Increasing Financial Inclusion in the Muslim World : Evidence from an Islamic Finance Marketing Experiment

Karlan, Dean ; Osman, Adam ; Shammout, Nour

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ISLAMIC FINANCE;    MICROFINANCE;    MICROCREDIT;    CREDIT ELASTICITY;    MARKETING;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9200
RP-ID  :  WPS9200

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Low utilization of household credit indeveloping countries may be partially due to religiousconsiderations. In a randomized marketing experiment inJordan, this paper estimates the effect of sharia-compliantloan features on demand for credit. To comply with Islamiclaw, the sharia-compliant product uses a bank fee ratherthan an interest payment structure, while keeping the restof the product features very similar. Sharia-complianceincreased the application rate for loans from 18 percent to22 percent, an increase in demand that is equivalent to a 10percent decrease in interest rates. This study also randomlyvaried the price of the sharia-compliant loan and finds thatless religious individuals are twice as elastic with respectto price as the more religious. By comparing reasons forrefusal across treatment groups, this paper estimates thatsurvey measures that try to assess the importance ofreligious objections to conventional credit overestimate theimportance of this type of objection by a third.