Smallholder agriculture in many developing countries has remained largely self-financed. However, improved productivity for attaining greater food security requires better access to institutional credit. Past efforts to extend institutional credit to smaller farmers has failed for several...

Over the past 20 years, Bangladesh has witnessed strong competition among microfinance institutions. Using program-level panel data from 2005-2010, this paper studies the microfinance institutions' recent competitive roles in their pricing of products, targeting strategies and portfolio shifts,...

Infrastructure investments are typically long-term. As a result, observed benefits to households and communities may vary considerably over time as short-term outcomes generate or are subsumed by longer-term impacts. This paper uses a new round of household survey as part of a local government...

Over the past 20 years, Bangladesh has witnessed strong competition among microfinance institutions. Using program-level panel data from 2005-2010, this paper studies the microfinance institutions'recent competitive roles in their pricing of products, targeting strategies and portfolio shifts,...

Infrastructure investments are typically long-term. As a result, observed benefits to households and communities may vary considerably over time as short-term outcomes generate or are subsumed by longer-term impacts. This paper uses a new round of household survey as part of a local government...

The rationale for public investment in rural roads is that households can better exploit agricultural and nonagricultural opportunities to use labor and capital more efficiently. But significant knowledge gaps remain as to how opportunities provided by roads actually filter back into household...

Over the past 20 years, Bangladesh has witnessed strong competition among microfinance institutions. Using program-level panel data from 2005-2010, this paper studies the microfinance institutions' recent competitive roles in their pricing of products, targeting strategies and portfolio shifts,...

This book reviews quantitative methods and models of impact evaluation. The formal literature on impact evaluation methods and practices is large, with a few useful overviews. Yet there is a need to put the theory into practice in a hands-on fashion for practitioners. This book also details...

A rationale for public investment in rural roads is that households can better exploit agricultural and nonagricultural opportunities to employ labor and capital more efficiently. Significant knowledge gaps persist, however, as to how opportunities provided by roads actually filter back into...

The mechanisms by which the poor benefit from economic growth remain a topic of debate in development literature. We address this issue in the context of rural Bangladesh, using a pooled dataset of three household panels between 1991-2001. Expansion of irrigation, paved roads, electricity, and...