Field research attempted to measure the risky environments, the information structures, the institutions, and the risk-response mechanisms of ten villages in northern Thailand. Various key features are then modeled in an abstract but realistic way, either with a full-information risk-sharing model or an information-constrained version of the same model. Observations from some of the villages seem consistent with one or the other of these models, but in many of the villages one is left with risk-response variations across households which suggest that Pareto improvements are possible.

We examine the reduced-form relationship between per capita income and various environmental indicators. Our study covers four types of indicators: urban air pollution, the state of the oxygen regime in river basins, fecal contamination of river basins, and contamination of river basins by heavy metals. We find no evidence that environmental quality deteriorates steadily with economic growth. Rather, for most indicators, economic growth brings an initial phase of deterioration followed by a subsequent phase of improvement. The turning points for the different pollutants vary, but in most cases they come before a country reaches a per capita income of $8000.

Whether governments clash in trade disputes or negotiate over trade agreements, their actions in the international arena reflect political conditions back home. Previous studies of cooperative and noncooperative trade relations have focused on governments that are immune from political pressures and that act as benevolent servants of the public interest. Here we take a first step toward introducing domestic politics into the analysis of international economic relations. We study the interactions between national leaders who are concerned both with providing a high standard of living to the general electorate and collecting campaign contributions from special interest groups. The analysis reveals the determinants of the structure of protection in a noncooperative trade war and in a cooperative trade agreement.

This paper provides a simple framework showing that the extent of competition in credit markets is important in determining the value of lending relationships. Creditors are more likely to finance credit-constrained firms when credit markets are concentrated because it is easier for these creditors to internalize the benefits of assisting the firms. The paper offers evidence from small business data in support of this hypothesis.

Evaluates alternative accrual-based models for detecting earnings management. Comparison of the specification and power of commonly used test statistics; Application of the models to a random sample of firm-years; Importance of controlling for financial performance when investigating earnings management stimuli that are correlated with financial performance.