Essays on Risk-Sharing and Development.

Individuals living in developing economies are subject to a wide variety of risks. Moreover, since private and public formal institutions designed to help individuals coping with risks tend to be weaker and narrower than in rich countries, these risks very often bear a heavy burden on welfare. If the preferences of agents can be characterized by concave utility functions, these agents will want to spread risk across time and among themselves. We focus here on mechanisms allowing agents to share risk among themselves, and we look more particularly at environments where formal insurance options are incomplete or absent. This thesis offers three chapters which goal is to analyze the extent to which risk sharing is affected by imperfections in the insurance or in the credit markets. In the first two chapters, we take a microeconomic perspective and we examine how rural farmers cope with income shocks in village economies characterized by the absence of formal insurance markets. In the last chapter, we adopt a macroeconomic perspective and we look at the role of the domestic financial sector development in fostering risk sharing through financial integration between countries.Development economics -- Pacific Area; Risk assessment -- Vietnam; Depressions -- Developing countries; Social security -- Developing countries; Vietnam -- Economic conditions -- 21st century;

Optimal Risk Sharing Under Limited Commitment: Evidence From Rural Vietnam

We use panel data from a household survey conducted in Vietnam to analyze the effectiveness of informal risk sharing arrangements in protecting household consumption from idiosyncratic income shocks. We focus on the effects of reported harvest shocks and of estimated shocks to agricultural revenues on adult equivalent consumption. The full-insurance allocation is tested against a specified alternative under which contracts are not fully enforceable ex-post. We find that farmers hit by unfavorable events stabilize their consumption level below the village aggregate level, irrespective of the level of realized shocks. At the same time, farmers experiencing more favorable shocks enjoy higher consumption in proportion to the realized value of idiosyncratic shocks. Together, these finding are consistent with a simple 2-period model of optimal risk sharing with one-sided limited commitment. These results hold for total consumption and for non-durable consumption. We also find however some evidence supporting the full insurance hypothesis for food consumption.Consumption, Risk-sharing, Informal Insurance,Vietnam

The Determinants of Private Transfers in Rural Vietnam

We use the Vietnam Living Standard Survey conducted in 1993 and in 1998 to analyze the determinants of private transfers among rural farmers. Private transfers are widespread and important relative to pre-transfer income levels of recipients in both years. Conducting parametric and semiparametric analysis of single-index models for transfer status, we find that private transfers help smoothing income across the life cycle and across states of nature. Pre-transfer income is positively related to the net donor status and negatively associated with the net recipients status, especially for low levels of income. These results suggest that crowding-out of public redistributive policies targeted to the rural poor might be an issue to take into account in Vietnam.Private Transfers; Single-Index Model; Probit; Semiparametric Estimation; Vietnam

Financial Integration and Macroeconomic Volatility: Does Financial Development Matter?

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between international financial integration and macroeconomic volatility. Looking at a panel of 90 countries over the period 1960-2000, we find that domestic financial conditions matter when assessing the impact of financial integration on consumption growth volatility. More specifically, consumption growth volatility is found to increase with the degree of financial integration in countries with low level of financial development and to decrease in countries with high level of financial development. When measuring domestic financial conditions by the share of private credits to GDP, the threshold level of financial development above which financial integration yields consumption smoothing benefits is estimated to be around 60%-70% GDP.GMM-IV; Dynamic Pane;, Financial Integration; Financial Development

Price Elasticity Estimates of Cigarette Demand in Vietnam

In this paper, we analyze a complete demand system to estimate the price elasticity for cigarette demand in Vietnam. Following Deaton (1990), we build a spatial panel using cross sectional household survey data. We consider a model of simultaneous choice of quantity and quality. This allows us to exploit unit values from cigarette consumption in order to disentangle quality choice from exogenous price variations. We then rely on spatial variations in prices and quantities demanded to estimate an Almost Ideal Demand System. The estimated price elasticity for cigarette demand is centered around -0.53, which is in line with previous empirical studies for developing countries.Price elasticity; Cigarette Demand; Taxation; Consumption; Vietnam

