In recent years, impact investors – private investors who seek to generate simultaneously attractive financial and social returns – have attracted intense interest and controversy. We analyze a novel, comprehensive data set of impact and traditional investors to assess how the non-financial...

This article provides a review of recent research on agricultural insurance (AI) in developing countries. Agricultural producers face a variety of significant risks; historically, only government-subsidized products have achieved widespread adoption. A recent contractual innovation, which links...

There is interest in impact investing, the idea of deploying capital to obtain both financial and social returns. But private financial returns are only possible if capital markets are not perfectly integrated, so profit opportunities still exist in certain markets. This proposition is put to...

ICT is increasingly used to deliver customized information in developing countries. We examine whether individually targeting the timing of automated voice calls meaningfully increases engagement in an agricultural advisory service. We define, estimate, and evaluate a novel recommendation system...

There is growing evidence that business training for micro-entrepreneurs can be effective. Typically, such training is offered in-person and is thus often expensive to deliver and imposes significant burden on participants as well. This paper reports on a two-site randomized control trial, which...

This case examines Grassroots Capital's decision of whether or not to continue investing in a Bolivian microfinance bank that is suffering financial distress.Learning Objective: To illustrate political risks associated with business at the base of the pyramid; to explore how bankruptcy works in...

This case examines Grassroots Capital's decision of whether or not to continue investing in a Bolivian microfinance bank that is suffering financial distress.Learning Objective: To illustrate political risks associated with business at the base of the pyramid; to explore how bankruptcy works in...

In addition to their direct effects, episodes of financial instability may decrease investor confidence. Measuring the impact of a crisis on investor confidence is complicated by the fact that it is difficult to disentangle the effect of investor confidence from coincident direct effects of the...