Self-reported database of financial information for a large sample of MFIs around the world.
Studies
Benjamin Feigenberg, Erica Field, Rohini Pande / India / 2010
From the abstract: "[The authors] exploit[s] experimental variation in repayment meeting frequency across micro nance groups to show that more frequent interaction among group members builds social capital and improves their financial outcomes."
Debt Cycles
Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan / 2010
The authors observe that vegetable vendors in India and the Philippines frequently take high interest, one day loans for purchasing their inventories. Since reducing the amount borrowed each day has such high returns, they seek to understand why borrowers are not able to pay down their debt over time. They randomly provide borrowers with cash grants of the same size as the recurring principal of their daily loans to better understand this phenomenon.
Scott Fulford / India / 2010
From the abstract: "Using consistent consumption data that cover a much longer time period than most studies, my empirical findings show that increased access to bank branches in rural India increased consumption initially, but consumption later fell, although the long term effect was still slightly positive."
Xavier Gine, Dean Karlan / Philippines / 2010
From the abstract: "We find no increase in default and larger groups after three years in pre-existing areas, and no change in default but fewer groups created after two years in the expansion areas."
Brigit Helms / Global / 2010
A response to recent impact evaluations of microfinance, emphasizing the importance of microfinance in a poverty alleviation portfolio.
Emily Breza / India / 2010
An examination of the strength of peer effects on a borrower's repayment behavior following a large scale default in India.
Dilip Mookherjee, Sujata Visaria, Ulf von Lilienfeld-Toal / India / 2010
The authors investigate whether increasing credit enforcement exhibits adverse distributional effects (often attributed to the inelastic supply of credit), reducing access to credit for small businesses.
Erica Field, Rohini Pande, John Papp / India / 2009
From the abstract: "To explore these trade-o?s, we provide experimental estimates of the consequences for client repayment and investment behavior of introducing a grace period before repayment begins. Delaying the onset of repayment by two months signi?cantly increases both business investment and default."
Shawn Cole / India / 2009
From the abstract: "Studying banks in India, [the author] find[s] that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural credit increasing by 5-10 percentage points in an election year. There is signicant cross-sectional targeting, with large increases in districts in which the election is particularly close."
