Projects

The Townsend Thai Project aims to bridge academic research and policy creation by bringing together one of the most detailed and longest running panel datasets in the developing world collected by the Thai Family Research Project and secondary data archived by the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC) for researchers at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and other prominent universities around the world.

Visit the Townsend Thai Project Website; View the documentary: Emerging Thailand

The Townsend Thai data on the Dataverse are a panel database derived from micro surveys designed from a theoretical perspective. The Townsend Thai data is one of the longest running surveys of its kind in a developing country, incorporating monthly and annual household surveys with environmental, institutional, and key informant surveys. Visit the Townsend Dataverse

Household and small business data from the Little Village and Chatham neighborhoods of Chicago, reflecting their diverse perspectives and offering detailed information about the economic and social circumstances of the households and small business owners. The small business data sets describe how small businesses were established and the roles they play within their communities. Information is also available about the extent to which households and small business owners rely on ethnic and family networks. Visit the website

Designing Purely Weather-Contingent Crop Insurance with Personalized Coverage to Improve Farmers’ Investments in their Crops for Higher Yields

Crop cultivation is highly vulnerable to unfavorable weather. In developing countries, farmers bear the financial burden of their crops' exposure to weather ravages, the extent of which will only increase due to the effects of climate change. As a result, they rely on low-risk, low-yield cultivation practices that do not allow for the food and financial gains that can be possible when favorable weather supports higher yields. While crop insurance can help, it is often prohibitively expensive. This project seeks to make crop insurance more accessible and affordable for farmers in developing regions by developing a new system of insurance pricing and payoff schedules that takes into account the widely varying ways through which weather affects crop development and yield.

The Consortium oversees the development of a growing body of research that seeks to put financial services for the poor, with an emphasis on the impact of savings, second generation banking, and policy, on a firm empirical and theoretical foundation and serves as a reliable guide to effective action. It is composed of top-tier researchers across a variety of institutions who work to understand the impact of financial products, the macro and micro policies that are associated with financial access, and technological innovations in financial service delivery.