Does limited access to formal savings services impede business growth in poor countries? To shed light on this question, we randomized access to noninterest-bearing bank accounts among two types of self-employed individuals in rural Kenya: market vendors (who are mostly women) and men working as...

In developing countries, unexpected income shocks are common but informal insurance is typically incomplete. An important question is therefore whether risk-sharing within the household is effective. This paper presents results from a field experiment with 142 married couples in Kenya in which...

We use a clustered randomized trial, and over 16,000 household surveys, to estimate impacts at the community level from a group lending expansion at 110 percent APR by the largest microlender in Mexico. We find no evidence of transformative impacts on 37 outcomes (although some estimates have...