Working Papers

A widely held view is that small firms in developing countries are prevented from making profitable investments by lack of access to credit and insurance markets. One solution is to provide repayment flexibility in credit contracts.

Recent growth accelerations in Africa are characterized by increasing productivity in agriculture, a declining share of the labor force employed in agriculture and declining productivity in modern sectors such as manufacturing.

We conduct a field experiment offering graduated microcredit clients the opportunity to finance a business asset worth four times their previous borrowing limit. We implement this using a hire-purchase contract; our control group is offered a zero-interest loan.

Molina and Tanaka (2020) examine whether globalization promotes female empowerment by improving the jobs available to women. Previous work has documented that exporting causally improved working conditions at predominantly female garment factories in Myanmar.