This report covers the second year of the ESRC Research Centre for Analysis ofSocial Exclusion (CASE) from October 1998 to September 1999. The year sawincreased activity and output from the previous year.The Centre’s objectives are to develop understanding within five broad areas:income...

This report summarises presentations and discussion at a seminar, organised by LSE Housingand CASE, which took place at the London School of Economics on 7th July 1998. The eventwas chaired by Professor Howard Glennerster (LSE and Chairman of STICERD), and thespeakers were Professor William...

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

We study an economy where agents are heterogeneous in terms of observablewealth and unobservable talent. Adverse selection forces creditors to ask forcollateral. We study the two-way interaction between rationing in the creditmarket and the wages offered in the labor market. Both pooling and...

We analyze a simple and tractable model of occupational choice in the presence of credit marketimperfections. We examine the effect of parameters governing technology and transaction costs, andhistory, in terms of the initial wealth distribution, in determining the long-term wealth...

This paper analyzes how group lending programs use joint liability to utilize localinformation that borrowers have about each other’s projects through self-selection of groupmembers in the group formation stage. These schemes are shown to lead to positiveassortative matching in group...

Beyond its explanatory ambitions as positive science, economics has always had its normativeor applied branch that aims at providing advice about how man’s socio-economic conditionmight be improved. Under the name welfare economics the discipline’s normative branch hasbeen formalized, in the...

Paternalism, the interference with a person, against their will, for her own good, has longbeen held in disregard. Yet recently, new arguments for paternalistic governmentinterventions have been proposed. These arguments draw on two premises. First, theproposed paternalism is characterised as...

This paper computes welfare-maximizing monetary and tax policy feedback rules in acalibrated dynamic general equilibrium model with sticky prices. The government makesexogenous final good purchases, levies a proportional income tax, and issues nominalone-period bonds. A quadratic approximation...

Behavioral (e.g. consumption) patterns of boundedly rational agents can lead these agents intolearning dynamics that appear to be “wasteful” in terms of well-being or welfare. Within settingsdisplaying preference endogeneity, it is however still unclear how to conceptualize well-being.This...