This paper investigates the short-run consumption expenditure dynamics and the interaction of public and private arrangements of ultra-poor and labor-constrained households in Malawi using an original dataset from the Mchinjii social cash transfer pilot project (one of the first experiments of...

Financial regulation can generate government revenue by imposing the quantity and price of government bonds. We study an unexpected banking regulation introduced in 2011 by the Ethiopian Central Bank, forcing commercial banks to purchase a negative-yield government bond. High-frequency bank data...

Liquidity requirements can stimulate deposit growth by increasing depositor repayment in bad states, which can also promote lending and branching. We study an unexpected policy change which fostered the liquid assets of Ethiopian banks by 33% in 2011, and present three findings in line with this...

This paper investigates the short-run consumption expenditure dynamics and the interaction of public and private arrangements of ultra-poor and labor-constrained households in Malawi using an original dataset from the Mchinjii social cash transfer pilot project (one of the first experiments of...

In October 2012, the Government of Ethiopia launched the Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP), with the aim of increasing the earnings and employment of growth-oriented micro and small enterprises (MSEs) owned or partly-owned by women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. In doing so, it...

In absence of deposit insurance, underdeveloped financial systems can exhibit a coordination failure between banks, unable to commit on safe asset holding, and depositors, anticipating low deposit repayment in bad states. This paper shows conditions under which a government can solve this...

Financial regulation affects government revenue whenever it imposes both the mandatory quantity and price of government bonds. This paper studies a banking regulation adopted by the National Bank of Ethiopia in April 2011, which forces all private banks to purchase a fixed negative-yield...

Gender disparities in small and medium-size enterprise lending exist around the world and impede the growth of millions of women-led firms. This paper examines a potential driver of these disparities: gender-biased loan officers. Officer bias is measured through a novel loan application...

In many aid projects, monitoring and evaluation is a static exercise driven by donor reporting requirements. After project closure, there are seldom sustainable benefits of the monitoring and evaluation system. This paper examines how monitoring and evaluation can be transformed into a dynamic...