Measuring risk attitudes among Mozambican farmers:

Although farmers in developing countries are generally thought to be risk averse, little is known about the actual form of their risk preferences. In this paper, we use a relatively large field experiment to explore risk preferences related to sweet potato production among a sample of farmers in northern Mozambique. We explicitly test whether preferences follow the constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility function and whether farmers follow expected utility theory or rank dependent utility theory in generating their preferences. We find that we can reject the null that farmers'preferences follow the CRRA utility function in favor of the more flexible power risk aversion preferences. In a mixture model, we find that about three-fourths of farmers in our sample develop risk preferences by rank dependent utility. We also find that by making the common CRRA assumption in our sample, we poorly predict risk preferences among those who are less risk averse.Sweet potato, Risk preferences, constant relative risk aversion (CRRA), farmers preferences,

Optimal Risk Sharing Under Limited Commitment: Evidence From Rural Vietnam

We use panel data from a household survey conducted in Vietnam to analyze the effectiveness of informal risk sharing arrangements in protecting household consumption from idiosyncratic income shocks. We focus on the effects of reported harvest shocks and of estimated shocks to agricultural revenues on adult equivalent consumption. The full-insurance allocation is tested against a specified alternative under which contracts are not fully enforceable ex-post. We find that farmers hit by unfavorable events stabilize their consumption level below the village aggregate level, irrespective of the level of realized shocks. At the same time, farmers experiencing more favorable shocks enjoy higher consumption in proportion to the realized value of idiosyncratic shocks. Together, these finding are consistent with a simple 2-period model of optimal risk sharing with one-sided limited commitment. These results hold for total consumption and for non-durable consumption. We also find however some evidence supporting the full insurance hypothesis for food consumption

Financial Integration and Macroeconomic Volatility: Does Financial Development Matter?

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between international financial integration and macroeconomic volatility. Looking at a panel of 90 countries over the period 1960-2000, we find that domestic financial conditions matter when assessing the impact of financial integration on consumption growth volatility. More specifically, consumption growth volatility is found to increase with the degree of financial integration in countries with low level of financial development and to decrease in countries with high level of financial development. When measuring domestic financial conditions by the share of private credits to GDP, the threshold level of financial development above which financial integration yields consumption smoothing benefits is estimated to be around 60%-70% GDP

The Determinants of Private Transfers in Rural Vietnam

We use the Vietnam Living Standard Survey conducted in 1993 and in 1998 to analyze the determinants of private transfers among rural farmers. Private transfers are widespread and important relative to pre-transfer income levels of recipients in both years. Conducting parametric and semiparametric analysis of single-index models for transfer status, we find that private transfers help smoothing income across the life cycle and across states of nature. Pre-transfer income is positively related to the net donor status and negatively associated with the net recipients status, especially for low levels of income. These results suggest that crowding-out of public redistributive policies targeted to the rural poor might be an issue to take into account in Vietnam

Optimal Risk Sharing Under Limited Commitment: Evidence From Rural Vietnam

We use panel data from a household survey conducted in Vietnam to analyze the effectiveness of informal risk sharing arrangements in protecting household consumption from idiosyncratic income shocks. We focus on the effects of reported harvest shocks and of estimated shocks to agricultural revenues on adult equivalent consumption. The full-insurance allocation is tested against a specified alternative under which contracts are not fully enforceable ex-post. We find that farmers hit by unfavorable events stabilize their consumption level below the village aggregate level, irrespective of the level of realized shocks. At the same time, farmers experiencing more favorable shocks enjoy higher consumption in proportion to the realized value of idiosyncratic shocks. Together, these finding are consistent with a simple 2-period model of optimal risk sharing with one-sided limited commitment. These results hold for total consumption and for non-durable consumption. We also find however some evidence supporting the full insurance hypothesis for food consumption