Research

Articles

• Somville, V. and L. Vandewalle (2023), Access to Banking, Savings and Consumption Smoothing in Rural India, Journal of Public Economics, 223. 

Media coverage: Faculti 

• Cassan, G and L. Vandewalle (2021), Identities and Public Policies: Unintended Effects of Political Reservations for Women in India, World Development, 143.

Media coverage: Ideas for India

Data

• Mehrotra, R., V. Somville and L. Vandewalle (2021), Increasing Trust in the Bank to Enhance Savings: Experimental Evidence from India, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 69(2): 623-644.

Data

• Baland, J.-M., R. Somanathan and L. Vandewalle (2019), Socially Disadvantaged Groups and Microfinance in India, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 67(3): 537-569.

Media coverage: Ideas for India, VOX

• Somville, V. and L. Vandewalle (2018), Saving by Default: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Rural India, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(3): 39-66.

Media coverage: Ideas for India, VOX

Data

• Vandewalle, L. (2017), The Role of Accountants in Indian Self-Help Groups: A Trade-off between Financial and Non-Financial Benefits,  World Development, 93: 177-192.

• Casini, P., L. Vandewalle and Z. Wahhaj (2017), Public Good Provision in Indian Rural Areas: The Returns to Collective Action by Microfinance Groups. World Bank Economic Review, 31(1): 97-128.

Media coverage: NewsReach (May-June 2012)

• Baland, J.-M., R. Somanathan and L. Vandewalle  (2008), Microfinance Lifespans: A Study of Attrition and Exclusion in Self-Help Groups in India.  India Policy Forum, vol. 4: 159-210.

Book chapter

• Ray, D., S. Subramanian and L. Vandewalle  (2021), India's Lockdown, in The COVID-19 Pandemic, India and the World: Economic and Social Policy Perspectives. Routledge India.

Also Published in India and the Pandemic: The First Year, Essays from the India Forum. Orient Blackswan.

Media coverage: CEPR Policy Insight No. 102, Counterview, India Forum, VoxEU

Working Papers

• Childcare, Labor Supply, and Business Development: Experimental Evidence from Uganda, with Kjetil Bjorvatn, Denise Ferris, Selim Gulesci, Arne Nasgowitz and Vincent Somville (Conditionally accepted - American Economic Journal: Applied Economics).

In a field experiment in Uganda, mothers of young children are randomly offered a childcare subsidy, an equivalent cash grant, both or nothing. Childcare leads to a 44 percent increase in household income, which is at least as large as the impact of the cash grant and driven by an increase in mothers' business revenues and fathers' wage earnings. The childcare subsidy also improves child development while the cash grant does not. Overall, our findings demonstrate that childcare subsidies can be an effective policy to simultaneously promote child development and reduce poverty in a low-income context.

• Political Competition over Life and Death - Infant mortality and social provision in India, with Anders Kjelsrud and Kalle Moene (R&R - Journal of Human Resources).

We argue that economic inequality harms social provision to the poor, but that higher political competition can mitigate this effect. We test this hypothesis using a large redistricting of electoral boundaries in India. Higher economic inequality leads to more post-neonatal infant deaths, but only in situations with a lack of political competition. We assert that the effect on mortality operates via changes in social provision at the local level. Indeed, inequality leads to worse performance of public health care and a weaker provision of the workfare program MGNREGA -- but only in situations with little political competition.

• Inequality and Social Unrest in India, with Mathieu Couttenier and Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti (Submitted).

We show that inequality triggers social unrest in rural India. We develop a theoretical framework where social unrest is rationally used by civilians to oppose (unfair) surplus sharing by the elite. We predict that the probability of observing social unrest in a village increases with the sum of distances between the (log) average and the lowest incomes.  We bring our measure to the data using bank account details in 2,197 Indian villages. We document that a 10% increase in our inequality measure increases by 6.5% the unconditional probability of observing social unrest in a village in a given month.

• The Effect of Gender-Targeted Transfers: Experimental Evidence from India, with Ingvild Almas and Vincent Somville (Submitted).

Women are the primary recipients of many welfare programs around the world. This gendered targeting is backed by claims that women make better consumption choices than men, but the empirical evidence is scarce. We report from an experiment designed to study the effect of such gendered targeting: in each household, weekly cash transfers were randomly allocated to a man or a woman. We combine the randomized transfers with detailed financial diaries to measure the households’ economic decisions. Our precise estimates suggest no difference in consumption, saving or nutrition in households with female rather than male recipients.

