Contracting Constraints, Credit Markets and Economic Development
Advances in Economics and Econometrics, Vol. 3, Forthcoming 2002
Posted: 26 Apr 2002
There are 2 versions of this paper
Contracting Constraints, Credit Markets and Economic Development
Abstract
This paper begins by summarizing the micro-evidence on credit markets from a large number of studies from all over the world, with the goal of identifying a number of stylized facts. We argue that, in particular, the evidence strongly suggests that for poor people in developing countries, imperfections in the credit market are quantitatively very important. We then build a simple model that explains the observed patterns, based on the idea that monitoring and screening borrowers have both fixed and variable costs. We go on to build a simple dynamic model that allows us to understand what the observations about the credit market imply for the evolution of the wealth distribution.
Keywords: Credit Markets; Distribution; Growth
JEL Classification: O12, D82, D31
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation