IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/10146.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

(Measured) Profit is Not Welfare: Evidence from an Experiment on Bundling Microcredit and Insurance

Author

Listed:
  • Banerjee, Abhijit
  • Duflo, Esther

Abstract

We investigate the puzzle of microfinance: that loans generate large measured returns for businesses, yet loan take-up is low and the businesses often close. We analyze a randomized trial that bundled microfinance loans with a cheap health insurance policy. Requiring clients to purchase insurance substantially lowered loan renewal. The insurance was useless, due to administrative failures, but reduced loan renewal negatively impacted clients? businesses. Clients' decision to incur substantial business losses, rather than pay modest insurance premiums, implies the substantial financial gains from microfinance loans are dissipated by unmeasured costs and provide little net value to microfinance clients.

Suggested Citation

  • Banerjee, Abhijit & Duflo, Esther, 2014. "(Measured) Profit is Not Welfare: Evidence from an Experiment on Bundling Microcredit and Insurance," CEPR Discussion Papers 10146, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10146
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP10146
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro Tarozzi & Jaikishan Desai & Kristin Johnson, 2015. "The Impacts of Microcredit: Evidence from Ethiopia," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 54-89, January.
    2. Dean Karlan & Jonathan Zinman, 2010. "Expanding Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 433-464, January.
    3. Bruno Crépon & Florencia Devoto & Esther Duflo & William Parienté, 2015. "Estimating the Impact of Microcredit on Those Who Take It Up: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Morocco," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 123-150, January.
    4. Dean Karlan, Jonathan Zinman, 2013. "Long-Run Price Elasticities of Demand for Credit: Evidence from a Countrywide Field Experiment in Mexico-Working Paper 331," Working Papers 331, Center for Global Development.
    5. Dean Karlan & Jonathan Zinman, 2019. "Long-Run Price Elasticities of Demand for Credit: Evidence from a Countrywide Field Experiment in Mexico," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(4), pages 1704-1746.
    6. Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo & Richard Hornbeck, 2014. "Bundling Health Insurance and Microfinance in India: There Cannot Be Adverse Selection If There Is No Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 291-297, May.
    7. Dow, W & Gertly, P & Schoeni, R-F & Strauss, J & Thomas, D, 1997. "Health Care Prices, Health and Labor Outcomes : Experimental Evidence," Papers 97-01, RAND - Labor and Population Program.
    8. Rebecca L. Thornton & Laurel E. Hatt & Erica M. Field & Mursaleena Islam & Freddy Solís Diaz & Martha Azucena González, 2010. "Social security health insurance for the informal sector in Nicaragua: a randomized evaluation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(S1), pages 181-206, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Tetsuya Kaji, 2019. "Asymptotic Theory of $L$-Statistics and Integrable Empirical Processes," Papers 1910.07572, arXiv.org.
    2. Neuberger, Doris, 2015. "Financial Inclusion, Regulation, and Education in Germany," ADBI Working Papers 530, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    3. Riekhof, Marie-Catherine, 2019. "The insurance premium in the interest rates of interlinked loans in a small-scale fishery," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 87-112, February.
    4. Swati M. Dhawan & Kim Wilson & Hans-Martin Zademach, 2022. "Formal Micro-Credit for Refugees: New Evidence and Thoughts on an Elusive Path to Self-Reliance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-21, August.
    5. Craig McIntosh & Felix Povel & Elisabeth Sadoulet, 2019. "Utility, Risk and Demand for Incomplete Insurance: Lab Experiments with Guatemalan Co-Operatives," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(622), pages 2581-2607.
    6. Visser, Martine & Jumare, Hafsah & Brick, Kerri, 2020. "Risk preferences and poverty traps in the uptake of credit and insurance amongst small-scale farmers in South Africa," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 826-836.
    7. Gallenstein, Richard & Flatnes, Jon Einar & Dougherty, John & Mishra, Khushbu & Miranda, Mario & Sam, Abdoul, 2017. "The Impact of Index Insurance and Joint Liability on Borrowing and Risk Taking among Smallholder Farmers: Evidence from a Framed Field Experiment in Tanzania," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 259210, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. 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.
