Banking the World Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion

Experts report on the latest research on extending access to financial services to the 2.5 billion adults around the world who lack it.

About 2.5 billion adults, just over half the world's adult population, lack bank accounts. If we are to realize the goal of extending banking and other financial services to this vast “unbanked” population, we need to consider not only such product innovations as microfinance and mobile banking but also issues of data accuracy, impact assessment, risk mitigation, technology adaptation, financial literacy, and local context. In Banking the World, experts take up these topics, reporting on new research that will guide both policy makers and scholars in a broader push to extend financial markets.
 
The contributors consider such topics as the complexity of surveying people about their use of financial services; evidence of the impact of financial services on income; the occasional negative effects of financial services on poor households, including disincentives to work and overindebtedness; and tools for improving access such as nontraditional credit scores, financial incentives for banking, and identification technologies that can dramatically reduce loan default rates.

Robert Cull is a Lead Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. Asli Demirgüç-Kunt is Director of Development Policy in the World Bank's Development Economics Vice Presidency and Chief Economist of the Financial and Private Sector Development Network (FPD). She is the coeditor of Financial Structures and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Comparison of Banks, Markets, and Development (MIT Press, 2001). Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He is the coauthor of The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press) and Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day.

1 Introduction: Banking the World 1
 Robert Cull, Asl ı Demirg ü ç -Kunt, and Jonathan Morduch
 I Where Are We Now? 17
 2 Half the World Is Unbanked 19
 Alberto Chaia, Aparna Dalal, Tony Goland,
Maria Jose Gonzalez, Jonathan Morduch, and Robert Schiff
 II Better Data 43
 3 Cause and Effect of Financial Access: Cross-Country
Evidence from the FinScope Surveys 45
 Patrick Honohan and Michael King
 4 How to Ask Households about Financial Services:
Experimental Evidence from Ghana and Timor-Leste 85
 Robert Cull and Kinnon Scott
 5 Going with the Flow: Measuring Financial Usage in Poor
Households 109
 Daryl Collins
 III Creating Impact 135
 6 The Economic Impact of Expanding Access to Finance in
Mexico 137
 Miriam Bruhn and Inessa Love
 7 Finance and Hunger: Empirical Evidence of the Agricultural
Productivity Channel 157
 Stijn Claessens and Erik Feijen
vi Contents
 8 Entrepreneurial Finance in the Western Balkans:
Characteristics of the Newly Self-Employed in Albania,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia 211
 Asl ı Demirg ü ç -Kunt, Leora F. Klapper, and Georgios A. Panos
 IV Cautionary Tales 265
 9 The Impact of International Remittances on Income, Work
Efforts, Poverty, and Inequality: Evidence from Vietnam
Household Living Standard Surveys 267
 Nguyen Viet Cuong, Marrit van den Berg, and Robert Lensink
 10 Mortgage Finance in Central and Eastern Europe —
 Opportunity or Burden? 305
 Thorsten Beck, Katie Kibuuka, and Erwin R. Tiongson
 V More than Products 391
 11 Measuring Personality Traits and Predicting Loan Default
with Experiments and Surveys 393
 Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Omar Robles
 12 Valuing Financial Literacy 415
 Shawn Cole, Thomas Sampson, and Bilal Zia
 13 Use of Biometric Technology in Developing Countries 429
 Xavier Gin é , Jessica Goldberg, Shalini Sankaranarayanan,
Peter Sheerin, and Dean Yang
 14 Accessing Credit from Banks, Microfinance Institutions, and
Informal Groups: What Is the Role of Social Capital? 447
 Anni Heikkil ä , Panu Kalmi, and Olli-Pekka Ruuskanen
 VI Conclusion 467
 15 Ten Research Questions 469
 Jonathan Morduch
 Contributors 483
 Index 485