Person:
Khandker, Shahidur R.

Fields of Specialization

Agriculture

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Shahidur R. Khandker (PhD, McMaster University, Canada, 1983) is currently a visiting senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and a former lead economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He has authored more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, World Bank Economic Review, and Journal of Development Economics. He has also written various books, including the Handbook on Impact Evaluation: Quantitative Methods and Practices, co-authored with Gayatri Koolwal and Hussain Samad and published by the World Bank; Seasonal Hunger and Public Policies: Evidence from Northwest Bangladesh, co-authored with Wahiduddin Mahmud; Fighting Poverty with Microcredit: Experience in Bangladesh, published by Oxford University Press; and Handbook on Poverty and Inequality, co-authored with Jonathan Haughton and published by the World Bank. He has written several book chapters and more than three dozen discussion papers at the World Bank on poverty, rural finance and microfinance, agriculture, and infrastructure. His work spans some 30 countries and covers a wide range of development issues, from microfinance and rural finance, agriculture, and infrastructure to poverty, seasonality, and energy.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 45

How Does Competition Affect the Performance of MFIs? Evidence from Bangladesh

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2013-04) Khandker, Shahidur R. ; Koolwal, Gayatri B. ; Badruddoza, Syed

Over the past 20 years, Bangladesh has witnessed strong competition among microfinance institutions. Using program-level panel data from 2005-2010, this paper studies the microfinance institutions' recent competitive roles in their pricing of products, targeting strategies and portfolio shifts, as well as their ability to recover loans. The findings do not support the view that newer microfinance institutions are less risk-averse in their targeting, or that increased borrowing among households due to microfinance institution competition has lowered recovery rates. There is also a considerable urban-rural distinction; although newer microfinance institutions tend to attract riskier clients in urban areas, the opposite is true in rural areas. Loan recovery rates are also the highest among the newest microfinance institutions for women in rural areas, suggesting that microfinance institutions may offer distinct products in these areas to attract better-risk clients. The portfolio of newer microfinance institutions also has a greater share of lending for agriculture, and fewer savings products.
Microfinance and Poverty : Evidence using Panel Data from Bangladesh

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2005-09-08) Khandker, Shahidur R.

Microfinance supports mainly informal activities that often have a low return and low market demand. It may therefore be hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of microfinance is modest or even nonexistent. If true, the poverty impact of microfinance observed at the participant level represents either income redistribution or short run income generation from the microfinance intervention. This article examines the effects of microfinance on poverty reduction at both the participant and the aggregate levels using panel data from Bangladesh. The results suggest that access to microfinance contributes to poverty reduction, especially for female participants, and to overall poverty reduction at the village level. Microfinance thus helps not only poor participants but also the local economy.
Are Microcredit Borrowers in Bangladesh Over-indebted ?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08) Khandker, Shahidur R. ; Faruqee, Rashid ; Samad, Hussain A.

Microcredit programs in Bangladesh have experienced spectacular growth in recent years, with a growing number of borrowers availing credit from multiple microcredit agencies. There is a growing concern that if there are not sufficient returns to borrowing from microfinance institutions (MFIS), some borrowers might be taking loans that they will not be able to repay. A household may be considered over-indebted, for example, if its debt liability exceeds 40 percent of its income or assets. Using a long panel of household survey data from Bangladesh, the paper finds that some 26 percent of microcredit borrowers are over-indebted on this measure versus 22 percent of non-microcredit borrowers. Econometric analysis suggests that both MFI competition and multiple borrowing raise indebtedness. However, repeated borrowing, while it affects short-term liability adversely, does affect the long-term debt-asset ratio favorably. That is, repeated borrowing helps increase assets more than debt over time. Microcredit borrowers in Bangladesh are thus not necessarily over-indebted. But when borrowing is seen as protection against shocks such as floods even at the cost of being indebted, MFIs may offer micro-insurance schemes to safeguard borrowers against economic shocks.
The Benefits of Solar Home Systems : An Analysis from Bangladesh

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-12) Samad, Hussain A. ; Khandker, Shahidur R. ; Asaduzzaman, M. ; Yunus, Mohammad

The Government of Bangladesh, with help from the World Bank and other donors, has provided aid to a local agency called Infrastructure Development Company Limited and its partner organizations to devise a credit scheme for marketing solar home system units and making these an affordable alternative to grid electricity for poor people in remote areas. This paper uses household survey data to examine the financing scheme behind the dissemination of these solar home systems, in particular the role of the subsidy; the factors that determine the adoption of the systems in rural Bangladesh; and the welfare impacts of such adoption. The paper finds that while the subsidy has been declining over time, the demand for solar home systems has seen phenomenal growth, mostly because of technological developments that have made the systems increasingly more affordable. Households with better physical and educational endowments are more likely to adopt solar home systems than poor households. The price of the system matters in household decision making -- a 10 percent decline in the price of the system increases the overall demand for a solar panel by 2 percent. As for the benefits, adoption of a solar home system improves children s evening study time, lowers kerosene consumption, and provides health benefits for household members, in particular for women. It is also found to increase women's decision-making ability in certain household affairs. Finally, it is found to increase household consumption expenditure, although at a small scale.
Estimating the Effects of Credit Constraints on Productivity of Peruvian Agriculture

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-10) Woutersen, Tiemen ; Khandker, Shahidur R.