    2. Daniel Bjorkegren & Joshua Blumenstock & Omowunmi Folajimi-Senjobi & Jacqueline Mauro & Suraj R. Nair, 2022. "Instant Loans Can Lift Subjective Well-Being: A Randomized Evaluation of Digital Credit in Nigeria," Papers 2202.13540, arXiv.org.
    3. Czura, Kristina, 2015. "Do flexible repayment schedules improve the impact of microcredit?," Discussion Papers in Economics 26608, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    4. Karlan, Dean & Osman, Adam & Zinman, Jonathan, 2016. "Follow the money not the cash: Comparing methods for identifying consumption and investment responses to a liquidity shock," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 11-23.
    5. Nakano, Yuko & Magezi, Eustadius F., 2020. "The impact of microcredit on agricultural technology adoption and productivity: Evidence from randomized control trial in Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    6. Bernardus Van Doornik & Armando Gomes & David Schoenherr & Janis Skrastins, 2024. "Financial Access and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Credit Lotteries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(6), pages 1854-1881, June.
    7. Francisco J. Buera & Joseph P. Kaboski & Yongseok Shin, 2020. "Taking Stock of the Evidence on Microfinancial Interventions," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 102(2), pages 173-202, May.
    8. João Paulo Coelho Ribeiro & Fábio Duarte & Ana Paula Matias Gama, 2022. "Does microfinance foster the development of its clients? A bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-35, December.
    9. Inna Cintina & Inessa Love, 2014. "The Miracle of Microfinance Revisited: Evidence from Propensity Score Matching," Working Papers 201424, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    10. Bernardus F Nazar Van Doornik & Armando Gomes & David Schoenherr & Janis Skrastins, 2023. "Financial access and labor market outcomes: evidence from credit lotteries," BIS Working Papers 1071, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Masselus, Lise & Petrik, Christina & Ankel-Peters, Jörg, 2024. "Lost in the design space? Construct validity in the microfinance literature," Ruhr Economic Papers 1097, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    12. Lau, Siew Yee & Parinduri, Rasyad & Lee, Yoong Hon, 2019. "Does Social Health Insurance Help Owners of Micro- and Small Firms Cope with Family Hardships? Evidence from Indonesia," MPRA Paper 95295, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Dahal, Mahesh & Fiala, Nathan, 2018. "What do we know about the impact of microfinance? The problems of power and precision," Ruhr Economic Papers 756, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    14. Julian Proctor & Paul Anand, 2017. "Is credit associated with a higher quality of life? A capability approach," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 17(4), pages 322-346, October.
    15. Aparajithan Venkateswaran & Anirudh Sankar & Arun G. Chandrasekhar & Tyler H. McCormick, 2024. "Robustly estimating heterogeneity in factorial data using Rashomon Partitions," Papers 2404.02141, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    16. Karlan, Dean & Knight, Ryan & Udry, Christopher, 2015. "Consulting and capital experiments with microenterprise tailors in Ghana," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 281-302.
    17. Bando, Rosangela & Uribe, Claudia, 2016. "Experimental Evidence on Credit Constraints," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7491, Inter-American Development Bank.
    18. Lucia Dalla Pellegrina & Giorgio Di Maio & Paolo Landoni & Emanuele Rusinà, 2021. "Money management and entrepreneurial training in microfinance: impact on beneficiaries and institutions," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(3), pages 1049-1085, October.
    19. Teresa Molina Millán & Karen Macours, 2017. "Attrition in randomized control trials: Using tracking information to correct bias," FEUNL Working Paper Series novaf:wp1702, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Economia.
    20. Emily Breza & Cynthia Kinnan, 2021. "Measuring the Equilibrium Impacts of Credit: Evidence from the Indian Microfinance Crisis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1447-1497.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Development; Health insurance; Microcredit; Microenterprises; Microfinance; Revealed preference; Welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:10146. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.