The guidance of Lawrence Haddad and Sudhir Wanmali in providing an enabling research environment deserves special recognition. We thank John Pender, the IFPRI internal reviewer, and two anonymous external reviewers for their critical but very constructive comments, which helped us significantly improve the analysis in and presentation of the report. Particular sections of this report have also benefited from the comments of Alain de Janvry, Andrew Foster, Lawrence Had- dad, Soren Hauge, Hanan Jacoby, Manohar Sharma, John Strauss, and participants in the Bunda/IFPRI workshop on rural finance held in October 1996 at Bunda, in seminars at IFPRI, and in various conferences at which papers emanating from this research were.
