This paper examines whether recently introduced "village funds", one of the largest microfinance programs ever implemented, improve access to finance. Village funds are analyzed in a cross-sectional approach in relation to competing financial institutions. We find, first, that they reach the...

This paper examines the nature of risk faced by households in Thailand and the strategies that these households adopt to mitigate the adverse effect from income shortfalls. I use a new cross-section dataset that is based on a sample of both urban and rural households. I find that price shock is...

Due to opaque information and weak enforcement in emerging loan markets, the need for collateral is high, whereas borrowers lack adequate assets to pledge as collateral. How is this puzzle solved? We find for a representative sample from Northeast Thailand that indeed most loans do not include...

Summary This paper examines whether recently introduced "village funds," one of the largest microfinance programs ever implemented, improve access to finance. Village funds are analyzed in a cross-sectional approach in comparison to competing financial institutions. We find, first, that they...