As part of Columbia University's Spring 2023 Development Workshop, Lori Beaman presented "Rural Finance, Agriculture and Households in Mali" at the Development Seminar.
Abstract:
We use a multi-arm experiment in Mali to shed light on investments decisions in agriculture. There are two main components of the experiment: there is a two-stage experiment designed to test whether households with high returns to capital are efficiently sorted to loans when microfinance is offered. Both cash grants and loans are disbursed as part of the experimental design. The second component of the experiment provided cash grants to men or women (randomly) within households.