We study the impact of college openings and teaching modality on county-level COVID-19 cases and ... more We study the impact of college openings and teaching modality on county-level COVID-19 cases and deaths using the information of 745 U.S. colleges. We group the colleges by their teaching modes in the fall 2020 semester: in-person, online, and hybrid; and employ a logistic model and a gradient boosting algorithm to estimate the propensity scores for the three groups to adjust the pre-treatment imbalances of college and county-level covariates. We find that greater enrollments, individual mask policies, and fewer republican votes in the county are major predictors of adopting online or hybrid modes. Treatment effects provide evidence that college reopenings, especially with in-person teaching elements, increase daily new cases and deaths.
Bangladesh lagged in microfinance regulation until 2006 when it established Microcredit Regulator... more Bangladesh lagged in microfinance regulation until 2006 when it established Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA). So far, MRA has granted license to around 650 Microfinance Institutions (MFIs); and has been supervising them with prudential and non-prudential regulations. We assessed the impact of regulation on cost efficiency using from pre-regulation and post-regulation data of 182 MFIs. Panel data analyses robustly show that regulation improves cost efficiency; directly through changing behavior of the MFIs, and indirectly through increasing staff productivity and portfolio size. We found partners of PKSF—the wholesale lending agency in Bangladesh—and unsubsidized MFIs are more efficient than others.
This note critically discusses the possible endogenous problems that microfinance sector in Bangl... more This note critically discusses the possible endogenous problems that microfinance sector in Bangladesh should seriously take into account. It also draws possible explanations and/or consequences of these factors. The broad understanding is that the sector should emphasize credit plus programs, skill development of borrowers, strong monitoring, product diversification, microenterprise for graduated members and micro-insurance to withstand shocks. For extreme poor, safety-net programs are better option than microfinance.
We study the impact of college openings and teaching modality on county-level COVID-19 cases and ... more We study the impact of college openings and teaching modality on county-level COVID-19 cases and deaths using the information of 745 U.S. colleges. We group the colleges by their teaching modes in the fall 2020 semester: in-person, online, and hybrid; and employ a logistic model and a gradient boosting algorithm to estimate the propensity scores for the three groups to adjust the pre-treatment imbalances of college and county-level covariates. We find that greater enrollments, individual mask policies, and fewer republican votes in the county are major predictors of adopting online or hybrid modes. Treatment effects provide evidence that college reopenings, especially with in-person teaching elements, increase daily new cases and deaths.
Bangladesh lagged in microfinance regulation until 2006 when it established Microcredit Regulator... more Bangladesh lagged in microfinance regulation until 2006 when it established Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA). So far, MRA has granted license to around 650 Microfinance Institutions (MFIs); and has been supervising them with prudential and non-prudential regulations. We assessed the impact of regulation on cost efficiency using from pre-regulation and post-regulation data of 182 MFIs. Panel data analyses robustly show that regulation improves cost efficiency; directly through changing behavior of the MFIs, and indirectly through increasing staff productivity and portfolio size. We found partners of PKSF—the wholesale lending agency in Bangladesh—and unsubsidized MFIs are more efficient than others.
This note critically discusses the possible endogenous problems that microfinance sector in Bangl... more This note critically discusses the possible endogenous problems that microfinance sector in Bangladesh should seriously take into account. It also draws possible explanations and/or consequences of these factors. The broad understanding is that the sector should emphasize credit plus programs, skill development of borrowers, strong monitoring, product diversification, microenterprise for graduated members and micro-insurance to withstand shocks. For extreme poor, safety-net programs are better option than microfinance.
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