We measure heterogeneity in risk aversion among households in Thai villages using a full risk-sharing model and complement the results with a measure based on optimal portfolio choice. Among households with relatives living in the same village, full insurance cannot be rejected, suggesting that...

We look at liquidity constraints and the financing of household investment in fixed assets. We find that rural households in our sample, especially the poor, seem to face liquidity constraints. The constraints are partially mitigated by kinship networks in the village. When we further analyze...

This paper provides a theory-based empirical framework for understanding the risk and return on productive capital assets and their allocation across activities in an economy characterized by idiosyncratic and aggregate risk and thin formal markets for real and financial assets. We apply our...

This paper uses loan-level data from Thailand's National Credit Bureau to study household debt over the life cycle of borrowers. We decompose two aggregate and commonly used measures of debt — debt per capita and delinquency rate — into components that unveil the extensive and intensive...

This study looks at capitalism in Southeast Asia through the lenses of modern corporate finance, based on contract and ownership theories of the firm. The paper limits its survey to recent literature that uses firm-level micro data of Southeast Asia corporate firms. Three major common issues of...

This paper extends a structural model of investment with costly external finance to firms in business groups, derives an empirical regression counterpart, and uses it to test for the existence of internal capital markets in business groups and various characteristics of a group that tend to...

This paper uses transaction-level data from Thailand to study concentration, specialization, and fragility of export activities. The paper shows that although exports have been an integral part of the development strategy of the country for several decades, direct engagement in international...

This paper provides narrative background on economic and political development of the 11 countries in Southeast Asia. It shows that post-World War II development experience, economic policies, and current economic performance in each country have deep historical roots, at least back to the...

This paper explores episodes of financial crises and recessions experienced by the economies in Southeast Asia: the global debt crisis and the commodity price collapse in the 1980s, the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, and the burst of the dot-com bubble and the global financial crisis in...