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Abstract:
Financial interlinkage, in the form of cross-holding of equity and debt between firms characterize business groups in many countries. We suggest that such financial interlinkage can be viewed as a way to solve credit rationing caused by asymmetric information. If firms possess better information about each other than a bank, then business groups can be a mechanism to induce firms to sort on the basis of this information. Banks can offer a menu of contracts that vary in the extent of financial interlinkage to induce firms to self-select on the basis of the equilibrium composition of the business groups they can form. This can solve inefficient credit rationing and thereby enhance efficiency. However, since this mechanism exploits local information, if there is heterogeneity in access to informational networks, financial interlinkage and the associated formation of business groups may worsen overall efficiency.

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the role of public and private responsibility in the provision of public goods. We emphasise that a typical public good will require many different inputs which raises the possibility of partnerships to exploit comparative advantages of different parties. But hold-up problems due to contractual incompleteness in specifying tasks discourage separation of ownership and management. We extend our analysis to examine the role of project design or 'ideology' as a separate non-contractible input, and the possibility of crowding out in the form of a less caring government being elected, because of the presence of private providers. The main application developed here is to NGOs in developing countries which, in the last two decades, have been increasingly involved in various capacities in the provisions of a wide range of public goods and services.

Abstract:
We study an overlapping generations version of the principal-agent problem, where incentive contracts are determined in general equilibrium. All individuals are workers when young, but have a choice between becoming entrepreneurs or remaining workers when old. Imperfections in the credit market give rise to rents in entrepreneurial activities involving set-up costs. These rents motivate poor agents to work hard and save to overcome the borrowing constraints. With a labor market that is subject to moral hazard, the increased effort raises social welfare. Taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor in order to allow the poor to become self-financed entrepreneurs reduces the incentives for young agents to work hard and save. A reduction of the imperfections in the credit market has the same effect since it reduces the entrepreneurial rents.

Abstract:
We study an overlapping generations version of the principal-agent problem, where incentive contracts are determined in general equilibrium. All individuals are workers when young, but have a choice between becoming entrepreneurs or remaining workers when old. Imperfections in the credit market give rise to rents in entrepreneurial activities involving set-up costs. These rents motivate poor agents to work hard and save to overcome the borrowing constraints. With a labor market that is subject to moral hazard, the increased effort raises social welfare. Taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor in order to allow the poor to become self-financed entrepreneurs reduces the incentives for young agents to work hard and save. A reduction of the imperfections in the credit market has the same effect since it reduces the entrepreneurial rents.

Abstract:
A unifying theme in the literature on organizations such as public bureaucracies and private non-profits is the importance of missions, as opposed to profit, as an organizational goal. Such mission-oriented organizations are frequently staffed by motivated agents who subscribe to the mission. This paper studies incentives in such contexts and emphazises the role of matching principals' and agents' mission preferences in increasing organizational efficiency. Matching economizes on the need for high-powered incentives. However, it can also entrench bureaucratic conservatism and resistance to innovations. The framework developed in this paper is applied to school competition, incentives in the public sector and in private non-profits, and the interdependence of incentives and productivity between the private for-profit sector and the mission-oriented sector through occupational choice.

Abstract:
A unifying theme in the literature on organizations, such as public bureaucracies and private non-profits, is the importance of missions, as opposed to profit, as an organizational goal. Such mission-oriented organizations are frequently staffed by motivated agents who subscribe to the mission. This Paper studies incentives in such contexts and emphasizes the role of matching principals' and agents' mission preferences in increasing organizational efficiency and reducing the need for high-powered incentives. The framework developed in this Paper is applied to non-profits, school competition, and incentives in the public sector.

Competition, incentives, non-profits

Abstract:
There has been a dramatic change in the division of responsibility between the state and the private sector for the delivery of public goods and services in recent years with an increasing trend towards contracting out to the private sector and 'public-private partnerships'. This Paper analyses how ownership matters in public good provision. We show that if contracts are incomplete then the ownership of a public good should lie with a party that values the benefits generated by it relatively more. This is true regardless of whether this party is also the key investor or provides other aspects of the technology.

Public goods, public ownership, public-private partnerships

Abstract:
This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We then compute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that we observe in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actual matches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage. However, because both sides of the market share this preference and because the groups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, in equilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste to remain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market.

caste, Gale-Shapley Algorithm, marriage markets

Abstract:
This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We then compute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that we observe in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actual matches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage. However, because both sides of the market share this preference and because the groups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, in equilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste to remain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market.

Caste, marriage markets, Gale-Shapley Algorithm

Abstract:
We show that the joint liability lending contracts derived in Ghatak (2000) violate an ex post incentive-compatibility constraint which says that the amount of joint liability cannot exceed the amount of individual liability. We derive and characterise optimal separating joint liability contracts incorporating this constraint.

