Recently, microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified the microfinance phenomenon. This paper applies propensity score matching (PSM), which has become widely used for the analysis of observational data, to the study...

Microfinance (MF) and family planning (FP) are thought to be very important interventions in the promotion of human development and it has been suggested that MF has significant beneficent impacts on contraceptive adoption and fertility. Thus, several authors, e.g. Amin, Hill and Li (1995), Amin...

Michael Clemens' recent working paper "The Meaning of Failed Replications: A Review and Proposal" echoes concerns expressed by some replicatees and economists more generally about the potentially damaging effects of a claim of failed replication on reputations (or similar concerns in social...

We reply to Robert Jensen and Emily Oster's (2014) response to our replication of their QJE paper and Berk Ozler's recent blog. We first summarize Jensen and Oster's empirical findings and proceed to briefly explain our own main results. Then we address and engage with the issues raised by and...

Banerjee and Iyer (henceforth, BI) (American Economic Review, 2005) find that districts which the British assigned to landlord revenue systems systematically underperform districts with non-landlord based revenue systems, especially in agricultural investment and productivity and mainly after...