Blogs

In 2010, when I was role-playing with classmates in a graduate school Negotiations course, I never thought I would soon be facilitating a similar program in a secondary school in Zambia.

Actual Africans would live in villages designed by economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Those villagers would wear wholesome hand-made ethnic clothing, dance to wholesome ethnic music and during the day they would grow food communally and engage in things called income-generating activities.

For our own protection, American peacekeepers and Nato planes would surround the villages - making hearts and minds happy and safe.

There is a pithy adage that every simple question has a complicated answer.

Today's NYTimes draws attention to how Zimbabweans are spending so much time waiting around for change -- not change of the political nature this time, the NYTimes notes, but change--small money--for any simple purchase.

This blog series highlights the US Household Finance Initiative's Innovation Fund grantees. The fund supports the development of scalable, market-tested products that help households make better financial decisions, escape cycles of debt, build assets and achieve financial resiliency.

“Has anyone in your family had cholera in the last 6 months?” the surveyor asks. “Yes. Five. Wait, no, six” the head of the household responds. Another family member sitting on the front step of their straw-thatched hut chimes in, “No, no, it’s seven.”

On Friday, Brooke Berman and I represented IPA’s U.S. Household Finance Initiative (USHFI) at the New York Stock Exchange’s closing bell ceremony. The event followed a panel on “Ensuring Consumers' Financial Success through Innovation and Technology” as part of Financial Literacy Week (April 9-13).

This blog was originally posted on the Impatient Optimists blog of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for World Water Day.

This blog series highlights the randomized trial of the impact of Compartamos, a for-profit microlender in Mexico, and their expansion in the Nogales area. The questions came from the original post here.

Outcome measure: Is there substitution between use of Compartamos (Crédito Mujer) and informal lending/savings mechanisms?

This blog series highlights the US Household Finance Initiative's Innovation Fund grantees. The fund supports the development of scalable, market-tested products that help households make better financial decisions, escape cycles of debt, build assets and achieve financial resiliency.