This paper contrasts individual liability lending with and without groups to joint liability lending. By doing so, we shed light on an apparent shift away from joint liability lending towards individual liability lending by some microfinance institutions First we show that individual lending...

Motivated by recent controversies surrounding the role of commercial lenders in micro finance, we analyze borrower welfare under different market structures, considering a benevolent non-profit lender, a for-prfi t monopolist, and a competitive credit market. To understand the magnitude of the...

A rolling blackout in Colombia in the early 1990s led to a rise in unplanned births, according to research by Amar Shanghavi and colleagues. What's more, young women who became mothers after the blackout had worse outcomes in later life. The impact of power outages on fertility is an important...

This paper estimates the effect of piracy attacks on shipping costs using a unique data set on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market. We look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy attacks and find that the increase in attacks in 2008 lead to around a ten percent...

Motivated by recent controversies surrounding the role of commercial lenders in microfinance, we analyze borrower welfare under different market structures,considering a benevolent non-profit lender, a for-profit monopolist, and a competitive credit market. To understand the magnitude of the...

This paper answers the question whether extreme power rationing can induce changes in human fertility and thus, generate "mini baby booms". We study a period of extensive power rationing in Colombia that lasted for most of 1992 and see whether this has increased births in the subsequent year,...