The control of bribery is a policy objective in many developing countries. It has been argued that asymmetric punishments could reduce bribery by incentivizing whistle-blowing. This paper investigates the role played by asymmetric punishment in a setting where bribe size is determined by Nash...

People across the developing world join rotational savings and credit associations (roscas) to fund repeated purchases of nondivisible goods. When the scope for punishment is weak, there is a natural question about why agents do not defect from these groups. I model a rosca as a commitment...

Why do individuals borrow and save money at the same time? I present a model in which sophisticated time-inconsistent agents, when faced with a future investment opportunity, rationally choose to save their wealth and then borrow to fund the investment. The combination of savings and a loan...

Food programs are large and expensive components of social safety nets in developing countries. For agricultural households, hunger is more acute in annual lean seasons, but food policies typically do not adapt to seasonality. There is limited research on this because of a paucity of panel data...

Food programs are large and expensive components of social safety nets in developing countries. For agricultural households, hunger is more acute in annual lean seasons, but food policies typically do not adapt to seasonality. There is limited research on this because of a paucity of panel data...

The control of bribery is a policy objective in many developing countries. It has been argued that asymmetric punishments could reduce bribery by incentivizing whistle-blowing. This paper investigates the role played by asymmetric punishment in a setting where bribe size is determined by Nash...

People across the developing world join rotational savings and credit associations (roscas) to fund repeated purchases of nondivisible goods. When the scope for punishment is weak, there is a natural question about why agents not defect from roscas. This paper models roscas as commitment savings...

People across the developing world join rotational savings and credit associations (roscas) to fund repeated purchases of nondivisible goods. When the scope for punishment is weak, there is a natural question about why agents do not defect from these groups. I model a rosca as a commitment...

Why do individuals borrow and save money at the same time? I present a model in which sophisticated time-inconsistent agents, when faced with a future investment opportunity, rationally choose to save their wealth and then borrow to fund the investment. The combination of savings and a loan...

I study the provision of commitment savings by informal banks to sophisticated hyperbolic discounters. Since a consumer is subject to temptation in the period that he signs a contract, banks might exploit his desire for instant gratification even as they help him to commit for the future....