A large fraction of business groups around the world are run by families. In this paper, we analyze how the structure of the families behind these business groups affects the groups' organization, governance and performance. To address this question, we constructed a unique data set of the...

How does the structure of the families behind business groups affect the group's organization, governance, and performance? We construct a unique dataset of family trees and business groups for 93 of the largest business families in Thailand. We find a strong positive association between family...

type="main" <p>This paper uses recent examples of natural disasters from Southeast Asia to illustrate some important arguments discussed in the literature on natural disasters and the economy. First, the severity of the consequences of disasters depends not only on the natural hazards, but also on...</p>

We present a framework for the study of risk and return of household enterprise in developing economies. We make predictions from two polar benchmarks: (1) an economy with Pareto optimal allocations under full risk sharing, and (2) an economy in which each autarky household absorbs risk in...

Return on assets (ROA) of household enterprise is crucial for understanding the productivity of households in developing economies. Yet the definition and measurement of household enterprise ROA remain inconsistent or unclear. We illustrate potential measurement problems with examples from...

We show how to use panel data on household consumption to directly estimate households' risk preferences. Specifically, we measure heterogeneity in risk aversion among households in Thai villages using a full risk‐sharing model, which we then test allowing for this heterogeneity. There is...

This paper discusses foreign direct investment from Southeast Asia to China. With the exception of some government-linked companies, most investments from Southeast Asia have been dominated by the region’s overseas Chinese businesses. In addition to cheap labour costs, large domestic...

Despite the considerable attention paid to the theory of tax incidence, there are surprisingly few estimates of the pass-through rate of sales taxes on retail prices. This paper estimates the effect of a suspension and subsequent reinstatement of the gasoline sales tax in Illinois and Indiana on...

Some gasoline markets exhibit remarkable price cycles, where price spikes are followed by a string of small price declines until the next price spike. This pattern is predicted from a model of competition driven by Edgeworth cycles, as described by Maskin and Tirole. We extend the Maskin and...

Families run a large fraction of business groups around the world. In this paper, we analyze how the structure of the families behind these business groups affects the groups' organization, governance and performance. To address this question, we constructed a unique data set of family trees and...