development goals. Microfinance in particular has often been argued, but not without controversy, to be a tool for empowering … women. Here, using a randomized controlled trial, we examine whether access to an individually-held commitment savings … women who have below median decision-making power in the baseline, and we find this leads to a shift towards female …

Policymakers often prescribe that microfinance institutions increase interest rates to eliminate reliance on subsidies …

pre-existing group liability 'centres' of approximately twenty women to individual-liability centres (treatment) and kept …

Expanding credit access is a key ingredient of development strategies worldwide. Microfinance practitioners … expansion. There is less consensus on the role of consumer credit in expansion initiatives. Some microfinance institutions are …

Motivated by recent controversies surrounding the role of commercial lenders in microfinance, we analyze borrower …

impact of Equity Bank—a leading private commercial bank focusing on microfinance—on the access to banking in Kenya. Unlike …

of a particular microfinance institution (Spandana) while the remainder were not, although other MFIs were free to enter …. We found no changes in any of the development outcomes that are often believed to be affected by microfinance, including … health, education, and women’s empowerment. The results of this study are largely consistent with those of four other …