Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP12838
Authors: Dean Karlan; Adam Osman; Jonathan Zinman
Abstract: Two for-profit Philippine social enterprises, aiming to demonstrate corporate social responsibility by increasing microlending to the poor, incorporated a widely-used poverty measurement tool into their loan applications and tested the tool using randomized training content. Treated loan officers were instructed why and how to use the tool for targeting; control group training merely labelled the tool “additional household information”. The targeting training backfired, leading to no additional poor applicants and lower-performing loans. Descriptive evidence suggests the targeting training exacerbated loan officer misperceptions and multitasking problems. Our results help explain why corporate social responsibility efforts are often siloed from core operations.
Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Double-Bottom Line; Multitasking; Social Business; Poverty Targeting; Discrimination; Microfinance; Microcredit
JEL Codes: D12; D22; D92; G21; O12; O16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Treatment (targeting training) (M53) | Loan officer behavior (application of poverty targeting tool) (G51) |
| Loan officer behavior (application of poverty targeting tool) (G51) | Outcomes (number of poor applicants) (I24) |
| Loan officer behavior (application of poverty targeting tool) (G51) | Outcomes (loan performance) (G51) |
| Treatment (targeting training) (M53) | Outcomes (number of poor applicants) (I24) |
| Treatment (targeting training) (M53) | Outcomes (loan performance) (G51) |
| Treatment (targeting training) (M53) | Loan officer behavior (misuse of tool) (G51) |
| Loan officer behavior (misuse of tool) (G51) | Outcomes (number of poor applicants) (I24) |