Alberto Motta

Financing Smallholder Agriculture: An Experiment with Agent-Intermediated Microloans in India

Recent evaluations have found that traditional microloans have insignificant impacts on incomes and output. Randomly selected villages in West Bengal, India participated in a field experiment with a novel variant of microcredit called TRAIL, where the selection of borrowers of individual liability loans was delegated to local trader-lender agents incentivized by repayment-based commissions. Other randomly selected villages participated in a group-based microcredit program called GBL. TRAIL loans increased the production of the leading cash crop and farm incomes by 27-37%, but GBL loans had insignificant effects. To understand underlying mechanisms, we develop and test a theoretical model that explains borrower selection into the two schemes as well as borrower incentives to invest the loans for productive purposes. We find that borrowers selected by the TRAIL agents were more able farmers than those who self-selected into the GBL scheme; this pattern of selection explains about a third of the observed difference in income impacts.

Collusion and Selective Supervision

This paper studies the role of a policy of inducing in combating collusion within organizations, or in regulatory setups. In a mechanism-design problem involving a principal-supervisor-agent we show the role of endogenous selection of supervisory activity by the principal. One simple example is a mechanism in which the agent bypasses the supervisor and contracts directly with the principal in some states of the world. If collusion between supervisor and agent can occur only after they have decided to participate in the mechanism, this can costlessly eliminate collusion. This result is robust to alternative information structures, collusive behaviors and specification of agents types. Applications include self-reporting of crimes, tax amnesties, immigration amnesties, work contracts specifying di¤erent degrees of discretion, mechanisms based on recommendation letters, embassies issuing immigration permits, and hiring committees.

Collusion and the Organization of the Firm

This paper shows that the threat of collusion between a productive agent and the auditor in charge of monitoring production can influence a number of organizational dimensions of the firm, including outsourcing decisions and the allocation of production costs. We find that the optimal organizational response to internal collusion lets the agent choose between working outside the firm (no monitoring and full claims over production costs) or within the firm (monitoring but no claims over costs). In equilibrium, there are no rents due to collusion. The results are robust to a number of extensions.

Understanding Social Impact Bonds and Their Alternatives: An Experimental Investigation

Policy-makers world-wide have proposed a new contract – the “social impact bond” (SIB) – which they claim can allay the underperformance and underfunding afflicting not-for-profit sectors, by tying the private returns of (social) investors to the success of social programs (Bolton 2010; Bolton & Savell 2010; Mulgan et al. 2010a,b; Liebman 2011; Tierney & Fleishman 2011; Von Glahn & Whistler 2011). Given the high hopes governments on various levels in England, Australia, and New York have pinned on this contract format, the considerable amount of money that has recently been poured into this emerging market (e.g., http://www.bigsocietycapital.com/), and the fact that serious are program evaluations cannot be expected any time soon (Disley et al. 2011; see also McKay 2013 and Pratt 2013), we test this new contract by way of experimental methods. We report an investigation of how SIBs perform in a first-best world, where investors are rational and able to obtain hard information about not-for-profits’ performance. To this end, we use a principal-agent multi-tasking framework to compare SIBs to inputs-based (IBs) and performance-based (PBs) contracts, which represent the most commonly used contracts governments and not-for-profits write. IBs contain a piece-rate mechanism, PBs contain a non-binding bonus mechanism, and SIBs contain a mechanism that, due to the presence of an investor, offers full enforceability. Although SIBs can perfectly enforce good behavior, they also require the principal (i.e. government) to relinquish control over the agent’s (i.e. not-for-profit’s) payoff to a self-regarding investor, which prevents the principal and agent from being reciprocal. In spite of these drawbacks, in our experiment SIBs outperformed IBs and PBs. We therefore conclude that, at least in our laboratory test-bed, SIBs can indeed allay underperformance and therefore possibly underfunding of not-for-profits.

Early Life Conditions and Financial Risk-Taking in Older Age

Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in adulthood, we find that superior cognitive skills in childhood (especially mathematical abilities) are positively associated with stock and mutual fund ownership. Childhood socioeconomic status, as indicated by the number of rooms and by having at least some books in the house during childhood, is also positively associated with the ownership of stocks, mutual funds and individual retirement accounts, as well as with the willingness to take financial risks. On the other hand, less risky assets like bonds are not affected by early childhood conditions. We find only weak effects of childhood health problems on portfolio choice in adulthood. Finally, favorable childhood conditions affect the transition in and out of risky asset ownership, both by making divesting less likely and by facilitating investing (i.e., transitioning from non-ownership to ownership).

The Impact of Childhood Health and Cognition on Portfolio Choice

Childhood health is by now recognized to influence future educational and economic outcomes. Children who experience poorer childhood health have significantly lower educational attainment, poorer health, and lower socioeconomic status as adults (Case et al. 2005; Currie 2009). For example, Case and Paxson (2008) investigated the relationship between height (as indicator for early health and socio-economic status), cognitive functions and health status at older ages and found that taller individuals (considered to be healthier and wealthier during childhood) have greater cognitive skills on average, report significantly fewer difficulties with activities of daily living, and are in considerably better physical and mental health.

Budget Constrained Consumers and Pricing

We look at imperfectly competitive markets where some consumers might be budget constrained. The set of budget constrained consumers varies endogenously with price. While the presence of such consumers reduces aggregate demand, we find that the equilibrium price under budget constrained demand is often higher than the equilibrium price under standard demand. The relationship between the two equilibrium prices depends on the elasticity of the standard demand, technology, and market structure. Both when market structure is exogenously given (e.g., monopoly, oligopoly) and endogenously determined (e.g., free entry), we find that lack of competition and inefficient technology generate a higher equilibrium price under constrained demand.