Debanking became a news story in 2023 when Nigel Farage alleged that Coutts had closed his account because its executives disapproved of his political opinions. A study by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) revealed that such ideologically motivated account closures are vanishingly rare....

This paper studies how formal financial access affects network-based financial arrangements. We use a field experiment that granted access to a savings account to a random subset of households in 19 Nepalese villages. Exploiting a unique panel dataset that follows all bilateral informal...

How do inexperienced consumers learn to use a new financial technology? We present results from a field experiment that introduced payroll accounts in a population of largely unbanked factory workers in Bangladesh. In the experiment, workers in a treatment group received monthly wage payments...

This paper studies how formal financial access affects network-based financial arrangements. We use a field experiment that granted access to a savings account to a random subset of households in 19 Nepalese villages. Exploiting a unique panel dataset that follows all bilateral informal...

Das Kontokorrent bildet die Grundlage für laufende Bankkonten und ermöglicht die Erfassung von Gutschriften und Belastungen. Eine umfassende gesetzliche Regelung fehlt jedoch, besonders zur Wirkung der Verrechnung im Rahmen des Rechnungsabschlusses. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass die ständige...

Should the Federal Reserve process payments for a Colorado credit union established to serve the cannabis industry? Should the Federal Reserve provide an account for a Connecticut uninsured bank that plans to keep all its depositors’ money in that Federal Reserve account? Should the Federal...

We study the introduction of a choice architecture design intended to increase short-term savings among employees at five U.K. firms. Employees were offered the opportunity to opt into a payroll deduction program that auto-deposits funds from each paycheck into a short-term savings account from...

Banking the unbanked is a common policy goal, but should this include access to bank accounts for minors? This study estimates how teenagers' access to bank accounts affects their financial development. Using variation in state laws, we show policies that permit access to independently-owned...

Enabling everybody to benefit from regulated financial services has become a global policy goal. However, while access to accounts is increasing, use of accounts remains low. This micro-level study considers the transactions and savings components of financial inclusion, and investigates the...

How do inexperienced consumers learn to use a new financial technology? We present results from a field experiment that introduced payroll accounts in a population of largely unbanked factory workers in Bangladesh. In the experiment, workers in a treatment group received monthly wage payments...

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into...

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into...

This paper investigates heterogeneous pass-through of monetary policy rates to variable-rate savings accounts using monthly account-level panel data from a Dutch comparison website. I find incomplete and delayed pass-through that varies widely across banks but even account products offered by...

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into...

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and infuence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into...

This paper verifies the impact of bank account information, such as information on deposits and withdrawals, that is not necessarily fully accounted for in conventional internal ratings and that can affect the accuracy of the default predictions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The...

This paper investigates inertia within and across banks in retail deposit markets using detailed panel data on consumer choices and account characteristics. In a structural choice model, I find that costs of inertia are around one third higher for switching accounts across compared to switching...

We provide empirical evidence from India's PMJDY program, a “big bang” supply shock that gives bank accounts to virtually all of its 280 million unbanked. Proprietary data from individual bank account statements shows that there is significant uptake, usage, usage growth, and balance...

Using administrative account level data, we study the largest financial inclusion program in India that led to 255 million new bank account openings. About 77% of these accounts maintain a positive balance. While the initial usage remains quite infrequent, it gradually converges to that of...

Having a bank account is widely regarded as the first step toward financial inclusion of the poor. Funds deposited in bank account are also observed to lead to higher savings. Exploiting special features of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India, our estimates indicate that...

This paper investigates inertia within and across banks in retail deposit markets using detailed panel data on consumer choices and account characteristics. In a structural choice model, I find that costs of inertia are around one third higher for switching accounts across compared to switching...

Savings accounts are owned by most households, but little is known about the performance of households' investments. We create a unique dataset by matching information on individual savings accounts from the DNB Household Survey with market data on account-specific interest rates and...

We experimentally test the impact of expanding access to basic bank accounts in Uganda, Malawi, and Chile. Over two years, 17%, 10%, and 3% of treatment individuals made five or more deposits, respectively. Average monthly deposits for them were at the 79th, 91st, and 96th percentiles of...

This paper examines the effects of providing financial services to low-income individuals on entrepreneurial activity, employment, and income. The analysis exploits cross-time and cross-municipality variation in the opening of Banco Azteca in Mexico to measure these effects with a...