Survey Data from "Is Digital Credit Filling a Hole or Digging a Hole? Evidence from Malawi"

This package contains the survey data and documentation for “Is Digital Credit Filling a Hole or Digging a Hole? Evidence from Malawi,” by Valentina Brailovskaya, Pascaline Dupas, and Jonathan Robinson. It contains data collected in Malawi between the Fall of 2019 and the Spring of 2020, as well as the survey instruments used to collect it. For more information, please see the readme. The abstract of the paper is as follows: "Digital credit has expanded rapidly in Africa, with opaque loan terms amidst low consumer financial literacy. Rich data from Malawi shows substantial demand for a digital loan with a base interest rate of 10% over 15 days, yet most borrowers are not aware of loan terms, repay late and incur substantial late fees. Regression discontinuity analyses show no evidence that access to small digital loans harms consumers’ perceived well-being. A short, randomized, phone-based financial literacy intervention improved knowledge but did not increase timely loan repayment, and modestly increased loan demand, ultimately increasing the likelihood of ever defaulting.