Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods within village communities. Using a theoretical model, this paper shows that an elected...

Microfinance institutions, despite the presence of competition and informational asymmetries, typically offer a limited variety of contracts. Assuming price competition, we propose a simple theoretical explanation for this behavior and study its consequences in terms of strategic interaction and...

We analyze an oligopolistic microcredit market characterized by asymmetric infirmation and institutions that can offer only one type of contract. We study the effects of competition on contract choice when small entrepreneurs can borrow from more than one institution due to the absence of credit...

In the context of a collective household choice model, we show that the effects of improved credit access on search intensity by the unemployed are heterogeneous across households and dependent on the within-household bargaining power of the unemployed. We find empirical support for the...

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. We provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods. Using a theoretical model, we show that an elected official, whose aim is to maximise re-election...

There is a large consensus that low levels of carbon price cannot provide adequate incentives to invest in cleaner technologies and abate emissions. Since carbon demand and price tend to decrease during recessions, economists and policy makers have proposed different types of price stabilizing...

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. We provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods. Using a theoretical model, we show that an elected official, whose aim is to maximise re-election...

Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. We study the impact of collective actions undertaken by these groups, composed of women only, on the variety of public goods the elected local authorities deal with. We provide a simple model that suggests two hypotheses...

We analyze the effects of entry in a previously monopolistic microcredit market characterized by asymmetric information and by institutions that offer only one type of contract. We consider different behavioral assumptions concerning the Incumbent and study their influence on equilibrium...