The Impact of Microcredit on Farms and Rural Household

The literature on experimental methods of impact evaluations shows that one of the best methods for the construction of the counterfactual is random assignment (Duflo et al., 2007; Imbens and Wooldridge, 2009).2 It allows the random assignment of individuals into two groups, the group of beneficiaries (treatment group) and the group of non-beneficiaries (control group) from a list of individuals w [...] For example, the advantage of an assignment at the farmers’ organization (FO) level is that it captures the effects within the group in addition to the effect at the individual level. [...] A small difference in the credit uptake rates between the two groups is partly due to the low credit interest in the treatment group and, on the other hand, the credit uptake rate in the control group is due to the entry of competitors (Crépon et al., 2015). [...] Beaman et al.’s (2014) study on Mali also highlighted the issues of estimating the average treatment effect on the treated in the microcredit context, given the heterogeneity of treatment effects with respect to the likelihood of taking the loan. [...] Effect (LATE) beneficiaries if they are offered the (2015, Ethiopia) program 3 Results of the evaluations of the effects of microcredit 3.1 Adoption of new agricultural technologies and intensification of the use of agricultural inputs The results of empirical studies converge to a positive impact of access to microcredit on adoption of agricultural technology.