The project is carried
out in Thailand under the direction of Khun Sombat Sakuntasathhien and
dedicated staff. The project is administered in the United States at the
National Opinion Research Center and the University of Chicago. Survey
design and research collaborators include Anna Paulson of Northwestern
University, Tae Joeng Lee of Yonse University, and Michael Binford of
the University of Florida. Robert M. Townsend is overall project director
and principal investigator.
The initial purpose of the NICHD-NSF funded project was to evaluate the
role of informal institutions such as the family and local networks in
helping to support the welfare and well-being of individuals in semi-urban
and rural areas of Thailand. Risk, and the potentially adverse and direct
consequences of household- and firm-specific shocks is a key part of project.
The mediating role of the family and social and economic networks in the
mobilization of savings and allocation of credit was also deemed essential.
These networks are not viewed in isolation but rather are part of the
larger village, regional, and national level financial system. Thus the
project includes an evaluation of village-level financial institutions,
such as Production Credit Groups and rice banks, and national-level financial
institutions such as commercial banks and the government agricultural
bank, the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC).
Indeed, the project has both micro
and macro aspects. It seeks to evaluate informal and formal financial
institutions and markets and to construct and evaluate macro models of
growth, fluctuations, and crisis. The macro models are based on the measured
micro- underpinnings.
A relatively large initial, cross
sectional survey, carried out in May l997, was designed with a two-fold
purpose:
- to obtain reliable information on the existence
and use of informal and formal mechanisms and institutions, in order
to assess them, and
- to acquire retrospective information to help
assess, and then model, the impact of high growth with increasing
inequality and uneven financial deepening.
A more detailed overview of this Initial
Survey is provided on this site. Briefly, aware of heavy regional
disparities, this initial survey was fielded in two distinct regions of
the country: the industrialized and fertile central regional and the semi-arid
and relatively poor northeast. The survey included separate instruments
for the households, village headmen
as key informants, local financial
institutions, and joint-liability BAAC
groups. Approximately 23% of the interviewed households were also running
some kind of business. There are also direct measurements of the local
village environment. Soil samples were also taken, administered
with a separate soil
questionnaire and plot photos. Finally there are overhead
air photos of each of the survey villages, going back three decades.
The devaluation of the Thai baht
in July l997 and the unexpected onset of the Asia crisis led to the realization
that with the initial May benchmark survey, the project was positioned
- to track the impact of the crisis on households
and businesses, and to understand the micro-underpinnings of the movement
in the macro variables.
This led to the Annual
Resurveys, also described in detail in this site. Briefly, in May
1998, one-third of the original sample of villages was resurveyed with
financial support from the Ford Foundation. Additional NICHD and NSF Funding
have continued these ongoing resurveys. Along with the initial survey,
these constitute at present a five-year household and business panel:
l997, l998, l999, 2000, 2001. In addition to the household
instruments, there were continued resurveys of headmen
and village institutions, and in
2000, the BAAC groups.
In addition, and in accordance with
the initial project design, an intensive Monthly Survey was initiated
in August l998 in a subset of villages from the original sampling frame.
The selection controlled for the environment
and deliberately sought variation in informal networks, local village
institutions, and use of national level institutions. The goal was
- to provide a micro-level evaluation of family
networks, markets and institutions.
Further details of this Monthly
Survey are provided from this site. Briefly, this household
survey included an initial census, a baseline interview on initial conditions
of sampled households, forms which gather information on the use of
contracts and informal institutions, and monthly interviews to track
changing conditions. Environmental data are gathered courtesy of grants
from the Melon foundation and the University of Chicago. This includes
soil analysis, plot photos, daily rainfall, soil moisture, water chemistry,
and other bi-weekly water measurements. This ongoing data collection
effort includes at present 36 months.
To view a summary of the entire Townsend Project,
please download the following Powerpoint document, click HERE
(17 MB)
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