Search Results
Working Paper
Integrated household surveys: an assessment of U.S. methods and an innovation
We present a vision for improving household financial surveys by integrating responses from questionnaires more completely with financial statements and combining them with payments data from diaries. Integrated household financial accounts?-balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows?-are used to assess the degree of integration in leading U.S. household surveys, focusing on inconsistencies in measures of the change in cash. Diaries of consumer payment choice can improve dynamic integration. Using payments data, we construct a statement of liquidity flows: a detailed ...
Working Paper
The Economics of Platforms in a Walrasian Framework
We present a tractable model of platform competition in a general equilibrium setting. We endogenize the size, number, and type of each platform, while allowing for different user types in utility and impact on platform costs. The economy is Pareto effcient because platforms internalize the network effects of adding more or different types of users by offering type-specific contracts that state both the number and composition of platform users. Using the Walrasian equilibrium concept, the sum of type-specific fees paid cover platform costs. Given the Pareto efficiency of our environment, we ...
Discussion Paper
Small-business access to trade credit: some evidence of ethnic differences
Based on findings from a survey of Black Households, this paper highlights socioeconomic and demographic factors that many influence the utilization of different financial markets. In addition, it discusses the potentially important role that informal financial networks can play in racial/ethnic communities. We propose that education programs, proactive community participation and partnerships between financial institutions and community organizations are important for greater access to credit and financial services among Black Households.
Journal Article
Small business finance in two Chicago minority neighborhoods
The authors use survey data to measure the use of formal and informal sources of financing by owners of small businesses in two ethnic neighborhoods. The authors find substantial differences across ethnic groups in the amount of start-up funding obtained and in the use of trade credit.
Journal Article
Formal and informal financing in a Chicago neighborhood
This article documents not only the actual use of banks, but also the widespread use of alternative financing mechanisms, using data from a survey of households and businesses in a Hispanic neighborhood of Chicago.
Journal Article
The credit risk-contingency system of an Asian development bank
This article offers a new method for the evaluation of financial institutions, one that combines socioeconomic survey data with appropriate accounting standards. A government-operated development bank in Thailand is found to be offering a risk-contingency or insurance system while being regulated as a more standard, loan-generating bank. Farmer clients experiencing adverse shocks receive indemnities that improve their well-being. With proper provisioning and accounts, that welfare gain could be weighed against premia or government subsidies.
Working Paper
Distinguishing limited commitment from moral hazard in models of growth with inequality
We use non-parametric, reduced form and structural techniques to distin-guish the micro-economic foundations of two models of growth with increasing inequality using new data from rural and semi-urban households in Thailand. We estimate a limited commitment model that is similar to Evans and Jovanovic (1989) and a moral hazard model that is an extension of Aghion and Bolton (1996). Both models emphasize the role of occupational choice and financial constraints. While the models share many implications, they are distinguished by their assumptions about the nature of financial market ...