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

self-help group lending program in rural Bihar, India (Hoffmann et al., 2021) to demonstrate that well-functioning groups …

, 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 …