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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Muhammad Meki
09 April, 2025
- Articles
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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Nidhi Aggarwal
Tirtha Chatterjee
Karan Sehgal
27 February, 2025
- Articles
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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Radhika Pandey
Ila Patnaik
Rajeswari Sengupta
21 February, 2025
- Perspectives
Formally insuring the informally insured
Rainfall is critical for the livelihoods of millions of Indians – yet many have no formal insurance if the rains fail. This column looks at what happens when a new formal insurance policy based on t...
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Mushfiq Mobarak
16 November, 2012
- Articles
Microfinance and predatory lending: The same old story?
Once hailed as a near-miraculous way of lending money to the poor, microfinance is now often seen as exploitation – and governments are stepping in. This column looks at another point in India’s h...
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Latika Chaudhary
Anand Swamy
19 October, 2012
- Articles
Financial Intermediation and Economic Growth in Bihar: A District-Level Analysis
The aim of the project was to assess the effectiveness of the banking sector's contribution to the overall development in Bihar. In a nutshell, the study tries to understand the efficiency of the bank...
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Sanjay Banerji
Krishna Gangopadhyay
Sushanta Mallick
18 July, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Note on Reserve Currencies
This project examines the likelihood that the current reserve currencies will retain their status in the near future, given the persistence in the composition of reserve holdings. However, due to pauc...
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Menzie Chinn
01 April, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Role of Derivatives in India's Financial Development
The annals of financial history are littered with stories of corporations and financial institutions which collapsed when a deterioration in market conditions led to massive losses in the derivatives ...
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Rangarajan K. Sundaram
01 April, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Household Finance in India
How does mortgage regulation influence the structure and performance of housing finance? This project answers the question by analysing administrative data on over 1.2 million loans originated by an I...
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John Campbell
Tarun Ramadorai
31 March, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Selling Formal Insurance to the Informally Insured
Agricultural activity is inherently risky, and smoothing consumption across years or seasons is a significant challenge for agrarian households in developing countries.
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Mushfiq Mobarak
Mark Rosenzweig
01 November, 2011
- IGC Research on India
State Ownership and Systemic Risk: Evidence from the Indian Financial Sector During 2007-09
The study analyses the performance of banks in India during 2007-09 in order to study the impact of ownership structure on bank vulnerability to a crisis.
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Viral Acharya
Nirupama Kulkarni
01 April, 2011
- IGC Research on India
Improving Access to Finance for Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries
One of the most important issues in developing countries is how to finance small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Although microcredit and new forms of financial inclusion are increasingly prominent in ...
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Shawn Cole
Leora Klapper
31 March, 2011
- IGC Research on India
Long Run-Effects of Repayment Flexibility in Microfinance: Evidence from India
Financiers across the world structure debt contracts to limit the risk of entrepreneurial lending. But debt structures that reduce risk may inhibit enterprise growth, especially among the poor.
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Erica Field
Rohini Pande
John Papp
Natalia Rigol
01 February, 2010
- IGC Research on India
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost 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...
Kuntala Bandyopadhyay
Saon Ray
Vasundhara Thakur
31 August, 2020
- Articles
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...
K. Srinivasa Rao
11 July, 2018
- Perspectives
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...
Rajeswari Sengupta
Harsh Vardhan
15 November, 2021
- Perspectives