Abstract:
We study an economy where agents are heterogeneous in terms of observable wealth and unobservable talent. Adverse selection forces creditors to ask for collateral. We study the two-way interaction between rationing in the credit market and the wages offered in the labour market. Both pooling and separating credit contracts can be offered in equilibrium. The minimum wealth needed to obtain a separating contract is decreasing in the wage, whereas the minimum wealth needed for a pooling contract is increasing in the wage. If the first effect dominates, the derived labour demand can be upward sloping, resulting in the possibility of multiple equilibria.

Abstract:
This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We then compute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that we observe in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actual matches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage. However, because both sides of the market share this preference and because the groups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, in equilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste to remain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
We show that the effect of eviction threats on unobservable investment effort can be positive. We demonstrate this apparently counter-intuitive result in a model of tenancy where investment by a tenant in the current period raises the chances of doing well in the next period, and therefore retaining the job in the period after next period. If the tenant earns rents, the landlord can partly substitute eviction threats for the crop share as an incentive device. This makes it more attractive for him to elicit investment effort. However, there is a direct negative effect of eviction threats on the tenant's discount factor. We find conditions under which the former effect dominates and eviction threats can increase investment incentives.

Abstract:
No abstract available.

Abstract:
This chapter develops a unified analytical framework, drawing on and extending the existing literature on the subject, for studying the role of property rights in economic development. It addresses two fundamental and related questions concerning the relationship between property rights and economic activity. (i) What are the mechanisms through which property rights affect economic activity? (ii) What are the determinants of property rights? In answering these, it surveys some of the main empirical and theoretical ideas from the extensive literature on the topic.

This paper will form a chapter for Volume V of the Handbook of Development Economics edited by Dani Rodrik and Mark Rosenzweig.

Economic Development, Property rights

Abstract:
This paper explores the consequences of creating and improving property rights so that fixed assets can be used as collateral. This has become a cause célèbre of Hernando de Soto whose views are influential in debates about policy reform concerning property rights. Hence, we refer to the economic impact of such reforms as the de Soto effect. We explore the logic of the argument for credit contracts, both in isolation, and in market equilibrium. We show that the impact will vary with the degree of market competition. Where competition is weak, it is possible that borrowers will be worse off when property rights improve. We discuss the implications for optimal policy and the political economy of policy reform.

collateral, credit markets, Hernando de Soto

Abstract:
In this paper we review as well as contribute to the empirical literature on the impact of land reform on agricultural productivity in India. We find that, overall for all states, land-reform legislation had a negative and significant effect on agricultural productivity. However, this hides considerable variation across types of land reform, as well as variation across states. Decomposing by type of land reform, the main driver for this negative effect seems to be land-ceiling legislation. In contrast, the effect of tenancy reform, averaged across all states, is insignificant. There seems to be a wide range of state-specific effects, which suggests that focusing on average treatment effects can hide a considerable amount of heterogeneity. In particular, allowing a separate slope for West Bengal, one of the few states that implemented tenancy laws rigorously, we find that land reform had a marginal positive effect relative to the rest of India.

agricultural productivity, land reform, West Bengal

Abstract:
We analyze a simple and tractable model of occupational choice in the presence of credit market imperfections. We examine the effect of parameters governing technology and transaction costs, and history, in terms of the initial wealth distribution, in determining the long-term wealth distribution and the level of per capita income of an economy.

Wealth inequality, Occupational choice, Poverty traps

Abstract:
The paper analyzes the effect of agricultural tenancy laws offering security of tenure to tenants and regulating the share of output that is paid as rent on farm productivity. Theoretically, the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects, a bargaining power effect and a security of tenure effect. Analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the Indian state of West Bengal in the late 1970s suggests that tenancy reform had a positive effect on agricultural productivity there.

Abstract:
Financial interlinkage, in the form of cross-holding of equity and debt between firms, characterize business groups in many countries. We suggest that such financial interlinkage can be viewed as a way to solve credit rationing caused by asymmetric information. If firms possess better information about each other than a bank, then business groups can be a mechanism to induce firms to sort on the basis of this information. Banks can offer a menu of contracts that vary in the extent of financial interlinkage to induce firms to self-select on the basis of the equilibrium composition of the business groups they can form.

Business groups, cross-holding of debt and equity, financial interlinkage

Abstract:
We look at an economic environment where borrowers have some information about the nature of each other's projects that lenders do not. We show that joint-liability lending contracts, similar to those used by credit cooperatives and group-lending schemes, will induce endogenous peer selection in the formation of groups in a way that the instrument of joint liability can be used as a screening device to exploit this local information. This can improve welfare and repayment rates if standard screening instruments such as collateral are unavailable.

Abstract:
We analyze the effect of agricultural tenancy laws that offer security of tenure to tenants and regulate the share of output they should pay the landlord as rent on farm productivity. Theoretically, the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects. A bargaining power effect tends to improve the crop-share of tenants and hence improves their incentives in general. A security of tenure effect tends to encourage investment by the tenant on one hand, but on the other hand eliminates the possibility of using eviction threats as an incentive device by the landlord. Analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the Indian state of West Bengal in the late seventies suggests that tenancy reform played an important role in increasing agricultural productivity.