A quick glance at agricultural input use data from developing countries reveals a large dispersion in take up of improved inputs and practices across farms. One explanation is that this is a problem resulting from limited information, credit constraints, risk, poor input quality, and/or...

The latest note examines the impact of a social enterprise's attempts to shorten the supply chain between farmers and small retail stores in Bogota, an idea that was one of the winners of the SME ideas competition. The small retail stores that are prevalent on many street corners in developing...

The latest note tests two different approaches to improving management, and finds a novel group-based approach to be more cost-effective than the standard approach of providing consulting to individual firms

This note shows how big data can help combine experimental with non-experimental approaches in impact evaluations when take-up is low. In this study, author have access to a large administrative data set (of 660 MB), which follows the monthly financial indicators of each client for up to 18...

Business training is one of the most common support services offered by governments to small firms around the world. However, a number of evaluations of such training programs have struggled to identify impacts, and an additional concern has been that any growth of trained firms might at the...

Financial consumers often fail to compare across different products and do not choose the most cost-effective product or the one most suitable to their needs. This is because the decision of which product to purchase may not only involve unfamiliar concepts but also because financial...

Financial literacy - the ability to make informed decisions regarding money - plays a critical role in ensuring both the well-being of households and the stability of the financial system. Consequently, numerous private institutions, non-profit organizations, and governments have responded by...