Inter-Country Comparisons of Poverty Based on a Capability Approach

We argue that inter-country comparisons of income poverty based on poverty lines uniformly reflecting the costs of the basic requirements of human beings are superior to the existing money-metric approaches. In this exercise, we implement a uniform approach to income poverty assessment based on basic human capabilities for three countries in three continents: Nicaragua, Tanzania, and Vietnam. We compute standard errors of the resulting poverty estimates and compare the incidence of income poverty across these three countries. The choice of approach affects both cardinal estimates and ordinal rankings of income poverty across countries and over time. We argue that meaningful and coherent inter-country poverty comparisons are best advanced through international co-ordination in survey design, and through the construction of income poverty lines that possess a meaningful and uniform interpretation (as the cost of achieving elementary income-dependent capabilities).

Inter-country Comparisons of Poverty Based on a Capability Approach: An Empirical Exercise

We argue that inter-country comparisons of income poverty based on poverty lines uniformly reflecting the costs of the basic requirements of human beings are superior to the existing money-metric approaches. In this exercise, we implement a uniform approach to poverty assessment based on basic human capabilities for three countries: Nicaragua, Tanzania, and Vietnam. We compute standard errors of the resulting poverty estimates and compare the incidence of poverty across these three countries. The choice of approach affects both cardinal estimates and ordinal rankings of poverty across countries and over time. Meaningful and coherent inter-country poverty comparisons can be advanced through international co-ordination in survey design and in the construction of income poverty lines that uniformly reflect the costs of the basic requirements of human beings.Poverty, Inter-Country comparisons, Capability approach

Middleman margins and asymmetric information: an experiment with potato farmers in West Bengal

West Bengal potato farmers cannot directly access wholesale markets and do not know wholesale prices. Local middlemen earn large margins; pass-through from wholesale to farm-gate prices is negligible. When we informed farmers in randomly chosen villages about wholesale prices, average farm-gate sales and priceswere unaffected, but pass-through to farm-gate prices increased. These results can be explained by a model where farmers bargain ex post with village middlemen, with the outside option of selling to middlemen outside the village. They are inconsistent with standard oligopolistic models of pass-through, search frictions or risk-sharing contracts.Accepted manuscrip

Asymmetric information and middleman margins: an experiment with indian potato farmers

West Bengal potato farmers cannot directly access wholesale markets and do not knowwholesale prices. Local middlemen earn large margins; pass-through from wholesale to farmgate prices is negligible. When we informed farmers in randomly chosen villages about wholesale prices, average farmgate sales and prices were unaffected, but pass-through to farmgate prices increased. These results can be explained by a model where farmers bargain ex post with village middlemen, with the outside option of selling to middlemen outside the village. They are inconsistent with standard oligopolistic models of pass-through, search frictions, or risk-sharing contracts.We acknowledge grants from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, the International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, and USAID's Development Innovation Ventures program. We are grateful to three anonymous referees, Abhijit Banerjee, Francesco Decarolis, Jordi Jamandreu, Dan Keniston, Asim Khwaja, Kaivan Munshi, Rohini Pande, Marc Rysman, Chris Udry, and participants at several seminars and conferences. We received excellent research assistance from Khushabu Kasabwala, Prathap Kasina, Arpita Khanna, Clarence Lee, Owen McCarthy, Sanyam Parikh, Moumita Poddar, Sunil Shoo, and Ricci Yeung. All errors are our own. (Hong Kong Research Grants Council; International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC; International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics; USAID's Development Innovation Ventures program)Accepted manuscrip

The Distributive impact of reforms in credit enforcement: Evidence from Indian debt recovery tribunals

It is generally presumed that strengthening the enforcement of lender rights expands the set of incentive compatible loan contracts, resulting in increased access to credit for all types of borrowers. This is based on an implicit assumption of inlnitely elastic supply of loans. With inelastic supply, strengthening enforcement can result in greater exclusion of poor borrowers from credit markets and a reallocation of credit from poor to wealthy borrowers. Using a dataset of capital project loans given by a large Indian bank to lrms of varying asset sizes, we lnd evidence of such adverse distributional impacts of a reform to strengthen lender rights implemented across Indian states in the 1990s.

Financing smallholder agriculture: an experiment with agent-intermediated microloans in India

We explore the hypothesis that traditional joint-liability microfinance programs fail to increase borrower incomes in part because they cannot screen out unproductive borrowers. In randomly selected villages in West Bengal, India, we implemented trader-agent-intermediated lending (TRAIL), in which local trader-lender agents were incentivized through repayment-based commissions to select borrowers for individual liability loans. In other randomly selected villages, we organized a group-based lending (GBL) program in which individuals formed 5-member groups and received joint liability loans. TRAIL loans increased the production of the leading cash crop by 27% and farm incomes by 22%. GBL loans had insignificant effects. We develop and test a theoretical model of borrower selection and incentives. Farmers selected by the TRAIL agents were more able than those who self-selected into the GBL scheme; this pattern of selection explains at least 30–40% of the observed difference in income impacts.Accepted manuscrip

A new approach to microfinance

Traditional microcredit has had limited success at enabling farmers to expand the cultivation of risky but profitable cash crops. A new approach that uses local intermediaries and aligns their incentives with farmer profits could generate better outcomes for agricultural production and income

Evaluating the distributive impacts of a micro-credit intervention

Most analyses of randomized controlled trials of development interventions estimate an average treatment effect. However, the aggregate impact on welfare also depends on distributional effects. We propose a simple approach to evaluate efficiency-equity trade-offs, that follow in the utilitarian tradition of Atkinson (1970). The method does not impose additional assumptions or data requirements beyond those needed to estimate the average treatment effect. We illustrate the approach using data from a credit delivery experiment we implemented in West Bengal, India.https://people.bu.edu/dilipm/wkpap/Distimp.pdfFirst author draf

Legal Reform and Loan Repayment: The Microeconomic Impact of Debt Recovery Tribunals in India

In 1993, the Indian government introduced debt recovery tribunals to speed up the resolution of debt recovery claims larger than a threshold. This paper exploits the staggered introduction of tribunals across states and the link between overdues and claim size to implement a differences-in-differences strategy on project loan data. It finds that the tribunals reduced delinquency for the average loan by 28 percent. They also lowered the interest rates charged on larger loans, holding constant borrower quality. This suggests that the speedier processing of debt recovery suits can lower the cost of credit. (JEL G21, K41, O16, O17