Risk and Return in Village Economies

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 framewo...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Main Authors: Samphantharak, Krislert, Townsend, Robert
Outros Autores: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Formato: Artigo
Publicado em: American Economic Association 2018
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114164
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1528-8102
Descrição
Resumo: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 framework to households running business enterprises in Thai villages with extensive networks, taking advantage of panel data: income, assets, consumption, gifts, and loans. We decompose risk and estimate the risk premia faced by households, distinguishing aggregate risk from idiosyncratic, potentially diversifiable risk. This distinction matters for estimating measures of underlying productivity and has important policy implications. (JEL D12, D22, D24, D81, O12, O14, O18)