Microfinance, Profile Pictures And Affirmative Action
Here’s the list for this week - enjoy!
How to De-Reserve Reserves: Admissions to Technical Colleges in India: This paper is interesting because it tackles the issue of dealing with de-reservation of college admissions in India. The reservation system in India is constantly under attack. Still, people don’t realize that the system is inefficient because a) positions aren’t always filled and b) the current reallocation system leaves students at a disadvantage. This offers a solution to improve the latter.
Smiles in Profiles: Improving Fairness and Efficiency Using Estimates of User Preferences in Online Marketplaces: Borrowers on Kiva are more likely to receive funding if their profile picture shows a smiling face. Women on the platform are more likely to receive funding compared to men and women are more likely to be smiling in their profile pictures compared to men. This paper uses GANs which is unique for an economics paper but I’m not sure I completely buy the results. The style of the profile picture could be correlated to the campaign and the authors don’t fully account for this.
Give Me a Pass: Flexible Credit for Entrepreneurs in Colombia: Flexible credit = more defaults! Having worked for a microfinance company I sympathize with the need to increase disbursements to the underserved. Sadly, this paper shows that increasing payment flexibility is not going to solve that problem.
Good Time, Bad Time: Socioeconomic Status, Time Scarcity, and Well-Being in Retirement: This paper argues that retirement is not the solution to time scarcity. An individual’s peer networks and socio-economic status play a role in the experience of time scarcity post-retirement.
“They Are There with Us”: Theorizing Racial Status and Intergroup Relations: Interesting paper on racial status theory. The author proposes “shared racial status as a product of three mechanisms: contact, discrimination, and external threat…”.
Have a great weekend
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