KONO HISAKI
Education
Ph.D., University of Tokyo, 2006
Visiting researcher, National University of Ho Chi Minh City, 2003-5
M.A., University of Tokyo, 2001
Visiting researcher, National University of Ho Chi Minh City, 2003-5
M.A., University of Tokyo, 2001
Fields of Interest
Contract Theory
Experimental Economics
Microeconometrics
Poverty Reduction
Microfinance
Aid effectiveness
Social Network
Experimental Economics
Microeconometrics
Poverty Reduction
Microfinance
Aid effectiveness
Social Network
Research Papers
-
"Microfinance Revolution: Its Effects, Innovations, and Challenges"
(with K.Takahashi), Developing Economies, forthcoming
- "Why is the Take-up of Microinsurance So Low? Evidence from a Health Insurance Scheme in India" (with S. Ito), Developing Economies, forthcoming.
- "Foreign Aid and Recurrent Cost: Donor Competition, Aid Proliferation and Budget Support" (with Y. Arimoto),
Review of Development Economics, May 2009, 13(2), 276-287.
- "Is Group Lending A Good Enforcement Scheme for Achieving High Repayment Rates? Evidence from Framed Field Experiments in Vietnam", IDE Discussion Paper No.61, under revision for Economic Journal.
- "Heterogeneous Contests and Less Informative Signals" (with N. Yagi), Japanese Economic Review, March 2008, 59(1), 113-126.
- "Employment with connection: Negative Network Effects,"Journal of Development Economics, October 2006, 81(1), pp.244-258.
- "Commitment to Development Index (CDI): Critical Comments" (with Y. Sawada, H. Kohama, and M. Ikegami), DAKIS Discussion Paper No.1, 2004.
“Microfinance revolution” is the term often applied to the successful expansion of small-scale financial services to the poor with high repayment records in developing countries. This paper investigates the extent to which the microfinance revolution is truly revolutionary. More specifically, it explores the impact of microfinance institutions on the poor, the mechanisms underlying high repayment rates and their innovations, and the new challenges microfinance institutions are currently facing. Different from the existing survey literature, we focus more on recent topics and attempt to show recent theoretical developments in a comprehensive manner using simplified models with very similar settings. We contend that microfinance is developing in a promising direction but has yet to reach its full potential.
Insurance for the poor, called microinsurance, has recently drawn the attention of practitioners in developing countries. However, there are common problems among the various schemes: (1) low take-up rates, (2) high claim rates, and (3) low renewal rates. In this paper, we investigate take-up decisions using household data collected in Karnataka, India, especially focusing on prospect theory, hyperbolic preference, and adverse selection. Prospect theory presumes that people behave in a risk-averse way when evaluating gains but in a risk-loving way when evaluating losses. Since insurance covers losses, the risk-loving attitude toward losses may explain the low take-up rates and we find weak empirical support for this. Households with hyperbolic preference were more likely to purchase insurance, consistent with our theoretical prediction of demand for commitment. We also find some evidence on the existence of adverse selection: households with a higher ratio of sick members were more likely to purchase insurance.
Recent empirical studies reveal that effectiveness of aid on growth is ambiguous. This paper considers aid proliferation - excess aid investment relative to recurrent cost - as a potential cause that undermines aid effectiveness, because aid projects can only produce sustainable benefits when sufficient recurrent costs are disbursed. We consider the donor's budget support as a device to supplement the shortage of the recipient's recurrent cost and to alleviate the misallocation of inputs. However, when donors have self-interested preferences over the success of their own projects to those conducted by others, they provide insufficient budget support relative to aid which results in aid proliferation. Moreover, aid proliferation is shown to be worsened by the presence of more donors.
We conducted framed field experiments in Vietnam to capture the role of joint liability, monitoring, cross-reporting, social sanctions, communication and group formation in borrowers' repayment behavior. We find that joint liability contracts cause serious free-riding problems, inducing strategic default and lowering repayment rates. Even after introducing a cross-reporting system and/or penalties among borrowers, people are still more likely to chose strategic default than under individual lending. We also find that joint liability lending often failed to induce mutual insurance among borrowers. Those who had been helped or who had repaid a little in the previous round were more likely to default strategically and repay a little again in the current round and those who paid large amounts were always the same individuals.
We consider rank-order contests with heterogeneous agents, focusing on the optimal accuracy of output signals. As opposed to the absolute performance evaluation, we show it is optimal for the principal to deliberately make the signals noisier according to the degree of heterogeneity.
In less developed countries, it is widely observed that employers hire workers through employee referrals. In this paper, we show an extension of this kind of networks may decrease applicants’ payoffs while a diversification of the networks can raise referred applicants’ payoffs. We also discuss the effect of the extension of interlinked contracts on farmers' wages.
Book chapters
- "Economic Integration and Poverty"
- "Publicly-Provided Primary Healthcare Services in Rural India: Achievements, Problems, and Possible Solutions" (with S. Ito), in H. Uchimura ed., Making Health Services More Accessible in Developing Countries: Finance and Health Resources for Functioning Health Systems, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- "Introduction to Field Experiments" (in Japanese), in T. Saijo ed., Introduction to Experimental Economics, NTT Press, 2007.
CV
E-mail：Hisaki_Kono
The views/opinions expressed in these pages are that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of JETRO or IDE.
