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Money & Finance

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Finance for small-firm growth: Towards flexibility and innovation

While microfinance contract innovations like repayment grace periods help small-firm owners, they can increase default rates for microfinance institutions. Based on field experiments in Pakistan and K...

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Do commodity derivatives suspensions rein in food price inflation?

Since December 2021, derivatives trading on seven agricultural commodities remains suspended, driven by concerns over excessive speculation and its potential impact on food prices. This article highli...

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RBI’s costly experiments with the currency

During 2023-2024, the average annual volatility of the rupee-dollar exchange rate was 1.8% – the lowest in over two decades. In this post, Patnaik, Pandey and Sengupta explain why sudden and sharp l...

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The Indian banking system: A ticking time bomb

In response to RBI’s call to accelerate the recognition of stressed assets, publicly traded banks in India added nearly Rs. 1 trillion in bad loans in the quarter ending December 2015. In this arti...

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Recapitalising public sector banks by disinvesting in RBI: Right and wrong

The Economic Survey 2015-16 put forth the argument that the Government of India could reduce its capital in the RBI from its current large level and use it to increase its capital in public sector ban...

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Achieving financial inclusion: Going cashless

A World Bank survey reveals that while about half of all individuals in India had bank accounts in 2014, only 12% had made a cashless transaction in the past year. In this article, Bappaditya Mukhopa...

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How doorstep banking increased savings and income in Sri Lanka

Recent findings in development economics indicate that microloans are likely to perform best when accompanied by financial education, insurance, and savings products. This column presents evidence fro...

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Increasing economic divide within backward castes

While the high level of socioeconomic inequality between the forward and backward caste groups in India is well documented, there is little research on inequalities within the backward caste groups. T...

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Financial inclusion for the poor: Using RCTs for effective programme design

While the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana – the Indian government’s flagship financial inclusion scheme - is impressive in its mission, it does not seem to have achieved meaningful results so far....

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When higher volatility is good news

Conventional wisdom suggests that access to financial services such as banks and bond markets, providing savings and borrowing instruments, allows smoothing consumption over lifetime, irrespective of...

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Cash to cashless

The RBI is in discussion with the government on ways to reduce cash usage in the economy and to promote the use of cashless instruments. This column presents results from a study that estimates the e...

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JAM and the pursuit of nirvana

The Finance Ministry is proposing to roll all subsidies into a single, lump-sum cash transfer to households, on the back of the JAM (Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar, Mobile numbers) trinity. In this article,...

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Foreign currency borrowing by Indian firms: What do we know?

As foreign currency borrowing by Indian firms has been increasing, concerns have surfaced about rising associated risks. Hence, recent policy changes seeking to make the regulatory regime simpler and...

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Are banks responsive to credit demand shocks in rural India?

The output of Kharif crops is estimated to decrease by about 2% this year due to deficient monsoon rains in some Indian states. How responsive are commercial banks to a credit demand shock in rural I...

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Emergence of Bandhan as a bank: A new era in the Indian banking industry

At a time when the Indian banking industry is experiencing a steep rise in bad loans, Bandhan – an MFI with a near 100% loan recovery rate – has converted into a bank. Based on a survey of 112 Ba...

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Most Popular Money & Finance Posts

India’s insurance sector: Challenges and opportunities

While India’s insurance sector has been growing dynamically in recent years, its share in the global insurance market remains abysmally low. This article traces the journey of the Indian insurance s...

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Financial inclusion in India: Progress and prospects

Financial inclusion is globally considered as a critical indicator of development and well-being of society. In this post, Srinivasa Rao traces the financial inclusion journey in India so far, and dis...

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Thinking about financial sector reforms in India

A key element of the economy that needs to function well in order to facilitate India’s strong and sustained recovery from the pandemic is the financial system. In this post, Sengupta and Vardhan d...

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