In a webinar on February 20, 2020, Tim Ogden, Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative at NYU shared the latest insights on SME business training programs, with guest speaker David McKenzie, Lead Economist in the Development Research Group, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit at the World Bank. Tim and David discussed what we know about small business performance and productivity, the importance of management, and training impact evaluations--all essential for innovating SME training programs. This webinar was part of FAI’s new SME Insight Community, developed in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.
Below are a list of the papers referenced during their conversation. You can download a PDF of this bibliography here.
Read MoreMicrocredit is a cheap intervention with modest but positive effects with a great deal of scope for evidence-based innovation that could materially improve impact.
Read MoreBRAC, the world’s largest development NGO, examines the limitations of Cost Benefit Analyses and how to improve research methodologies for more informed policy and investment decisions.
In the last ten years, we have seen a push from investors, foundations, governments and concerned citizens for better impact evaluations to prove which development programs work consistently across contexts, with sustained outcomes over time.
Read MoreThanks to the generosity of the Citi Foundation, the US Financial Diaries launched a blog and webinar series in partnership with Stanford Social Innovation Review. The series looks at the financial lives of working Americans and offer new insights for designing policies, programs, and products that can better meet their needs. Over the past month, there have been a number of exciting updates in the series...
Read MoreWe were glad when Mark Zuckerberg picked Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day as one of his 23 picks for his book club, the Year of Reading...[but] Maddie Crum of the Huffington Post points out that there’s just one thing wrong with Zuckerberg’s list. Where are all the women?
Read MoreMobile money’s early adopters in Bangladesh are much like those who first take up many emerging technologies worldwide - literate urban males who are above the poverty line. Mobile money’s promise, however, lies in its potential to deliver financial services cheaply and easily to groups who traditionally have less access to formal financial tools including women and the poor.
Read MoreAlthough micro-credit has been perceived as effective in reducing poverty, in reality, its impact has been modest. One reason could be that most microloans extended to the poor are term loans, which are not well-suited for borrowers with variable or risky income streams, for example, traders needing working capital for purchasing inventory, or farmers who earn lump-sum income after harvest. While the Indian government has been encouraging banks to provide credit in the form of over-draft, term loans continue to remain the predominant credit product.
In 2013, the Rural Financial Institutions Programme represented by GIZ and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), partnered with Mann Deshi Mahila Bank to launch a new overdraft facility serviced through banking agents to traders and farmers selling groceries in rural markets in Maharashtra, India.
Read MoreThe irresistible force of commitment savings met its immovable object. In every pilot, the products rarely moved off the shelf, and when they did, it was for reasons other than the value of the product itself.
Read MoreFew objects signal middle class like housing. More than a car, more than clothing or other life accoutrements, there’s nothing like owning a modest home to send the message that the family has achieved this near-universal dream.
In wealthier countries, the issue of housing is largely seen through the lens of ownership – families who own their homes are likely to see their assets grow far more than families who rent, even if their incomes are identical. Home ownership (or lack thereof) is the reason why the wealth gap is so much greater than the income gap.
Read MoreA key concept in economics is fungibility – that a “dollar is a dollar is a dollar.” However, money also carries cultural and social significance. In The Social Meaning of Money, Viviana Zelizer argues that people attach different meanings to different income sources. A new publication from FAI Executive Director Jonathan Morduch reviews Zelizer’s book and applies key lessons to the economic study of poor households
Read MoreIn honor of Angus Deaton's Nobel prize announcement, below is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Experimental Conversations, to be published by MIT Press in 2016. The book collects interviews with academic and policy leaders on the use of randomized evaluations and field experiments in development economics. To be notified when the book is released, please sign up here.
Read MoreIn a new paper, Exploring the Business Models Behind Microsavings, FAI affiliate Daniel Rozas seeks to disentangle some of the existing complications in the microsavings story by exploring several key questions:.
- How might one define the different models by which MFIs provide savings?
- How are they distinguished, where are they more prevalent, and which institutions are more likely to adopt them?
- And is there a difference in outcomes—in terms of cost, outreach, and profit?
Read MoreRecently, The New York Times Magazine ran a feature on the bail process for petty crimes, with a focus on the Brooklyn, NY court system. Although bail was historically set as a bond to ensure a defendant will return to court for trial, it is increasingly used as a tool for incarceration. According to the article, at any given time, 450,000 individuals in the U.S. are held in detention awaiting trial because they were unable to pay their court-assigned bail. A disproportionate number of these are poor.
Read MoreIn the past, we've talked about peer effects and low adoption rates of mobile money banking accounts in Bangladesh. Our research exploring these issues (as well benefits for migrant workers) is in full swing! It is a randomized evaluation, which means that half of the sample is randomly assigned to a control group, while half of the sample is randomly assigned to the treatment group, which receives training and assistance with signing up for mobile money accounts.
In this video, co-investigator Dr. Abu Shonchoy audits the training by re-interviewing a woman who was part of the treatment group to make sure that the training was thorough and made the service understandable to the participant . . .
Read MoreThe 2014 Global Findex data has been a hot topic of conversation around the FAI offices since its release last month. While there is a lot to dissect in the 97-page report, the biggest headline is the 20% decrease in the number of unbanked worldwide - approximately 700 million people worldwide.
However, there are concerns that this number is overstated and the data leave us with outstanding questions as to why certain trends occur over the last 4 years. One reason is we do not yet have access to the microdata. When we can only use broad strokes to tell a nuanced story, many of the finer points are lost, like regional differences in financial inclusion changes.
Another example is the data around gender . . .
Read MoreWe know that the path out of poverty is rarely a smooth one. The poor are buffeted by a wide range of shocks, pushing them backwards along the way. Exploring the world of risk in the Kenya Financial Diaries, we learned that for many of the poor, navigating a world of risk is actually not only about how you manage your money. It’s also about how you manage relationships with friends and family who can come to your aid when things go wrong. Consider Greta’s story:
Greta and her husband had saved money for a caesarian section she would need to deliver her baby. But public health facility workers went on strike just she was due, and the cost of care at a private facility was five times higher, much more than Greta could finance without hard and dangerous sacrifices. Through friends and family Greta was able to raise roughly 75% of the additional funds needed.
For low-income Kenyans, social network financing of risk is incredibly powerful . . .
Read More
