We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed ‘hard’ information about the...

Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of nonsystematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and nonprice factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product. Demand is significantly...

This paper evaluates the short- and longer term impact of Thailand's "Million Baht Village Fund" program, among the largest scale government microfinance iniatives in the world, using pre- and post-program panel data and quasi-experimental cross-village variation in credit per household. We find...

Although, interest rate charged by microfinance stimulate of lot of ethical debate. Very few studies in microfinance detail the cost components of interest rates paid by the borrowers. Setting the optimal interest rate with a dual goal of financial sustainability and fighting against poverty is...

We report results from a randomized evaluation of a microcredit program introduced in rural areas of Morocco in 2006. Thirteen percent of the households in treatment villages took a loan, and none in control villages did. Among households identified as more likely to borrow, microcredit access...

We use data from a randomized controlled trial conducted in 2003-2006 in rural Amhara and Oromiya (Ethiopia) to study the impacts of increasing access to microfinance on a number of socioeconomic outcomes, including income from agriculture, animal husbandry, nonfarm self-employment, labor...

Spain has chronically low productivity growth, which undermines its ability to generate higher living standards. Important contributors to low productivity growth are the misallocation of capital to low productivity firms and under-investment in knowledge-based capital. To foster a better...

Boosting investment is key to supporting the nascent recovery and reviving stagnant productivity. Aggregate investment has declined markedly since the start of the global financial crisis, especially in services. Italy’s investment is so low that the capital stock is now declining, hurting...

Poland’s productivity has grown strongly over the past two decades. However, the public and private capital stock is weak, and investment remains focused on the adoption of existing technologies, which weighs on future productivity gains and innovation. Many micro enterprises have low...

Aggregate investment has declined markedly over the crisis and has yet to recover. Reviving domestic and foreign investment is crucial to supporting the economic recovery, deepen Greece’s integration into global value chains and raising living standards. This will hinge primarily on improving...