These and various other models have been described in various grant proposals with Robert Townsend as principal investigator. The project is funded primarily by grants from the NICHD and NSF. Edited and revised excerpts of both the NICHD and NSF grants are included here. They include a discussion of:

NICHD--Risk, Insurance and the Family (CLICK HERE FOR EXCERPTS) Specific Aims Background and Significance Family as a Collective Group Insurance Intermediation and Credit Self-Insurance and Migration Extended Kinship Networks Village Economies Formal Financial Intermediaries Buffer Stock/Permanent Income Contract Theory/ Mechanism Design Endogenous Collective Organizations Preliminary Studies/Previous Grant Risk-Sharing--consumption and leisure Village field research- northern Thai villages Thai macro- Regional and National Risk Assessment Risk and Insurance in Village India Risk Sharing in Practice: how is it done Mechanism Design Townsend-Mueller special purpose data Impediments to trade Risk-contingencies, long-term exclusive credit, monitoring, costly state verification, limited communication, inter-temporal tie-ins, tracking assets, Distinguishing Imperfect Contracts and Markets in Panel Data

NSF--Credit, Insurance, and Impediments to Trade: Micro Underpinnings for Macro Models (CLICK HERE FOR EXCERPTS) Micro Underpinnings- Risk Sharing Micro Underpinnings ?Efficiency in Production Evaluation of Formal and Informal Institutions Risk Metrics from Theory Measuring Asset Changes and their use in Tests of Insurance Impediments to Trade- Permanent Income, Buffer Stick and Private Information Micro underpinnings for Macro--Entrepreneurship and Occupation Choice Macro Dynamics

The questionnaires of the Townsend Thai data were composed by Townsend, Paulson, and Lee after careful consideration of the key variables of various theoretical articles and consideration of several widely used or special-purpose datasets. This effort can be summarized by an example spread-sheet linking key variables to the various articles and their location in these surveys. Summaries of some of the key articles are included as representative examples. Variables are listed by topic:

Various working papers and publications that contribute to theory and empirical work are part of the overall Thai project and have used data available from this Thai data archive.