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Survey Data from "Is Digital Credit Filling a Hole or Digging a Hole? Evidence from Malawi"

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Survey Data from "Is Digital Credit Filling a Hole or Digging a Hole? Evidence from Malawi"
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/X5UR2C
 
Creator Valentina Brailovskaya
Pascaline Dupas
Jonathan Robinson
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description This package contains the survey data and documentation for “Is Digital Credit
Filling a Hole or Digging a Hole? Evidence from Malawi,” by Valentina
Brailovskaya, Pascaline Dupas, and Jonathan Robinson. It contains data collected
in Malawi between the Fall of 2019 and the Spring of 2020, as well as the survey
instruments used to collect it. For more information, please see the readme. The abstract of the paper is as follows:
"Digital credit has expanded rapidly in Africa, with opaque loan terms amidst low consumer financial literacy. Rich data from Malawi shows substantial demand for a digital loan with a base interest rate of 10% over 15 days, yet most borrowers are not aware of loan terms, repay late and incur substantial late fees. Regression discontinuity analyses show no evidence that access to small digital loans harms consumers’ perceived well-being. A short, randomized, phone-based financial literacy intervention improved knowledge but did not increase timely loan repayment, and modestly
increased loan demand, ultimately increasing the likelihood of ever defaulting.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Finance
 
Date 2023-06-20
 
Contributor Cavanagh, Jack
 
Relation Beyond the two datasets contained in this package, the team used four other data sources that are not publicly available:
- Administrative data from Airtel:
- Their “Know-Your-Customer” database (basic and demographic information)
- Mobile money transaction data from the period before credit scoring occurred
- Kutchova loan data for every loan within the study period
- Credit scores from a separate credit-scoring firm.
For more information on the data sources please see section 2.2 of the associated paper.
 
Type Sample survey data