Work in Progress

• Customer Knowledge and the Price-Quality Gradient, with Julia Cajal-Grossi and Christopher Woodruff.

• Male Emigration and Gender Discrimination in Remittance-Receiving Indian Households, with Abhishek Chakravarty, Selim Gulesci and Chinmay Tumbe.

Field Projects (Ongoing)

• Private Sector Development in Low Income Economies, with Julia Cajal-Grossi, Jonathan Morduch and Christopher Woodruff  (2021-2024).

  • • The project aims to enhance the knowledge about small firms in low income economies. For a period of six months we will gather high-frequency data in Uganda. Based on the insights from analyzing the high-frequency data we will design and test an intervention.

    • Funded by MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth,  Argidius Foundation and the Gates Foundation. Additional funding received through the International Growth Centre (IGC).

• Enhancing the Effectiveness of Vocational Education in Vietnam, with Smriti Sharma, Saurabh Singhal, Finn Tarp and Diego Ubfal (2020-2022) - Postponed with one year.

  • • The project aims to improve the performance of vocational colleges in Vietnam. Through pilot surveys, we identified two key challenges. We designed interventions to address these challenges and will test those using a randomized control trial.

    • Funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

• Engaging Women in Mobile Money Markets, with Xavier Giné and Jessica Goldberg (2019-2022) - Postponed with three years.

  • • We work with bKash, the largest provider of mobile financial services in Bangladesh to incentivize the expansion of their female agent network. To do so, agents will receive a subsidy to hire either a man or a woman to help with the bKash business. We will use administrative data from bKash to understand the performance of male versus female providers of financial services. We will also study if employer beliefs change as a result of being exposed to working with a female.

    • Funded by the Gates Foundation and Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL)

• Impact of e-KYC on Access to Finance: Evidence from Bangladesh, with Xavier Giné and Jessica Goldberg (2018-2021).

  • • We will evaluate the reduction in transaction costs and its impact on deepening financial inclusion in Bangladesh, where the network of banking agents is expanding rapidly.

    • Funded by DIME and the Swiss National Science Foundation

Field Projects (Finalized)

• Child Care for Childhood and Business Development, with Kjetil Bjorvatn, Selim Gulesci, and Vincent Somville (2018-2022).

  • • We study the impact of a childcare subsidy, an equivalent cash grant, or both on household members' labour market outcomes, earnings, family well-being and child development.

    • Funded by the Research Council of Norway, Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL) and the Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries Programme  (G2LM-LIC)

• The Short-Term Effects of the Covid-19 Lockdown on Rural Communties In India, with Ashwini Deshpande, Joshua Merfeld, Vijayendra Rao and Kritika Saxena  (2020).

  • • We collect data from SHG members, local government officials, police officers and health workers to better understand policy implementation and coordination issues during the pandemic.

    • Funded by the International Growth Centre (IGC)

• Savings Behaviour and the Introduction of Mobile Banking in India, with Vincent Somville (2013-2016).

  • • In India, a significant proportion of the households, especially in rural areas, are outside the coverage of the formal banking system. But recent advances in mobile technology provide an opportunity to easily expand the access to formal financial services. People can use mobile phones to save, transfer money to other users and receive payments from the government. Together with our partner, Basix Sub-K, we set-up various randomized controled trials that allow us to address gaps in research on the financial lives of the poor.

    • Funded by the Research Council of Norway

• Self-Help Groups: Group Action Study, with Paolo Casini (09/2010 - 10/2010).

  • • The aim of this study is to measure the influence of collective actions undertaken by SHGs on the provision of public goods in their villages. Therefore, we did a detailed survey of all the SHGs that the NGO PRADAN created in Odisha, India, and of the villages in which the SHGs meet.

    • Funded by the CRED

• Self-Help Groups: Performance Study, with Jean-Marie Baland and Rohini Somanathan (04/2006 - 04/2008).

  • • Self-Help Groups are the dominant institutional form of microfinance in India. We conducted a large field survey on SHGs created by the NGO PRADAN to understand the reasons behind the rapid development of some groups, and the failures or stagnation of others.

    • Funded by FUCID