Skip navigation.

Blog

An Anti-Nudge on the Way to Mexico

IPA President Dean Karlan guest posts on the Nudge blog to share a story about how an "anti-nudge" in his rental car almost side-tracked a trip to visit the Microcredit Impact Study in Northern Mexico...

 

 

Commentary
What could you live without?
by Dean Karlan

Kristof (again!) has a nice blog post about the tradeoff between consuming things we think we want, at the expense of not giving to charities to help people who struggle for basic needs.  Very much like Peter Singer's famous lake analog

Are microfinance clients who sell contraband less likely to repay?
by Martin Rotemberg

I was surprised to learn the other day that in Bolivia a huge fraction of the goods purchased with microcredit are smuggled across the Peruvian and Chilean borders in order to avoid customs (for instance, most appliances are smuggled here). Ignoring the morality of it (I don't think the government cares all that much - many retailers who sell contraband pay sales tax), do you think that the behavior of clients who sell contraband is somehow different? Are people who can and do buy illegal products less likely to care about fulfilling their loan commitments?