This article briefly describes the Soninke labor migration, and interprets it as a means of diversifying risk in a context of missing insurance and credit markets. Historical and anthropological studies on this ethnic group are briefly surveyed, and suggest that it is not only the well-being of...

Using data from the Philippines, this article seeks to understand how households in the study area apparently manage to avoid falling into a debt trap in spite of frequent borrowing. Findings suggest that this is achieved via three institutional features. First, most informal debt carries no...

This article highlights the main findings of an evaluation report on the impact of a microfinance program based in Antananarivo. It first provides background information on microfinance programs in Madagascar and on the market-demand for micro-loans. It then describes the main characteristics of...

Using a 2006 household survey in Mali, we compare current poverty rates and inequality levels with counterfactual ones in the absence of migration and remittances. With proper hypotheses on migrants and a selection model, we are able to impute a counterfactual income for households currently...

This study aims at assessing the impact of a microfinance institution serving micro-entrepreneurs in Antananarivo (Madagascar). It starts by reviewing the recent literature on the socioeconomic impact of microfinance, then moves on to describe the current state of supply and demand of...

This paper explores the impact of Malian migrants' Home Town Associations (HTAs) located in France on the provision of local public goods in Mali. To this end, we compute an original dataset on all the HTAs that have been created by Malian migrants in France since 1981 and geo-localize their...