Rural credit markets and informal contracts in the Cochabamba valleys, Bolivia.

摘要

Credit has long been recognized as an important ingredient of rural development. However, efforts to deliver subsidized credit to small farmers, reduce the overall level and heterogeneity of rural interest rates, and minimize the role of moneylenders have failed in most developing countries. This has led to a reassessment of the role of rural financial markets (RFMs). The dissertation contributes to this debate by empirically investigating, within the context of the New Institutional Economics (NIE), rural borrowing behavior and informal credit contracts in Cochabamba, Bolivia.By emphasizing informational issues, the NIE explains the observed segmentation in RFMs better than conventional theory based on price-closure rules. First, because of asymmetric information between lender and borrower, risk is inherent in every credit transaction. Both agents need information about the other--the lender about the credit-worthiness of the borrower and the borrower about the terms offered by the lender. Second, loans require multidimensional contracts because the interest rate cannot capture all the loan's attributes.The existing literature usually assumes that the lender chooses the borrower. However, borrowers often have several sources of credit from which to choose. Based on 1991 household data, the thesis documents the existence of several credit sources (formal and informal) and of a rich diversity in the uses of credit among peasant farmers in Cochabamba. Consequently, loans with very different attributes (amount, interest rate, duration, collateral) coexist in response to heterogeneous needs. A mixed conditional logit model is used to analyze how the relative valuation that different farmers attach to loan attributes determines their choice of lender. Farmers with diversified incomes prefer smaller loans for shorter periods--even if that implies higher interest rates. Younger households with few assets prefer informal over institutional lenders.Informal lenders play a much more important role in the region's development than is recognized by policy-makers. They provide more than half of the loans, offer very flexible terms, and are willing to finance non-agricultural activities. Because irrigation is a crucial factor in lowering borrowing costs, governments would assist farmers more by investing in infrastructure than by subsidizing credit.