The Impact of Micro-credit on Employment: Evidence from Bangladesh and Pakistan

Azhar Khan, Twyeafur Rahman, Robert E. Wright

Research output: Working paperDiscussion paper

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Abstract

This paper examines the impact of micro-credit on employment. Household-level data was collected, following a quasi-experimental design, in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Three borrower groups are compared: Current borrowers; Pipeline borrowers and Non-borrowers. Pipeline borrowers are included to control for self-selection effects. It is argued that microcredit causes a substitution of employment away from employment-for-pay to selfemployment. Therefore, the effect on total employment is ambiguous. OLS and fixed effects regression are used to examine separately self-employment and employment-for-pay between three groups of borrowers. For Pakistan, there is no evidence that micro-credit effects employment. However, for Bangladesh, there is robust evidence consistent with this hypothesis.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationGlasgow
PublisherUniversity of Strathclyde
Pages1-27
Number of pages27
Volume16-10
Publication statusPublished - 21 Jul 2016

Keywords

  • micro-credit
  • poverty
  • self-employment

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