Britta Augsburg is Associate Director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. She is an applied development economist, with a particular interest in environmental influences on child (health) outcomes, how they interact with other inputs - such as nutrition and stimulation -, and how policy can be used to target improvements in a child’s environment. She has 15 years’ experience in design and implementation of complex evaluations in LMIC’s, including India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Mongolia. Recent studies have focused on understanding both demand and supply constraints for poor households to improve their sanitation environment.
Education
PhD Social Protection Policy, University of Maastricht, 2008
Masters Econometrics, University of Maastricht, 2002
Propedeuse Econometrics, University of Maastricht, 2000
The authors use an RCT to analyze the impacts of microcredit, with a study population consisting of loan applicants who were marginally rejected by an MFI in Bosnia.
This paper presents evidence from Rwanda's Girinka ('One Cow per Poor Family') program that has distributed more than 130,000 livestock asset transfers in the form of cows to the rural poor since 2006.
Microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending to individual lending. This EBRD Impact Brief presents some such evidence from a recent randomised field experiment in Mongolia.
This study evaluates an intervention in the dairy subsector by an Indian livelihood promotion institution and conducts a detailed analysis of the main cost and bene t factors of the activity.
Although microfinance institutions across the world are moving from group lending towards individual lending, this strategic shift is not substantiated by sufficient empirical evidence on the impact of both types of lending on borrowers. We present such evidence from a randomised field experiment in rural Mongolia.
The FINISH project will test whether the use of microfinance for rural sanitation can be implemented at scale, in order to: accelerate access by the poor to demand-led sanitation, resulting in health, economic, and social impact; and greater sustainability in sanitation service delivery.
Until recently microfinance - the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship - was cheered as an excellent policy to alleviate poverty. But more recently such policies have been viewed less favourably. What does the evidence show on the effectiveness of such schemes, and how can they be reformed to operate better?
FINISH - Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health - is a joint undertaking of a wide range of actors that came together to address the challenges of micro finance, insurance and sanitation and health.
FINISH - Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health - is a joint undertaking of a wide range of actors that came together to address the challenges of micro finance, insurance and sanitation and health.
In this paper we try to raise caution against the consequences of the overwhelming drive for microfinance institutions to become financially self-sustainable-more often than not pushed into this by international organizations.
