Business Training for Microfinance Clients: How it Matters and for Whom?

We measure the impact of a business training program for female microentrepreneur clients of a group banking program in Peru. Using the credit with education model, we assigned clients randomly to either treatment or control groups. Treatment groups received thirty to sixty minute entrepreneurship training sessions during their normal weekly group banking meeting. These lasted between one to two years. Control groups remained as they were before, meeting weekly with the group banking program solely for making loan and savings payments. We find that intention to treat (ITT) led to higher repayment and client retention rates for the microfinance institution, improved business knowledge, and practices. More importantly, average business sales revenues also increase while revenues fluctuations were reduced. In addition, we find significant heterogeneity in the exposure of clients within the treatment group. Treatment on the treated (TOT) estimates, obtained using ITT as instrumental variable, show substantially larger effects.Microfinance, business training, adult education

Learning about Oneself: The Effects of Performance Feedback on School Choice

We design and implement a field experiment that provides students from less advantaged backgrounds with individualized feedback on performance in a mock version of the admission exam used to ration seats in public high schools in Mexico City. The intervention reduces the gap between expected and actual performance and shrinks the variance of individual ability distributions. Guided by a simple model in which Bayesian agents choose school tracks based on their perceived ability distribution, we empirically document the interplay between variance reductions and mean changes of beliefs in shaping curricular choices. The shift in stated preferences over high school tracks enabled by the intervention affects admission outcomes within the assignment mechanism, with students who score higher in the mock test being assigned into more academically-oriented options

Self-Perceptions about Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mexico City

A growing body of evidence suggests that people exhibit large biases when processing information about themselves, but less is known about the underlying inference process. This paper studies belief updating patterns regarding academic ability in a large sample of students transitioning from middle to highschool in Mexico City. The analysis takes advantage of rich and longitudinal data on subjective beliefs together with randomized feedback about individual perfor-mance on an achievement test. On average, the performance feedback reduces the relative role of priors on posteriors and shifts substantial probability masstoward the signal. Further evidence reveals that males and high-socioeconomic status students tend to process new information on their own ability more effectively

Perceived Ability and School Choices

This paper studies how youths’ self-perceptions of ability affect their sorting patterns across schools. We design and implement a field experiment in which ninth-graders from less advantaged backgrounds in Mexico City are provided with individualized feedback about their performance on an achievement test. The treatment shifts both the mean and the variance of the subjective distributions of academic ability. This variation is embedded into a discrete choice model that characterizes the channels through which perceived ability shapes individual preferences over school characteristics. Follow-up data on schooling outcomes suggest that the information intervention improved the match between students and education choices

The costs of employment protection

India has some of the more restrictive labour laws in the world. However, these laws cover only the organised sector. Thus, firms thinking of growing in size and becoming formal must weigh the advantages of size against the disadvantages of regulation. This keeps Indian firms small and informal unless they have a lot to lose by staying small, that is, when they are very good indeed. This, it is argued, results in a disproportionately large share of smaller, less productive firms, many of which operate in the informal sector, which employs nearly 90% of the Indian workforce. This makes sense given the uneven protection of employment across formal and informal sectors, with the latter being virtually unregulated. Strict labour laws may also result in very few large firms concentrating most of the total market production, as these regulations act as a barrier to becoming large

Neandertals and modern humans in Western Asia.

Edited by Takeru Akazawa, Kenichi Aoki, and Ofer Bar-Yosef. 1998. New York: Plenum Press. 552 pp. ISBN 0-306-45924-8. $79.50 (cloth).Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/34265/1/10_ftp.pd

Perceived Ability and School Choices: Experimental Evidence and Scale-up Effects

This paper studies an information intervention designed and implemented in the context of a school assignment mechanism in Mexico City. We find that providing students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds with feedback about their academic performance contributes to placing applicants in schools that better fit their skills, allowing them to graduate on time from high school at a higher rate. We also quantify the effect of a counterfactual and yet feasible implementation of the information intervention at a much larger scale. Simulation results demonstrate substantial heterogeneity in the demandside responses, which trigger sorting and displacement patterns within the assignment mechanism. The equilibrium effects of the intervention may possibly hinder the subsequent academic trajectories of high-achieving and socio-economically disadvantaged students

Can a Mobile-App-Based Behavioral Intervention Teach Financial Skills to Youth? Experimental Evidence from a Financial Diaries Study

We study the impact of a mobile-app-based behavioral intervention on youth's financial literacy and financial behavior. To maximize the chances to reach out-of-school youth, we provided access to a user-friendly budget recording tool coupled with biweekly enumerators' visits and SMSs during a 27-week period. The bundled treatment has positive and significant effects on financial literacy and awareness of market prices. The probability of saving and savings deposits are not affected, but usage of credit increases both at the extensive and intensive margins. Average treatment effects on financial literacy and behavior are driven by youth without previous exposure to financial education, suggesting that the bundled intervention prompted specific subgroups (i.e., youth with lower levels of financial knowledge) to invest more in financial literacy