Using original data on gifts and loans, this paper investigates how rural Filipino households deal with income and expenditure shocks. Results indicate that gifts and informal loans are partly motivated by consumption smoothing motives but do not serve to efficiently share risk. Certain shocks...

Using detailed data on gifts, loans, and asset sales, this paper investigates how rural Filipino households deal with income and expenditure shocks. We find that shocks have a strong effect on gifts and informal loans, but little effect on sales of livestock and grain. Mutual insurance does not...

In this article, McKinsey Global Institute researchers assess the increases in debt and leverage in ten mature economies and four emerging economies – breaking down that data by each country’s financial, household, non-financial business and government sectors. The authors then...

This article investigates how the control and devolution of productive assets are allocated among husband and wife. Theory predicts that bargaining power within marriage depends on the division of assets upon divorce and on control over assets during marriage. Using detailed household data from...

This paper opens a new field in quantitative policy analysis by developing a methodology for the construction and simulation of computable non-separable household models. Non-separability originates in market failures and in a binding credit constraint, both of which transform the products and...

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