Given the substantial amount of resources currently invested in microcredit programs, it is more important than ever to accurately assess the extent to which peer monitoring by borrowers faced with group liability contracts actually reduces moral hazard. We conduct a field experiment with women about to enter a group loan program in Paraguay and then gather administrative data on the members’ r...

In this paper, we present theorems specifying the critical values for series associated with debts arranged in the order of their duration.

We develop a model of the credit market where competitive lenders offer long-term contracts specifying a non-linear schedule of possible repayment schedules to borrowers who may differ both in their taste for immediate gratification (β) and their prior beliefs about that taste (β̂). The equilibrium contract to a borrower with given beliefs β̂ is discontinuous: it features an advantageous option i...

As more countries are planning to inaugurate or enlarge student loan schemes, much of the debate is over the question of the optimal form of the repayment obligation: specifically, whether it should be according to a fixed schedule of payments or a percentage or earnings or income. This paper argues that the current fascination with income contingency is frequently based on a set of supposed ad...

We studied the localization of blood flow control in skeletal muscle by shortterm microocclusions (30-60 seconds) of capillaries and arterioles of the pectoralis muscle in anesthetized frogs (Rana pipiens). The muscle was surgically exposed to permit transillumination and measurement of red cell velocity in the microvessels, but innervation and blood supply were kept intact. About one-third of ...

We employed intracoronary infusions of calf intestine adenosine deaminase (ADA) to test the hypothesis that adenosine regulates coronary blood flow during myocardial reactive hyperemia (RH). Infusions of 4.5 U ADA/min per kg body weight into the left circumflex coronary artery of 10 open-chest dogs reversibly reduced repayment of flow debt by 30-39% (P less than 0.05) following 5-, 10-, 15-, 20...