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A series of recent randomised trials estimate the impact of microfinance on incomes, consumption, and other key measures of welfare. This comment demonstrates why impact estimates obtained from experimental designs focusing on marginal microfinance borrowers are likely to understate the impacts yet realised by inframarginal borrowers, those having taken microfinance loans prior to implementation of an experiment, when field experiments are implemented in areas broadly served by microfinance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although approximately 1 billion people in the world live with physical disabilities, there is a lack of rigorous research on the economic impacts of providing assistive devices for persons with disabilities. This study involves 261 people with disabilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where 121 had received wheelchair donations through nonprofit organisations. Using covariate matching (CVM), seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) and a series of robustness checks for endogeneity, it is found that those given access to a wheelchair devoted 1.75 more hours per day to work, 1.40 fewer hours per day to street begging and realised a 77.5 per cent increase in income. Results point to a 122 per cent internal rate of return based on new income created from wheelchair donation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]