The Controversial Effects of Microfinance on Child Schooling: A Retrospective Approach

I rapporti di ricerca illustrano i risultati dei singoli progetti annuali o pluriennali condotti da Euricse.

Two crucial problems when research agencies or donors need to asses empirically the microfinance/children education nexus on already operating organizations are lack of availability of panel data and selection bias. We propose an original approach which tackles these problems by combining retrospective panel data, fixed effects and comparison between pre and post-treatment trends. The relative advantage of our approach vis-à-vis standard cross-sectional estimates (and even panels with just two observations repeated in time) is that it allows to analyse the progressive effects of microfinance on borrowers.