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Type:
Paper
Date:
February 2010
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan, Jonathan Zinman, Margaret McConnell
Country:
Bolivia; Peru; Philippines
Research Areas:
Reimagining Financial Access, Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Behavioral Economics, Savings
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Describes finding from an experiment in rural India that suggest that the structure of microcredit loan contracts can help people with self-discipline problems who lack suitable savings products.
Type:
Paper
Date:
December 2009
Authors:
Michal Bauer, Julie Chytilová, Jonathan Morduch
Country:
India
Research Areas:
Reimagining Financial Access
Themes:
Behavioral Economics
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Evaluates the presence of market imperfections such as free-riding in group-based mechanisms.
Type:
Paper
Date:
November 2009
Authors:
Xavier Giné, Pamela Jakiela, Dean Karlan, Jonathan Morduch
Country:
Peru
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Product Design
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Using two new datasets, the authors examine whether the presence of banks affects the profitability and outreach of microfinance institutions. They find evidence that competition matters. Greater bank penetration in the overall economy is associated with microbanks pushing toward poorer markets, as reflected in smaller average loans sizes and greater outreach to women. The evidence is particularly strong for microbanks relying on commercial-funding and using traditional bilateral lending contracts (rather than group lending methods favored by microfinance NGOs). The authors consider plausible alternative explanations for the correlations, including relationships that run through the nature of the regulatory environment and the structure of the banking environment, but fail to find strong support for these alternative hypotheses.
Type:
Paper
Date:
September 2009
Authors:
Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Jonathan Morduch
Country:
Global
Research Areas:
Investment and Regulation
Themes:
Big Picture, Commercialization & Subsidy
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The authors describe important trade-offs that microfinance practitioners, donors, and regulators navigate. Drawing evidence from large, global surveys of microfinance institutions, they find a basic tension between meeting social goals and maximizing financial performance. Potential trade-offs therefore arise when selecting contracting mechanisms, level of commercialization, rigor of regulation, and the extent of competition. Meaningful interventions in microfinance will require making deliberate choices – and thus embracing and weighing tradeoffs carefully.
Type:
Paper
Date:
September 2009
Authors:
Asli Demirgüç-Kunt
Country:
Global
Research Areas:
Investment and Regulation
Themes:
Commercialization & Subsidy
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Presents the results of a field experiment and follow-up survey to measure impacts of a credit expansion for microentrepreneurs in Manila.
Type:
Paper
Date:
July 2009
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Jonathan Zinman
Country:
Philippines
Research Areas:
Measuring Impact
Themes:
Big Picture, Credit
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A review of recent innovations that are improving the quantity and quality of financial access. Authors relate the innovations and empirical evidence to theoretical ideas, drawing links in particular to new work in behavioral economics and to randomized evaluation methods.
Type:
Paper
Date:
June 2009
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Jonathan Morduch
Country:
Global
Research Areas:
Reimagining Financial Access
Themes:
Big Picture, Insurance, Research Methodology
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Type:
Paper
Date:
June 2009
Authors:
Jonathan Morduch, David Roodman
Country:
Bangladesh
Research Areas:
Measuring Impact
Themes:
Credit
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Uses data from SafeSave, a credit cooperative in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, to examine how sensitive borrowers are to increases in the interest rate on loans.
Type:
Paper
Date:
May 2009
Authors:
Rajeev Dehejia, Heather Montgomery, Jonathan Morduch
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Interest Rates
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Group liability in microcredit purports to improve repayment rates through peer screening, monitoring, and enforcement. However, it may create excessive pressure, and discourage reliable clients from borrowing. Two randomized trials tested the overall effect, as well as specific mechanisms. The first removed group liability from pre-existing groups and the second randomly assigned villages to either group or individual liability loans. In both, groups still held weekly meetings. We find no increase in default and larger groups after three years in pre-existing areas, and no change in default but fewer groups created after two years in the expansion areas.
