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Beyond RCTs: How Rapid-Fire Testing Can Build Better Financial Products
Rapid-fire tests are nimble randomized controlled trials specifically aimed at improving product design. They are already common practice among technology-based companies as a way to iterate and rapidly improve their product and expand their user-base, but they can also be used to answer questions about the demand for financial products and improve other interventions that help the world’s poor. Innovations for Poverty Action explores what these trials can and cannot do.
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- Uncategorized
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Students and professionals team up for first Ann Arbor Health Hackathon
The "hackathon" included 24 hours of health-related “hacking,” which involved teams pitching ideas and creating prototypes for solutions to health problems. The event focused on preventing disease in underserved areas of the developing world.
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- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- North America
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Storming the Walls – How Mozambique’s ‘Citadel Economy’ Shapes Financial Inclusion
In Mozambique, the combination of infrastructure deficit caused by colonial neglect and civil war, a centralist political economy, the sheer scale of poverty, and limited formal sector employment opportunities creates sharp income inequalities and shapes a "citadel economy," where high walls separate those inside and outside the enclave. This keeps financial service providers from reaching excluded target markets in the informal and agrarian economy. Christine Hougaard at Cenfri explores the problem and its potential solutions.
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- Uncategorized
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Landscape of Microinsurance Africa study released
The study provides an in depth analysis of the evolution of microinsurance in the African region in terms of products, delivery channels, regulations and profitability indicators to the industry.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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New Calvert Study Highlights Financial and Social Benefits of ESG Integration
Calvert Investments and Harvard Business School’s Serafeim suggest investors can benefit from the evaluation of companies’ environmental, social and governance efforts.
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- Investing
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Handle With Care: How to Maximize the Value of Microinsurance for Emerging Consumers
Intuitively, microinsurance is well-suited to managing some of the financial risks faced by emerging consumers. Yet insurance penetration in emerging economies is very low. Should insurance not be playing a substantially bigger risk management role for people at the base of the pyramid?
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- microfinance, research
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In the lab: six innovations scientists hope will end malaria
After being abandoned as too ambitious in 1969, global plans to eliminate malaria are back on the agenda, with financial backing from the world's richest couple, Bill and Melinda Gates, and U.S. President Barack Obama.
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- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- research
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There’s a $56 trillion market that could be the biggest in the history of commerce
In a round-up of some of its strongest long-term investing themes, Bank of America Merrill Lynch highlighted one such opportunity for businesses and economic growth: the explosion of the global middle class.
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- Uncategorized
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