Description:
The need to insure against idiosyncratic income risk leads to the formation of risksharing groups in village economies where formal financial markets are absent. We develop a theoretical model to address the impact of limited commitment and social control on the extent of informal risk sharing when agents are induced to form such risk-sharing coalitions. Social control increases the prospect of future punishment of present defectors and thus mitigates the absence of commitment. A defection-proof core-partition exists, is unique and homophilic. Riskier societies may not be more segmented and may not pay a higher cost for insurance. A higher social control leads to a less segmented society but does not necessarily lead to a lower price for sharing risk. We provide evidence, based on data on Thai villages, that consumption smoothing conforms with our theoretical result of homophily-based coalitions and that social control contributes to less segmentation of a society