TDPE Presents: Dean Yang

Identification Strategy: A Field Experiment on Dynamic Incentives in Rural Credit Markets How do borrowers respond to improvements in a lender’s ability to punish defaulters? We report the results of a randomized field experiment in rural Malawi that examines the impact of fingerprinting borrowers in a context where a unique identification system is absent. Consistent with a simple model of borrower heterogeneity and information asymmetries, fingerprinting led to substantially higher repayment rates for borrowers with the highest ex ante default risk, but had no effect for the rest of borrowers. Dean Yang is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Ford School of Public Policy and Department of Economics, University of Michigan. His areas of research interest include international migration and remittances, microfinance, human capital, disasters, international trade, and crime and corruption. He has worked as a consultant on development issues for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the UNDP, and in El Salvador and Peru. A native of the Philippines, he received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Harvard University.