Financial Access Initiative
Encyclopedia
Established in 2006, the Financial Access Initiative (FAI) is an American consortium of researchers at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
Innovations for Poverty Action is an American non-profit organization founded in 2002 by Yale economist Dean Karlan. IPA conducts randomized controlled trials , along with other types of quantitative research, to measure the impacts of development programs in sectors including microfinance,...

 focused on finding answers to how financial sectors can better meet the needs of poor households.

The Initiative was launched with core funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU.
Led by Managing Director Jonathan Morduch
Jonathan Morduch
Jonathan Morduch is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the NYU Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service. He is a prominent development economist most well known for his significant academic contributions to assessing the impact of microfinance since the early years of the movement...

 (NYU), Dean Karlan
Dean Karlan
Dean Karlan is a Professor of Economics at Yale University and a Research Fellow at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

 (Yale), Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He was hired with tenure by Harvard in 2004 after having spent six years at MIT, first as a junior faculty member and then as a full professor. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and conducts research on...

(Harvard), the Initiative seeks to provide rigorous research on the impacts of financial access and on innovative ways to improve access. FAI’s website states that financial access holds the promise to help low-income individuals in developing countries manage their economic lives and build wealth.

Activities

The Financial Access Initiative involves three main activities:
  1. Systematizing evidence and communicating lessons: Clarify and organize what is known (and what needs to be known) about the demand for finance by the poor. Emphasis is placed on presenting the information in actionable form and targeting regulators, donors, and other key decision makers.
  2. Generating new evidence: Key topics include the nature of demand for financial services; the extent of impacts of financial access on incomes, businesses, and broader aspects of well being; and mechanisms that can increase impact and scale.
  3. Policy around regulation: Describe policy options for central bankers and regulators in a high-level but accessible format. The outputs are independent guides to policy with an emphasis on direct effects and trade-offs of policy choices.

Research

Funded by a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, FAI’s research aims to assess existing research on global financial access, generate new evidence through field work, and inform regulatory policy.

Field Research

Field research is coordinated by Innovations for Poverty Action, an organization based in New Haven, Connecticut, and headed by Dean Karlan. Current research is taking place in Bolivia, Indonesia, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, India, Ghana, and the Philippines. Randomized control trials are used to focus on three central research initiatives: demand for financial services, impact of financial services and the role of regulatory policy.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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