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Author: Maitreesh Ghatak

20 results found.

Development Discussion Paper

Public service delivery, exclusion and externalities: Theory and experimental evidence from India

Alex Armand, Britta Augsburg, Antonella Bancalari and Maitreesh Ghatak

This study explores the interaction between the quality of public services, the implementation of user fees, and the resulting potential for exclusion, that can lead to negative externalities. Our theoretical framework t...Read more...

15 November 2023

Development Discussion Paper

Why Do People Stay Poor?

Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak and Anton Heil

There are two views as to why people stay poor. The equal opportunity view emphasizes that differences in individual traits like talent or motivation make the poor choose low productivity jobs. The poverty traps view e...Read more...

9 March 2020

Development Discussion Paper

Profit with Purpose? A Theory of Social Enterprise with Experimental Evidence

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

When social benefits cannot be measured, a hybrid organization which selects managers based on motivation can be used to balance profi…ts with a social purpose. This paper develops a model of social enterprise based on s...Read more...

8 November 2013

Development Discussion Paper

Group Lending Without Joint Liability

Thiemo Fetzer, Maitreesh Ghatak and Jonathan de Quidt

This paper contrasts individual liability lending with and without groups to joint liability lending. By doing so, we shed light on an apparent shift away from joint liability lending towards individual liability lending...Read more...

16 July 2013

Development Discussion Paper

Motivating Knowledge Agents: Can Incentive Pay Overcome Social Distance?

Erlend Berg, Maitreesh Ghatak, R Manjula, D Rajasekhar and Sanchari Roy

This paper studies the interaction of incentive pay and social distance in the dissemination of information. We analyse theoretically as well as empirically the effect of incentive pay when agents have pro-social objecti...Read more...

1 March 2013

Development Discussion Paper

Market Structure and Borrower Welfare in Microfinance

Jonathan de Quidt, Thiemo Fetzer and Maitreesh Ghatak

Motivated by recent controversies surrounding the role of commercial lenders in microfinance, we analyze borrower welfare under different market structures,considering a benevolent non-profit lender, a for-profit monopol...Read more...

1 September 2012

Development Discussion Paper

Taxation and Regulation of Bonus Pay

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

We explore the consequence for taxation and regulation of bonus pay when investors are protected by taxpayers from downside risk. The paper develops a model where workers in financial sector firms make decisions about ef...Read more...

1 July 2011

Development Discussion Paper

Can Market Failure Cause Political Failure?

Madhav S, Aney, Maitreesh Ghatak and Massimo Morelli

We study how inefficiencies of market failure may be further amplified by political choices made by interest groups created in the inefficient market. We take an occupational choice framework, where agents are endowed he...Read more...

1 July 2011

Development Discussion Paper

IMPLEMENTING HEALTH INSURANCE FOR THE POOR: THE ROLLOUT OF RSBY IN KARNATAKA

D Rajasekhar, Erlend Berg, Maitreesh Ghatak, R Manjula and Sanchari Roy

The National Health Insurance Scheme (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, RSBY) aims to improve poor people’s access to quality health care in India. This paper looks at the implementation of the scheme in Karnataka, drawing...Read more...

March 2011

Development Discussion Paper

Contractual Structure and Endogenous Matching in Partnershipso

Maitreesh Ghatak and Alexander Karaivanov

We analyze optimal contracts and optimal matching patterns in a simple model of partnership where there is a double-sided moral hazard problem and potential partners differ in their productivity in two tasks. It is possi...Read more...

February 2011

Development Discussion Paper

Trade and the Skill Premium Puzzle with Capital Market Imperfections

Roberto Bonfatti and Maitreesh Ghatak

An interesting puzzle is that trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has been associated with a sharp increase in the skill premium in both developed and developing countries. This is in contrast with neoclassical t...Read more...

November 2010

Development Discussion Paper

Repayment Frequency in Microfinance Contracts with Present-Biased Borrowers

Greg Fischer and Maitreesh Ghatak

This paper analyzes the theoretical underpinnings of high-frequency repayment, a feature in nearly all microfinance contracts that has been largely overlooked by theorists. The pervasive belief among practitioners that f...Read more...

July 2010

Development Discussion Paper

Thanks for Nothing? Not-for-Profits and Motivated Agents

Maitreesh Ghatak and Hannes Mueller

We re-examine the labor donation theory of not-for-profits and show that these organizations may exist not necessarily because motivated workers prefer to work in them, or that they dominate for-profits in terms of welfa...Read more...

November 2009

Development Discussion Paper

Marry for What? Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Maitreesh Ghatak and Jeanne Lafortune

This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertiseme...Read more...

May 2009

Development Discussion Paper

The de Soto Effect

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

This paper explores the consequences of creating and improving property rights so that fixed assets can be used as collateral. This has become a cause célèbre of Hernando de Soto whose views are influential in debates ab...Read more...

April 2009

Development Discussion Paper

Property Rights and Economic Development

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

This chapter develops a unified analytical framework, drawing on and extending the existing literature on the subject, for studying the role of property rights in economic development. It addresses two fundamental and re...Read more...

February 2009

Theoretical Economics Paper

Competition and Incentives with Motivated Agents

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

A unifying theme in the literature on organizations such as public bureaucracies and private non-profits is the importance of missions, as opposed to profit, as an organizational goal. Such mission-oriented organizations...Read more...

November 2003

Development Economics Paper

Eviction Threats and Investment Incentives

Abhijit Banerjee and Maitreesh Ghatak

We show that the effect of eviction threats on unobservable investment effort can be positive. We demonstrate this apparently counter-intuitive result in a model of tenancy where investment by a tenant in the current per...Read more...

June 2003

Theoretical Economics Paper

Credit Rationing, Wealth Inequality, and Allocation of Talent

Maitreesh Ghatak, Massimo Morelli and Tomas Sjostrom

We study an economy where agents are heterogeneous in terms of observable wealth and unobservable talent. Adverse selection forces creditors to ask for collateral. We study the two-way interaction between rationing in th...Read more...

October 2002

Development Economics Paper

Public-Private Partnership for the Provision of Public Goods: Theory and an Application to NGOs

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

This paper analyzes the role of public and private responsibility in the provision of public goods. We emphasise that a typical public good will require many different inputs which raises the possibility of partnerships ...Read more...

August 1999