Abstract: We use an RCT to analyze the impact of microcredit on poverty reduction. The study population consists of loan applicants to a large microfinance institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina who would have been rejected through regular screening. Access to credit allowed borrowers to start...

Abstract: We present evidence from a randomized field experiment in rural Mongolia on the comparative poverty impact of group versus individual microcredit. We find a positive impact of group loans but not of individual loans on entrepreneurship and food consumption. Moreover, group borrowers...

This paper provides evidence on household responses to the relaxation of one barrier constraining adoption of health practices - lack of information - in a resource constrained setting. It examines the effects of a randomized intervention in Malawi which provides mothers with information on...

This paper etimates the causal effects of family size on girls’ education in Mexico, exploiting prenatal son preference as a source of random variation in the propensity to have more children within an instrumental variables framework. It finds no evidence of family size having an adverse...

Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices, and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomised intervention in rural Malawi which, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young...

This paper provides evidence on household responses to the relaxation of one barrier constraining adoption of health practices - lack of information - in a resource constrained setting. It examines the effects of a randomized intervention in Malawi which provides mothers with information on...

<p><p>This paper tests whether family size has a causal effect on girls' education in Mexico. It exploits son preference as the main source of random variation in the propensity to have more children, and estimates causal effects using instrumental variables. Overall, it finds no evidence of family...</p></p>

This article argues that an effective way to analyse the macroeconomic effects of business-to-business electronic commerce is to regard it as a decline in the cost of information to producers. Calculations based on input-output tables and the IMF’s Multimod macroeconomic model show that...

This paper looks at the determinants of secondary school attendance in Bangladesh with a focus on the interaction between community gender norms and relative supply of madrasas (i.e. Islamic schools). We present a theoretical framework where the probability of children's school participation...

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. We provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods. Using a theoretical model, we show that an elected official, whose aim is to maximise re-election...