ESSAYS ON MICROCREDIT PROGRAMS AND EVALUATION OF WOMEN’S SUCCESS

Microcredit programs are of great interest to economists and policymakers because of their potential for reducing poverty, particularly among women. This book contains three essays which establish the linkages between microcredit programs and women’s success in reducing household poverty. The first chapter mainly investigates the effectiveness aspect of microcredit programs. Using program evaluation methods, we find significant improvement in women’s economic condition after participating in these programs. The second chapter studies the determinants of women’s economic performance in microcredit programs. These determinants are in the form of different types of characteristics of women: their own characteristics, such as age or schooling or the characteristics of the household or village they live in. Microcredit programs originated from Bangladesh and now three major microcredit programs are operating: Grameen Bank, BRAC and RD-12. The third chapter investigates how these different microcredit programs have been performing relative to each other.