Finance

J-PAL’s Finance sector measures the impact of financial services, products, and process innovations, and tries to understand how access to financial services can be used as a mechanism to reduce poverty and spur economic development.

Low-income households need effective financial tools to help manage and grow their money. Yet many of the financial services they can access are costly, unsafe, or not well-suited to their needs. To support financial inclusion efforts around the world, the Financial Inclusion Program at IPA partners with service providers, governments, and researchers to design and rigorously test financial services and programs encouraging healthy financial behavior among the poor.

In addition to supporting policymakers in applying evidence from randomized evaluations to their work, sector chairs and staff write policy insights that synthesize general lessons emerging from the research and condense results from evaluations in policy publications and evaluation summaries

News

Lessons from GST for eliminating the Rs1 trillion lying around as float

Research by J-PAL affiliates found that improvements to the method for transferring public benefits in India reduced program expenditure by 24%.

News

Why Is It So Hard to Talk about Money?

J-PAL affiliate Dina Pomeranz and coauthors found that peer groups helped Chilean micro-entrepreneurs save more.

News

12-year study looks at effects of universal basic income

J-PAL affiliates and coauthors are launching a randomized evaluation of universal basic income in Kenya.

Evaluation

Graduating Microenterprises to SME-level Credit

Previous research found that microcredit does not substantially improve borrowers’ income or social well-being, but less evidence exists on the impact of larger loans.

Sector Chairs

Co-Chair, Finance

Associate Professor

Harvard University

Sector Contacts

Headshot of Michael Hou

Policy Associate, J-PAL Global

Tyler Spencer

Senior Policy Associate, J-PAL Global