogeneity in a borrowing group may arise due to the social...