Department: Economics.

This dissertation concerns cross-country consumption risk sharing in a long-run perspective. Financial integration, empirically measured by cross-country holdings of assets and liabilities, has increased dramatically in the past two decades. But what can explain the lack of cross-country risk...

In the past two decades, cross country portfolio holdings of a large variety of assets have risen sharply. This has created an important role for changes in asset prices, or valuation effects". This dissertation examines the role of valuation effects in a country's external adjustment. The...

The existing theoretical analysis of microfinance focuses on the nature of the loan contract such as group liability. We draw attention to the role of missing or imperfect labor market in understanding some of the important `second generation' debates in microfinance. Our analysis helps explain...

This paper analyzes a social insurance system that integrates unemploymentinsurance with a pension program through an individual account, allowingworkers to borrow against their future wage income to finance consumptionduring an unemployment episode and thus improving their search...