Household Risk Management in Rural and Urban Thailand

This paper examines the nature of risk faced by households in Thailand and the strategies that these households adopt to mitigate the adverse effect from income shortfalls. I use a new cross-section dataset that is based on a sample of both urban and rural households. I find that price shock is the most prevalent source of income shortfalls. I also find that the most common risk-mitigating strategy employed by households is to borrow from the Village Fund. Nonetheless, there is a high degree of heterogeneity among households, especially in terms of their sources of income and this plays a key role in determining how a household responds to shocks. Thus, it may not be advisable to design policy based on the paradigm of a representative consumer.