Smaller projects by leading experts or up-and-coming scholars in important sub-fields.
In areas with poor access to formal financial institutions, informal organizations often develop to provide financial services to their members. Emmanuel Maliti’s research uses survey data both from those institutions and their individual members to empirically analyze the effects of socio-economic dynamics on cooperation within Village Community Banks (VICOBAs), informal financial...
This project builds on the intriguing conclusions that Chandrasekhar, Kinnan and Larreguy discovered in a 2009 study of the impact of new...
The Mexican government is planning to pay all conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs by direct deposit into savings accounts opened for this purpose under beneficiaries’ names. Specifically, the Mexican CCT program, called OPORTUNIDADES, will pay beneficiaries by depositing bimonthly cash transfers into savings accounts managed by Bansefi, a public micro-...
Researchers Carlos Serrano, Saide Aranzazu Salazar-Altamirano and Sirenia Vazquez Baez, of Mexico's Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV), attempt to better understand Mexico's savings and financial intermediation systems.
Current data on intermediation and...
Esteban Puentes’ research project studies the interaction of the financial sector and entrepreneurship in Chile. Despite the high growth in the last 20 years, financial access is still limited, especially to formal savings opportunities. For instance, only 14% of households overall have a savings account and only 4% of the poorest households do.
In his CFSP project,...
The questions explored by Warren Weber in this research project emerged from the May 2011 CFSP Workshop on the Optimal Design of Payment Systems.
Weber’s work suggests that early U.S. payment systems may have similarities with today's emerging payment systems in developing countries. By examining the historical example of the...
Tae Jeong Lee’s research examines the remarkable economic growth of South Korea and Taiwan from 1951 through 2007. During this period, the average annual growth rate of real GDP of Taiwan was 7.5%, and that of Korea was 6.8%. In addition, Korea and Taiwan were able to reduce overall poverty and maintain a highly equitable...
In developed countries, technologies, such as savings reminders and automatic enrollment in retirement savings plans, help individuals overcome common obstacles to meeting their savings goals; however, in developing countries, these solutions are far harder to implement, especially for poor and rural clients.
Emily Breza's research project explores how...