This paper studies the impact of a program that provides grants for technical assistance on the interest rates and outreach of credit unions in Mexico. Credit unions financing rural borrowers received grants in different years. The study uses propensity score matching and relies additionally on...

Bancassurance is the process of using a bank's customer relationships to sell life and non-life insurance products. In some developed countries it has had a dramatic impact on developing sales volumes, attaining market shares in excess of 50 percent in life and more than 10 percent in non-life....

For an international sample of banks, the authors construct measures of a bank's absolute size and its systemic size defined as size relative to the national economy. They examine how a bank's risk and return, its activity mix and funding strategy, and the extent to which it faces market...

This paper discusses Islamic banking products and interprets them in the context of financial intermediation theory. Anecdotal evidence shows that many of the conventional products can be redrafted as Sharia-compliant products, so that the differences are smaller than expected. Comparing...

Using cross-country and panel regressions, the authors show that financial sector development significantly reduces undernourishment (hunger), largely through gaining farmers and others access to productivity-enhancing equipment, translating into beneficial income and general effects. They show...

This paper experimentally evaluates the relative importance of psychic costs of tetanus vaccination compared to monetary costs among women in rural Nigeria. To measure psychic costs, vaccine take-up between two conditions to receive cash incentives is compared: clinic attendance vs. vaccine...

This paper uses nationally representative panel data and a combination of econometric approaches, to explore linkages between rural non-farm activities (wage and self-employment) and household welfare in rural Malawi. The paper analyzes the average treatment effects and distributional effects on...

This paper uses unique data collected in rural Pakistan to assess the extent to which consanguinity, which is widespread in North Africa, Central and West Asia, and most parts of South Asia, is linked to child cognitive ability and nutritional status. As economic benefits of marrying cousins may...

This paper presents the initial findings from six rounds of research conducted between 2012 and 2016 on livelihoods and social change in rural Myanmar, undertaken as part of the Qualitative Social and Economic Monitoring initiative. These data provide unique insights into the ways in which broad...

This paper analyzes four years of qualitative data observing a large participatory anti-poverty project in India as it scales up from its first phase (covering 400,000 households) to its second (covering 800,000 households). Focusing on the frontlines of change -- at the village level, the...