Information, the Dual Economy, and Development
构建一般均衡模型，分析现代部门（高生产率但信息不对称大）与传统部门（低生产率但信息不对称小）的互动，发现信贷可得性与生产率之间的权衡导致现代化不足，且可能存在长期陷阱，并检验了库兹涅茨倒U假说的稳健性。
We examine the interactions between different institutional arrangements in a general equilibrium model of a modernizing economy. There is a modern sector, where productivity is high but information asymmetries are large, and a traditional sector where productivity is low but information asymmetries are low. Consequently, agency costs in the modern sector make consumption lending difficult, while such loans are readily obtainable in the traditional sector. The resulting trade-off between credit availability and productivity implies that not everyone will move to the modern sector. In fact, the laissex-fair level of modernization may fail to maximize net social surplus. This situation may also hold in the long run: in a dynamic version of the model, a "trickle-down" effect links the process of modernization with reduction in modern sector agency costs. This effect may be too weak and the economy may get stuck in a trap and never fully modernize. The two-sector structure also yields a natural testing ground for the Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis: we show that even within the "sectoral shifting" class of models, this phenomenon is not robust to small changes in model specification.