Evaluating the distributive impacts of a micro-credit intervention

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First author draft
Date
2021-06
DOI
Authors
Mookherjee, Dilip
Maitra, Pushkar
Mitra, Sandip
Visaria, Sujata
Version
First author draft
OA Version
Citation
D. Mookherjee, P. Maitra, S. Mitra, S. Visaria. "Evaluating the Distributive Impacts of a Micro-Credit Intervention."
Abstract
Most analyses of randomized controlled trials of development interventions estimate an average treatment effect. However, the aggregate impact on welfare also depends on distributional effects. We propose a simple approach to evaluate efficiency-equity trade-offs, that follow in the utilitarian tradition of Atkinson (1970). The method does not impose additional assumptions or data requirements beyond those needed to estimate the average treatment effect. We illustrate the approach using data from a credit delivery experiment we implemented in West Bengal, India.
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This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license.