This paper proposes an estimator for the endogenous switching regression models with fixed effects. The estimator allows for endogenous selection and for conditional heteroscedasticity in the outcome equation. Applying the estimator to a dataset on the productivity in agriculture substantially changes the conclusions compared to earlier analysis of the same dataset. This paper proposes an estimator for the endogenous switching re-gression models with fixed effects. The estimator allows for endogenous selection and for conditional heteroscedasticity in the outcome equation. Applying the estimator to a dataset on the productivity in agriculture substantially changes the conclusions compared to earlier analysis of the same dataset.
Restoring Balance : Bangladesh's Rural Energy Realities

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-03) Asaduzzaman, M. ; Barnes, Douglas F. ; Khandker, Shahidur R.

This study, the first to concentrate on Bangladesh's energy systems and their effects on the lives of rural people, drew on these background studies, as well as other World Bank-financed research on IAP and rural infrastructure, to present a rural energy strategy for the country. The study's broad aim was to identify ways to improve the living standard in rural Bangladesh through better and more efficient use of energy, while creating an environment conducive to growth and poverty reduction. For any developing country, the crux of a rural energy strategy is to have more and better choices for meeting rural demand for energy through market mechanisms and sound policy. This goes hand in hand with the development of competent implementing institutions, which are critical to the process. Also important are new supply- and demand side technologies that can be used to raise rural people's welfare and improve productivity to increase growth prospects. Accordingly, the rural energy strategy advocated by this study aims to satisfy the types of demand that increase household welfare and raise rural growth prospects as energy becomes a direct input into the production process.
Micro-Finance and Poverty : Evidence Using Panel Data from Bangladesh

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-01) Khandker, Shahidur R.

Micro-finance supports mainly informal activities that often have low market demand. It may be thus hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of micro-finance in an economy with low economic growth is modest or nonexistent. The observed borrower-level poverty impact is then a result of income redistribution or short-run income generation. The author addresses these questions using household level panel data from Bangladesh. The findings confirm that micro-finance benefits the poorest and has sustained impact in reducing poverty among program participants. It also has positive spillover impact, reducing poverty at the village level. But the effect is more pronounced in reducing extreme rather than moderate poverty.
Dynamic Effects of Microcredit in Bangladesh

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-03) Khandker, Shahidur R. ; Samad, Hussain A.

This paper uses long panel survey data spanning over 20 years to examine the dynamics of microcredit programs in Bangladesh. With the phenomenal growth of microfinance institutions representing 30 million members with over $2 billion of annual disbursement over the past two decades, it is important to understand the dynamics of microcredit expansion and its induced impact on household welfare. A dynamic panel model is used to address a number of issues, such as whether credit effects are declining over time, whether market saturation and village diseconomies are taking place, and whether multiple program membership, which is rising as a consequence of microcredit expansion, is harming or benefiting the borrowers. The paper's results confirm that microcredit programs have continued to benefit the poor by raising household welfare. The beneficial effects have also remained higher for female than male borrowers. There are diseconomies of scale caused by higher levels of village-level borrowing, especially for male members. Multiple program membership is also growing with competition from microfinance institutions, but this has rather helped raise assets and net worth more than it has contributed to indebtedness.
Does Micro-Credit Empower Women : Evidence from Bangladesh

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-03) Pitt, Mark M. ; Khandker, Shahidur R. ; Cartwright, Jennifer

This paper examines the effects of men's and women's participation in group-based micro-credit programs on a large set of qualitative responses to questions that characterize women's autonomy and gender relations within the household. The data come from a special survey carried out in rural Bangladesh in 1998-99. The results are consistent with the view that women's participation in micro-credit programs helps to increase women's empowerment. Credit program participation leads to women taking a greater role in household decisionmaking, having greater access to financial and economic resources, having greater social networks, having greater bargaining power compared with their husbands, and having greater freedom of mobility. Female credit also tended to increase spousal communication in general about family planning and parenting concerns. The effects of male credit on women's empowerment were, at best, neutral, and at worse, decidedly negative. Male credit had a negative effect on several arenas of women's empowerment, including physical mobility, access to savings and economic resources, and power to manage some household transactions.
The Impact of Farm Credit in Pakistan

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-08) Khandker, Shahidur R. ; Faruqee, Rashidur R.

Both formal, and informal loans matter in agriculture. But formal lenders provide much more in production lending, than do informal lenders, often at a higher cost than what they can recover. The Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP), for example, providing about 90 percent of formal loans in rural areas, incurs high costs on loan defaults. Like other governments, the Government of Pakistan subsidized the formal scheme on the grounds that lending to agriculture is a high-risk activity, because of covariate risk. Because farm credit schemes are subsidized, policymakers must know if these schemes are worth supporting. Using recent data from a large household survey from rural Pakistan, the authors estimate the cost-effectiveness of the ADBP loans. To estimate credit's impact, they use a two-stage method, which takes into account the endogeneity of borrowing. Clearly, formal lenders are biased toward larger farmers with collateral. Large landowners, who tend to represent only four percent of rural households, get 42 percent of formal loans. Landless, and subsistence farmers, who represent more than 69 percent of rural households, receive only 23 percent of formal loans. ADBP loans improve household welfare but, although large farmers receive most of ADBP finance, the impact of credit is greater for small farmers than for large farmers. Large landowners use formal loans unproductively. Because the ADBP scheme is subsidized, it is not cost-effective for delivering rural credit. It would be more cost-effective is small farmers were better targeted instead.