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Lore Vandewalle
Lore Vandewalle is a Professor of Economics at KU Leuven. She is also a part-time professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research mainly focuses on financial inclusion, micro-enterprise development and gender in India, Bangladesh and Uganda. She has also worked on political reservations and public good provision in India.
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Why political competition matters when inequality is high
In a high-inequality setting, local politicians with secure positions may favour the rich by diverting resources towards them, at the cost of the poor. To test this hypothesis, this article analyses data from rural India, and demonstrates that lower political competition worsens the impact of inequality on public provisioning as well as developmental outcomes such as infant mortality.
Socially disadvantaged groups and microfinance in India
The benefits of microfinance are in the details. This column takes a look at lending by commercial banks in India to self-help groups – smaller, informal community-based groups – as a new and successful microfinance initiative. Different ways of thinking about getting credit to the poorest and most marginalised in society can work, but only if the institutions are properly geared up for their customers
Can bank account-based payments boost savings?
?The Finance Ministry plans to focus on mobilising savings in the next phase of PMJDY, the financial inclusion scheme. This column presents results from an experiment in Chhattisgarh, which tests whether the method of payment of wages and other transfers affects household finances. It finds that people that are paid through their bank account save more than those that are paid in cash.