Serving the Underserved: Microcredit as a Pathway to Commercial Banks

We are grateful to Raymond Fisman (the editor), three anonymous referees, Shashwat Alok, Sofia Amaral, Haelim Anderson, Meghana Ayyagari, Thorsten Beck, Martin Brown, Miriam Bruhn, Fernando Chague, Ralph De Haas, Jens Hagendorff, Martin Kanz, Tumer Kapan, Amartya Lahiri, W. Blake Marsh, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, Jonathan Morduch, Felix Noth, Steven Ongena, Ben Roth, Miri Stryjan, Sergio Vicente, Paolo Volpin, Nan Yang, and participants at numerous conferences and seminars for useful comments and suggestions. We also thank the staff at the National Bank of Rwanda, the TransUnion Credit Reference Bureau, the Rwanda Cooperative Agency, and the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda for providing the data used in this study, assistance with numerous queries, and helpful discussions. This paper was previously entitled “Financial Access Under the Microscope” and is part of a project on Macroeconomic Research in Low-Income Countries (project ID 60925) supported by the U.K.'s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the National Bank of Rwanda, International Monetary Fund, FCDO, Federal Reserve Board, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, or those affiliated with the Federal Reserve System. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Thomas Kigabo, Chief Economist of the National Bank of Rwanda, and a wonderful co-author and colleague, who passed away in January 2021.

A supplemental appendix is available online at https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01117.