小额信贷可以提高收入：来自中华人民共和国随机对照试验的证据（英）

EVIDENCE FROM A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALIN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA Shu Cai, Albert F. Park, and Sangui Wang ADB ECONOMICSWORKING PAPER SERIES ADB Economics Working Paper Series Microfinance Can Raise Incomes:Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trialin the People’s Republic of China Shu Cai (shucai.ccer@gmail.com) is a professorat Jinan University. Albert F. Park (afpark@adb.org)is the chief economist and director general of theEconomic Research and Development ImpactDepartment, Asian Development Bank. Sangui Wang(wangsg@ruc.edu.cn) is a professor at RenminUniversity of China. Shu Cai, Albert F. Park, and Sangui WangNo. 812 | October 2025 TheADB Economics Working Paper Seriespresents research in progress to elicit commentsand encourage debate on development issuesin Asia and the Pacific. The views expressedare those of the authors and do not necessarilyreflect the views and policies of ADB orits Board of Governors or the governmentsthey represent. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO license (CC BY 3.0 IGO) © 2025 Asian Development Bank6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City, 1550 Metro Manila, PhilippinesTel +63 2 8632 4444; Fax +63 2 8636 2444www.adb.org Some rights reserved. Published in 2025. ISSN 2313-6537 (print), 2313-6545 (PDF)Publication Stock No. WPS250409-2DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22617/WPS250409-2 The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and policiesof the Asian Development Bank (ADB) or its Board of Governors or the governments they represent. ADB does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and accepts no responsibility for anyconsequence of their use. The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers does not imply that theyare endorsed or recommended by ADB in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. By making any designation of or reference to a particular territory or geographic area in this document, ADB does notintend to make any judgments as to the legal or other status of any territory or area. This publication is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO license (CC BY 3.0 IGO)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/. By using the content of this publication, you agree to be boundby the terms of this license. For attribution, translations, adaptations, and permissions, please read the provisionsand terms of use at https://www.adb.org/terms-use#openaccess. This CC license does not apply to non-ADB copyright materials in this publication. If the material is attributedto another source, please contact the copyright owner or publisher of that source for permission to reproduce it.ADB cannot be held liable for any claims that arise as a result of your use of the material. Please contact pubsmarketing@adb.org if you have questions or comments with respect to content, or if you wishto obtain copyright permission for your intended use that does not fall within these terms, or for permission to usethe ADB logo. Corrigenda to ADB publications may be found at http://www.adb.org/publications/corrigenda. Notes: ABSTRACT This study investigates the impacts of a government-led microcredit program in the People’sRepublic of China (PRC) which was implemented at scale in poor rural areas, using a randomizedcontrolled trial (RCT). In contrast to recent RCT-based studies that found no evidence ofsignificant increases in income from microcredit interventions, we find that the Chinese programsignificantly raises household income and reduces poverty. We explore possible explanations forwhy the estimated impacts may be greater in the PRC, including larger loan size, lump sumrepayments, lower interest rates, less access to formal credit before the program, and greaterreturns from credit constrained off-farm employment opportunities. Keywords:microfinance, program evaluations, randomized controlled trial JEL codes:D12, D22, G21, I32, O16 1.INTRODUCTION Microfinance has been lauded as a transformative institutional innovation that has empoweredmillions among the poor, enabling them to lift themselves out of poverty (Armendariz andMorduch, 2005). However, a recent symposium of six randomized controlled trial (RCT) studiesthat evaluated microfinance programs in different parts of the world found that none of theprograms led to statistically significant increases in household income.1Although some notableearlier studies did find positive impacts of microfinance on income and consumption (Pitt andKhandker, 1998; Coleman, 1999; Kaboski and Townsend, 2005, 2011, 2012), the consistent non-results of the more cleanly identified RCT studies have cast doubt on one of the most fundamentalclaims of the microfinance movement and led to a reassessment of the designs of microfinanceprograms and how they can be improved to achieve more significant impacts (Field et al., 2016). In this study, we provide new RCT-based evidence that microfinance can,