Type:
Paper
Date:
May 2009
Authors:
Xavier Giné, Dean Karlan
Country:
Philippines
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Credit, Product Design
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This paper reports on the
first randomized evaluation of the impact of introducing microcredit in a new market in the slums of Hyderabad, India.
Type:
Paper
Date:
May 2009
Authors:
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, Cynthia Kinnan
Country:
India
Research Areas:
Measuring Impact
Themes:
Big Picture
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Describes the challenges of providing reliable banking services to the poorest customers in a commercially viable way.
Type:
Paper
Date:
February 2009
Authors:
Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Jonathan Morduch
Country:
Global
Research Areas:
Reimagining Financial Access, Investment and Regulation
Themes:
Commercialization & Subsidy
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Type:
Paper
Date:
January 2009
Authors:
David McKenzie, Suresh de Mel, Christopher Woodruff
Country:
Sri Lanka
Themes:
Credit, Gender
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We conducted a field experiment to test whether savings constraints prevent the self-employed from increasing the size of their businesses. We opened interest-free savings accounts in a village bank in rural Kenya for a randomly selected sample of poor daily income earners. Despite the fact that the bank charged substantial withdrawal fees, take-up and usage was high among women and the savings accounts had substantial, positive impacts on their productive investment levels and expenditures. These results imply that a substantial fraction of daily income earners face important savings constraints and have a demand for formal saving devices (even for those that offer negative de facto interest rates).
Type:
Paper
Date:
January 2009
Authors:
Pascaline Dupas, Jonathan Robinson
Country:
Kenya
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Savings
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Estimates the presence and importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in a consumer credit market using a randomized field experiment methodology.
Type:
Paper
Date:
December 2008
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Jonathan Zinman
Country:
South Africa
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Product Design
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Examines the effect commitment mechanisms can have in helping an individual quit smoking.
Type:
Paper
Date:
December 2008
Authors:
Xavier Giné, Dean Karlan, Jonathan Zinman
Country:
Philippines
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Commitment Devices
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This paper explores the implications of voluntary reporting on knowledge of microfinance, using specific data from the MixMarket and the Microcredit Summit. The authors find that while both organizations aspire to provide a broad, global set of data, different trends in the reported data influence our analyses and lead to different conclusions depending on the dataset used.
Type:
Paper
Date:
December 2008
Authors:
Jonathan Bauchet, Jonathan Morduch
Country:
Global
Research Areas:
Investment and Regulation
Themes:
Big Picture
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Assessing the effects of access to credit on mental health.
Type:
Paper
Date:
December 2008
Authors:
Lia CH Fernald, Rita Hamad, Dean Karlan, Emily J Ozer, Jonathan Zinman
Country:
South Africa
Research Areas:
Measuring Impact
Themes:
Behavioral Economics, Consumer Protection
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Analyzes the financial data of 245 microfinance institutions to examine the effect of regulation on the profitability and outreach of these institutions.
Type:
Paper
Date:
October 2008
Authors:
Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Jonathan Morduch
Country:
Global
Research Areas:
Investment and Regulation
Themes:
Commercialization & Subsidy
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Type:
Paper
Date:
October 2008
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Markus Mobius, Tanya Rosenblat, Adam Szeidl
Country:
Peru
Research Areas:
Reimagining Financial Access, Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Behavioral Economics
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Highlighted Publications
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Type:
Paper
Date:
June 2009
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Jonathan Morduch
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Type:
Paper
Date:
February 2009
Authors:
Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Jonathan Morduch
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Type:
Paper
Date:
January 2009
Authors:
David McKenzie, Suresh de Mel, Christopher Woodruff
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Type:
Paper
Date:
October 2008
Authors:
Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Jonathan Morduch
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Type:
Paper
Date:
January 2008
Authors:
Nava Ashraf, Xavier Giné, Dean Karlan
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Type:
Paper
Date:
November 2006
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Martin Valdivia
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