Women's empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major … role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development … equality between men and women …

This paper examines a cost-reducing innovation to the delivery of "Self-Help Group" microfinance services. These groups …

experimental study based on a hope intervention in Oaxaca, Mexico among 601 indigenous women with access to microfinance loans. Our …

The empowerment of women within households remains a major issue around the world including in Africa. We have … conducted a study in Burundi coupling discussion sessions with microfinancing to determine if they enhance the role of women in …

Empowering women and enhancing children's early development are two important goals that are often pursued via … that the program empowered women in various dimensions, including higher labor force participation and employment, higher …

, India, we find that "gung ho entrepreneurs" (GEs), households who were already running a business before microfinance …

networks. We first study 75 villages in Karnataka, 43 of which were exposed to microfinance after we first collected detailed … microfinance are at least as likely to disappear as links involving likely borrowers. We replicate these surprising findings in the … context of a randomized controlled trial in Hyderabad, where a microfinance institution randomly selected neighborhoods to …

of microfinance. Random variation in the frequency of mandatory meetings across first-time borrower groups generates …

In October 2010, the state government of Andhra Pradesh, India issued an emergency ordinance, bringing microfinance … loans in the affected state. We use this massive dislocation in the microfinance market to identify the causal impacts of a … sector (agriculture), suggesting that one important impact of the microfinance contraction was transmitted through its effect …

Recent evaluations of traditional microfinance loans have found no significant impacts on borrower incomes or …