The announcement of a new government program can provide immediate increases in subjective well-being as beneficiaries anticipate the benefits to come. However, the actual delivery of government programs...
Borewells for groundwater extraction have proliferated across South Asia, encouraged by subsidized electricity for pumping. Because borewells operating near one another experience mutually attenuated discharges...
This paper reviews evidence on agent networks of microfinance institutions and other financial services providers, which have expanded rapidly in recent years in some low- and middle-income contexts. There...
Most small firms in developing countries have large month-to-month fluctuations in their income stream due to seasonality and unanticipated positive and negative shocks such as business opportunities...
Microcredit promised business growth for small firms lacking access to banking loans. Although microcredit has reached millions, recent randomized evaluations find limited average business impacts. Critics...
The volume and number of remittances to Nicaragua increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using administrative data from the largest bank in Nicaragua, we find that this increase comes from...
Interest Bearing Notes is a product of the Finance and Private Sector Research Team in the World Bank's Development Research Group. It reports on research by the team, as well as non-World Bank research...
Widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation, has been proposed as a means of limiting groundwater overexploitation, especially in the intensively farmed and water-stressed...
Widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation, has been proposed as a means of limiting groundwater over-exploitation, especially in the intensively farmed and water-stressed...
This paper uses a unique data set with 1.1 million customer transactions from a microfinance institution in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2017 to 2018. The paper provides evidence of assortative...
This paper explores heterogeneity in soil quality, lack of knowledge, and autonomy as explanations for the low adoption of improved agricultural practices. The paper uses data from a randomized field experiment...
What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David...
Input subsidy programs (ISP) often have two conflicting targeting goals: selecting individuals with the highest marginal return to inputs on efficiency grounds, or the poorest individuals on equity grounds...
This paper provides new evidence of factors, other than GDP per capita, that correlate with the development of insurance markets. Based on 20 years of insurance premium data from 180 countries, and a similar...
Fifty-three percent of subjects who owned a high-fee account with a local bank in Malawi did not switch to a new, lower-fee account when given the choice. In contrast, holders of high-fee accounts who...
This paper uses a randomized controlled trial to study the effects of access to agent banking. Individuals were encouraged to open an account and transact at a banking agent or a branch of a financial...
This paper uses a randomized community development program in rural Pakistan to assess the impact of citizen engagement on the quality of public health services. The program had a strong emphasis on organizing...
In many emerging democracies women are less likely to vote than men and, when they do vote, are likely to follow the wishes of male household and clan heads. We assess the impact of a voter awareness campaign...
The impact of performance pay in institutions with multiple goals depends on complementarities in the disutility cost of effort and how different tasks interact to achieve each goal. Workers of a mission-oriented...
Financial consumers often fail to compare across different products and do not choose the most cost-effective product or the one most suitable to their needs. This is because the decision of which product...