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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Drawing on financial diaries research outlined in Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day, this brief looks at ways to envision the next generation of services for the "bottom billion” by examining what is and isn’t working for poor households as they patch together their financial lives.
Type:
Brief
Date:
July 2009
Authors:
Financial Access Initiative
Country:
Bangladesh; India; South Africa
Research Areas:
Reimagining Financial Access
Themes:
Consumer Protection, Credit, Product Design, Savings
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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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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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Type:
Paper
Date:
January 2009
Authors:
David McKenzie, Suresh de Mel, Christopher Woodruff
Country:
Sri Lanka
Themes:
Credit, Gender
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Reports on a variety of experiments conducted to better understand the importance of some of the problems of measuring profits, and offers recommendations for collecting profit data.
Date:
January 2009
Authors:
David McKenzie, Christopher Woodruff, Suresh de Mel
Country:
Sri Lanka
Themes:
Financial Literacy, Research Methodology
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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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Date:
January 2009
Authors:
Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Behavioral Economics, Savings
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Date:
December 2008
Authors:
Justine Hastings, Lydia Tejeda-Ashton
Country:
Mexico
Research Areas:
Measuring Impact
Themes:
Financial Literacy
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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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Type:
Paper
Date:
September 2008
Authors:
Xavier Giné, Dean Yang
Country:
Malawi
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Credit, Insurance, Technology Adoption
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Explains the design and results from a field experiment in South Africa that explored the effect of psychological features such as presentation changes on loan take-up.
Type:
Paper
Date:
May 2008
Authors:
Marianne Bertrand, Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, Jonathan Zinman
Country:
South Africa
Research Areas:
Mechanisms Matter
Themes:
Credit, Marketing
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Type:
Paper
Date:
April 2008
Authors:
Dean Karlan, Jinyong Hahn, Keisuke Hi
Country:
Global
Research Areas:
Measuring Impact
Themes:
Research Methodology
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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:
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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