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Working Paper
Financing Repeat Borrowers: Designing Credible Incentives for Today and Tomorrow
We analyze relational contracts between a lender and borrower when borrower cash flows are not contractible and the costs of intermediation vary over time. Because lenders provide repayment incentives to borrowers through the continuation value of the lending relationship, borrowers will condition loan repayment on the likelihood of receiving loans in the future. Therefore, the borrower's beliefs about the lender's future liquidity and profitability become an important component of the borrower's repayment decision. Consequently, the possibility of high lending costs in the future weakens ...
Working Paper
Can Self-Help Groups Really Be 'Self-Help'?
We provide an experimental and theoretical evaluation of a cost-reducing innovation in the delivery of "self-help group" microfinance services, in which privatized agents earn payments through membership fees for providing services. Under the status quo, agents are paid by an outside donor and offer members free services. In our multi-country randomized control trial we evaluate the change in this incentive scheme on agent behavior and performance, and on overall village-level outcomes. We find that privatized agents start groups, attract members, mobilize savings, and intermediate loans at ...
Working Paper
Serving the Underserved: Microcredit as a Pathway to Commercial Banks
A large-scale microcredit expansion program---together with a credit bureau accessible to all lenders---can enable unbanked borrowers to build a credit history, facilitating their transition to commercial banks. Loan-level data from Rwanda show the program improved access to credit and reduced poverty. A sizable share of first-time borrowers switched to commercial banks, which cream-skim less risky borrowers and grant them larger, cheaper, and longer-maturity loans. Switchers have lower default risk than non-switchers and are not riskier than other bank borrowers. Switchers also obtain better ...