This paper evaluates how microfinance performed in providing business financing in 27 Sub-Saharan African countries. It uses data from the 2009 and 2010 Gallup World Poll, a nationally-representative survey of at least 1,000 individuals per country, conducted in up to 157 countries per year. The...

How do inexperienced consumers learn to use a new financial technology? We present results from a field experiment that introduced payroll accounts in a population of largely unbanked factory workers in Bangladesh. In the experiment, workers in a treatment group received monthly wage payments...

How do inexperienced consumers learn to use a new financial technology? We present results from a field experiment that introduced payroll accounts in a population of largely unbanked factory workers in Bangladesh. In the experiment, workers in a treatment group received monthly wage payments...

This paper examines the effects of providing financial services to low-income individuals on entrepreneurial activity, employment, and income. The analysis exploits cross-time and cross-municipality variation in the opening of Banco Azteca in Mexico to measure these effects with a...