The establishment of formal agricultural credit systems in most developing countries in recent decades has been motivated by the belief that widespread shortages of short- and long-term finance have arrested agricultural growth and development. The lack of affordable formal credit has been...

The Bank's draft Operational Directive on Financial Sector Operations requires the adjustment of financial statements in countries where the cumulative inflation rate over three years approaches or exceeds 100 percent. Financial statements in those countries are to follow the accounting...

This paper develops and tests a proposed methodology that puts forward a new integrated method for evaluating the performance of development finance institutions. This methodology applies assessment criteria that take into account both the social objective that the development finance...

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 takeup is found to be decreasing in basis risk...

Using 40 years of historical rainfall data, this paper estimates a distribution for payouts on rainfall insurance policies offered to farmers in the State of Andhra Pradesh, India, in 2006. The authors find that the contracts primarily protect households against extreme tail events; half the...

Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? This paper uses a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product. The analysis...

Rainfall index insurance provides a payout based on measured local rainfall during key phases of the agricultural season, and in principle can help rural households diversify a key source of idiosyncratic risk. This paper describes basic features of rainfall insurance contracts offered in India...

The authors investigate whether factor prices matter in agricultural production and in the selection of production technology. Each stage of the analysis corroborates the inducement hypothesis, which implies that factor prices do matter in agricultural production and in the selection of...

The objective of this paper is to assess both the aggregate growth effects and the distributional consequences of financial liberalization as observed in Thailand from 1976 to 1996. A general equilibrium occupational choice model with two sectors, one without intermediation, and the other with...