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What Scheme Would you Like? Let’s Ask the Poor

Yesterday evening I attended a SPARK session (symposium like talks on various topics pertaining to development economics held frequently at IFMR) on the MGNREGA. While the speaker went through the history of the various similar schemes the government had conducted … Read More

Developing Financing Strategies for Implementing the State Action Plans on Climate Change

Koyel Mandal, Sunanda Rathi, Vivek Venkataramani

This report is a high level strategy document based on interim findings from a study on ‘Developing Financing Strategies for Implementing the State Action Plans on Climate Change.’ It primarily focuses on strategies for states to access and leverage Central … Read More

The Economic Returns to Social Interaction: Experimental Evidence from Microfinance

Benjamin Feigenberg, Erica Field and Rohini Pande

In this study, microfinance clients were randomly assigned to repayment groups that met either weekly or monthly during their first loan cycle, and then graduated to identical meeting frequency for their second loan. Long-run survey data and a follow-up public … Read More

Gold Loans as an Alternative Source of Credit for Low-income Households

Misha Sharma

The demand for gold in India has always been high, thus creating a huge potential for growth in the gold loan market. In recent decades, the market has emerged as a reliable sources of credit for low-income households. This report … Read More

Marketing Weather-indexed Agricultural Insurance to Smallholder Farmers in Rural Gujarat, India

Shawn Cole, Maulik Jagnani, Lisa Nestor and Jeremy Tobacman

This policy note presents findings from a study “Index Insurance to Manage Weather Risks: A Long-term Experiment” where the authors investigate the effectiveness of rainfall insurance as a tool to help farmers manage risk. The research also examines whether farmers … Read More

Self Help Group Bank Linkage: Through the Responsible Finance Lens

Parul Agarwal, Misha Sharma, Amulya Krishna Champatiray

The report presents findings from a study that attempts to answer the questions associated with the above mentioned objective by collecting primary data from SHGs and SHPIs across three states -Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

Comprehensive Social Security for the Indian Unorganised Sector: Recommendations on Design and Implementation

Anand Sahasranaman, Vishnu Prasad, Swati Grewal, Nikhil Tambi, Shahid Vaziralli, Camille Boudot-Reddy

This report  highlights challenges in the design and implementation of social security schemes in India, and draws out lessons for designing a comprehensive social security framework. The report delves into issues of ownership structure, program coverage, delivery architecture and specific … Read More

Agent Intermediated Lending: A New Approach to Microfinance

Pushkar Maitra, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Alberto Motta, Sujata Visaria

In this paper, authors present findings from a study on trader agent intermediated lending (TRAIL), a new version of microfinance where local intermediaries (lenders) are appointed as agents to recommend borrowers for individual liability loans designed to allow the financing … Read More

The Diffusion of Microfinance

Abhijit Banerjee, Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo, Matthew O. Jackson

To study the impact of the choice of injection points in the diffusion of a new product in society, this study examined the impact of a word-of-mouth diffusion model and applied it to data on social networks and participation in … Read More

Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function

Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, Jiaying Zhao

The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this … Read More