IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevef/v8y2016i2p257-265.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Microfinance on the margin: why recent impact studies may understate average treatment effects

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce Wydick

Abstract

A series of recent randomised trials estimate the impact of microfinance on incomes, consumption, and other key measures of welfare. This comment demonstrates why impact estimates obtained from experimental designs focusing on marginal microfinance borrowers are likely to understate the impacts yet realised by inframarginal borrowers, those having taken microfinance loans prior to implementation of an experiment, when field experiments are implemented in areas broadly served by microfinance.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Wydick, 2016. "Microfinance on the margin: why recent impact studies may understate average treatment effects," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 257-265, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevef:v:8:y:2016:i:2:p:257-265
    DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2015.1121512
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19439342.2015.1121512
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/19439342.2015.1121512?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Félix, Elisabete Gomes Santana & Belo, Teresa Freitas, 2019. "The impact of microcredit on poverty reduction in eleven developing countries in south-east Asia," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 52.
    2. Erhardt, Eva Christine, 2017. "Microfinance beyond self-employment: Evidence for firms in Bulgaria," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 75-95.
    3. Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo & Richard Hornbeck, 2018. "How Much do Existing Borrowers Value Microfinance? Evidence from an Experiment on Bundling Microcredit and Insurance," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(340), pages 671-700, October.
    4. Choda, Amreen & Schoofs, Annekathrin & Verrinder, Noel, 2020. "Improving housing conditions: Labelled loans in Kenya and Uganda," Ruhr Economic Papers 878, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    5. Erhardt, Eva, 2017. "Microfinance beyond self-employment: Evidence for firms in Bulgaria," MPRA Paper 79294, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Schoofs, Annekathrin, 2022. "Promoting financial inclusion for savings groups: A financial education programme in rural Rwanda," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    7. R. Khandker, Shahidur & Khalily, M. A. Baqui & A. Samad, Hussain, 2015. "Who Benefits Most from Microfinance in Bangladesh?," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 38(4), pages 1-30, December.
    8. Morduch, Jonathan, 2020. "Why RCTs failed to answer the biggest questions about microcredit impact," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    9. Dahal, Mahesh & Fiala, Nathan, 2020. "What do we know about the impact of microfinance? The problems of statistical power and precision," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevef:v:8:y:2016:i:2:p:257-265. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJDE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.