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Money & Finance

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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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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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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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...

  • 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...

  • 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 ...

  • 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...

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 ...

  • 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.

  • IGC Research on India

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Columbia Business School

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Muhammad Meki

University of Oxford

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Indian Institute of Management Udaipur

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Tirtha Chatterjee

Jindal School of Government and Public Policy

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Boston College

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Aditya Birla Group

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Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research

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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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