Search Results
Report
Patterns of rainfall insurance participation in rural India
This paper describes the contract design and institutional features of an innovative rainfall insurance policy offered to smallholder farmers in rural India and presents preliminary evidence on the determinants of insurance participation. Insurance take-up is found to be decreasing in basis risk between insurance payouts and income fluctuations, higher among wealthy households, and lower among households that are credit constrained. These results match predictions of a simple neoclassical model appended with borrowing constraints. Other patterns are less consistent with the benchmark model. ...
Working Paper
Loan regulation and child labor in rural India
We study the impact of loan regulation in rural India on child labor with an overlapping-generations model of formal and informal lending, human capital accumulation, adverse selection, and differentiated risk types. Specifically, we build a model economy that replicates the current outcome with a loan rate cap and no lender discrimination by risk using a survey of rural lenders. Households borrow primarily from informal moneylenders and use child labor. Removing the rate cap and allowing lender discrimination markedly increases capital use, eliminates child labor, and improves welfare of all ...
Report
Barriers to household risk management: evidence from India
Financial engineering offers the potential to significantly reduce the consumption fluctuations faced by individuals, households, and firms. Yet much of this potential remains unfulfilled. This paper studies the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product designed to compensate low-income Indian farmers in the event of insufficient rainfall during the primary monsoon season. We first document relatively low adoption of this new risk management product: Only 5-10 percent of households purchase the insurance, even though they overwhelmingly cite rainfall variability as their most ...
Journal Article
Asian nations driving world oil prices
The rapid growth in China and India has led to an increase in demand for oil, which, in turn, has driven up prices. After adjusting for inflation, a barrel of oil today costs about what it did during the 1979 oil shock.
Working Paper
A tale of two states: Maharashtra and West Bengal
In this paper the authors study the economic evolution between 1960 and 1995 of two states in India ? Maharashtra and West Bengal. In 1960, West Bengal?s per capita income exceeded that of Maharashtra. By 1995, it had fallen to just 69 percent of Maharashtra?s per capita income. The authors employ a "wedge" methodology based on the first order conditions of a multi-sector neoclassical growth model to ascertain the sources of the divergent economic performances. Their diagnostic analysis reveals that a large part of West Bengal?s development woes can be attributed to: (a) low sectoral ...
Journal Article
Interview: Raghuram Rajan
In August 2005, at the annual conference of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Raghuram Rajan created a stir. Rajan, then chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, argued in a presentation that a hidden danger of massive failures was lurking in the global financial system. Risks had been building up, he said, a result of the incentives facing private institutions in the environment of that era.
Working Paper
Why doesn’t technology flow from rich to poor countries?
What is the role of a country?s financial system in determining technology adoption? To examine this, a dynamic contract model is embedded into a general equilibrium setting with competitive intermediation. The terms of finance are dictated by an intermediary?s ability to monitor and control a firm?s cash flow, in conjunction with the structure of the technology that the firm adopts. It is not always profitable to finance promising technologies. A quantitative illustration is presented where financial frictions induce entrepreneurs in India and Mexico to adopt less-promising ventures than in ...
Briefing
The Role of Nonbanks and Fintechs in Boosting India’s UPI Person-to-Merchant Transactions
Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a mobile-based instant payment system in India, has grown substantially in the last few years. Indians initially used UPI for person-to-person (P2P) payments, but today use UPI more for person-to-merchant (P2M) payments. Nonbanks and fintechs have contributed to the rapid growth of UPI P2M payments by providing third-party apps, merchant services, and consumer credit, as well as enabling UPI P2M payments to expand beyond India’s borders.
Report
Trading activity in the Indian government bond market
We study how the Indian government bond market functions, how it has changed over time, and what factors help explain some of its features. Looking at the primary market, we describe how underwriting obligations are allocated to primary dealers via auction and identify several significant determinants of the underwriting commission cutoff rate, including the launch of the Negotiated Dealing System-Order Matching System (NDS-OM) electronic trading platform. Turning to the secondary market, we explore the importance of benchmark bonds, the launch of NDS-OM, the growth in trading activity, and ...