The impact of public and private transfers on credit markets has not been sufficiently studied and understanding any spill over effects caused by these transfers may be useful for policy makers. This paper estimates the impact of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) and remittances received by poor...

This paper presents preliminary results on the possible demand for weather insurance in China. Results from 1,564 farm households from Western and Central China between October 2007 and October 2008 suggest that the greater risk for farmers is drought followed by excessive rain. Heat is less...

I study the economic consequences of shifting bargaining power in relational contracts through interventions such as the formation of a Bargaining Group (BG) for the side of sellers in a market where buyers traditionally hold significant market power. Existing theories of relational contracts...

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The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed a series of financial reforms in emerging economics of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The seminal works of R.I. McKinnon and E.S. Shaw, which attribute the slow growth of these economies to financial repression, inspired many of these...

Since the highest income groups have tremendous influence over economic policy by virtue of money, position, and connection, it is important to identify the interest of these groups with regard to economic conditions. Recently, annual time series data on the shares of the very highest income...

Traditional economic theory posits that a well functioning capital market is a necessary condition for industrialization and economic growth. However, in reality it is observed that micro and small enterprises are ubiquitous because entrepreneurs can set up business in low-return activities with...

The emphasis of education as a driving force for the growth of agricultural productivity can be dated back to the early 1960s. However, most empirical work failed to take into account of the fact that production technology changes with timeand consequently obscure the true contribution of...

We analyze the correlation between farm productivity and market participation using comparable household data from Tanzania, Vietnam and Guatemala. Each farm’s input use and output levels provide a within-sample measure of relative productivity, which we relate to that household’s level of...

This paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in Ghana. It also assesses the impacts of food price increases on various household groups. Taking the recent global food crisis as an example, we find that prices for...