Given the substantial amount of resources currently invested in microcredit programs, it is more important than ever to accurately assess the extent to which peer monitoring by borrowers faced with group liability contracts actually reduces moral hazard. We conduct a field experiment with women...

Traditional financial literacy interventions are frequently ineffective at improving financial outcomes. We test an alternative approach using a field experiment with over 400,000 student loan borrowers in which treatment group members received communications about the availability of their FICO...

Weather is a major source of income risk, especially in low-income environments. This paper uses data from randomized field experiments involving Indian farmers to evaluate how the take-up viz commercial success of an innovative rainfall insurance product is affected by product priming that...

We design a field experiment to study the relationship between neglect of compound interest and pension contributions in rural China. We randomly assigned some households to a financial education treatment, emphasizing the concept of compound interest. This treatment increased the pension...

This study examines the take-up, use, and impact of Islamic savings accounts for poor Muslim clients of an MFI in Pakistan, using a randomized controlled trial. We specifically focus on the impact of opening Islamic savings accounts on women’s empowerment. The main results strongly suggest...

A large fraction of households have very little savings buffer and are therefore vulnerable to financial shocks. This paper examines whether a social norm nudge can induce such households to save more. We ran a large-scale field experiment at a retail bank in the Netherlands. We find that...

This paper investigates how saving the federal tax refund affects gig economy participation forlow-income online tax filers in the six months following tax filing. Using longitudinal surveyand administrative data, we leverage random assignment in a unique refund savings experimentas an...

Many U.S. households — especially those with low- to moderate-incomes (LMI) — struggle to save for retirement. To address this issue, the Department of the Treasury launched myRA, a no-fee retirement account designed primarily to help people who lacked access to employer-sponsored plans...

Many initiatives worldwide aim at improving financial literacy through targeted education programs, yet there is little evidence regarding their effectiveness. We examine the impact of a short financial education program on teenagers in German high schools. Our findings reveal that the training...

We present the results of a randomized intervention in schools to study how teaching financial literacy affects risk and time preferences of adolescents. Following more than 600 adolescents, aged 16 years on average, over about half a year, we provide causal evidence that teaching financial...