Research
Research Objectives
CGM will facilitate research and evidence-based knowledge creation that aims to foster economic development and improve lives. Faculty from the Haas School of Business and related departments – including economics, engineering, public health, and public policy – are engaged in research activities in growth markets around the world. CGM will facilitate collaboration between UC Berkeley researchers and companies, academic institutions, and policymakers. The center also provides a platform to disseminate research findings and knowledge to stakeholders. Focus areas include energy, healthcare, entrepreneurship, digital commerce, inequality, financial inclusion and climate change.
Corporate Research Partnerships
The Initiative will identify opportunities for Berkeley faculty to address issues relevant to companies operating in growth markets. Examples include (a) using state-of-the art analytical techniques, including machine learning, to examine data sets from partner companies and (b) providing research insights for partner companies and policy makers based on impact evaluation and experimentation (for example, A/B testing).
Non-Governmental and Developmental Partnerships
CGM will collaborate with key nongovernmental and developmental entities (i.e., World Bank and the Gates Foundation) on critical research, policy and development challenges.
Academic Partnerships
CGM will collaborate with top universities on research, teaching and policy engagement.
Research Support
CGM will work to generate research funding for faculty research projects, Ph.D. students, and post-doctoral scholars.
Faculty
Ernesto Dal Bó
Phillips Girgich Professor of Business
Lucas W. Davis
Jeffrey A. Jacobs Distinguished Professor
Sunil Dutta
William D. Crawford Chair in Taxation and Accounting at the Haas School of Business
Paul Gertler
Li Ka Shing Professor of Economics
Ganesh Iyer
Faculty Director, Center for Growth Markets
Przemek Jeziorski
Associate Professor of Marketing
Jonathan Kolstad
Associate Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy
David Levine
Professor, Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Chair in Business Administration
Gustavo Manso
Professor, William A. and Betty H. Hasler Chair in New Enterprise Development Distinguished Teaching Fellow
Abhishek Nagaraj
Assistant Professor, Management and Organizations (MORS) group, Berkeley Haas
Catherine Wolfram
Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, & Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate & Energy Economics in the U.S. Department of the Treasury
Guo Xu
Assistant Professor of Business and Public Policy at Berkeley Haas
Latest Research
Przemyslaw Jeziorsk, Assistant Professor
Mobile Money in Tanzania
In developing countries, mobile telecom networks have emerged as major providers of financial services, bypassing the sparse retail networks of traditional banks. Jeziorski and his coauthor analyze a large individual-level data set of mobile money transactions in Tanzania to provide evidence of the impact of mobile money on alleviating financial exclusion in developing countries.
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The authors identify three types of transactions:(i) money transfers to others; (ii) short distance money self-transportation; and (iii) money storage for short to medium periods of time. The study takes advantage of a “natural experiment” – an unanticipated increase in transaction fees makes it is possible to examine how user behavior changes. The authors find that the willingness to pay to avoid walking with cash an extra mile is 2% of an average transaction. The same figure is 0.8% for storing money at home for an extra day. An important implication is that mobile money ameliorates significant amounts of crime-related risk related to handling cash.
FINO Payments Bank Project
A thought leader, innovator and implementer of technology solutions. FINO enables end-to-end customer sourcing and servicing.
Segments of the population in low- and middle-income countries, such as daily wage earners or small business owners in rural areas, typically have limited access to formal financial services. Contactless digital payment technology could expand financial access for underbanked populations by reducing the need for physical banks and in-person services, which would also limit risky person-to-person interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Visual Know Your Customer (V-KYC) is a completely touchless, artificial intelligence-based digital banking technology that scans the video and audio of customers’ mobile calls and processes the data to provide instant and remote authorization and screening of potential customers. The V-KYC technology can potentially onboard and expand payments banking access to new merchants and end clients, increase transactions through eschewing the need for in person authentication, enable the uptake insurance services and money transfers. The research team aims to evaluate the impact of a novel V-KYC product on the expansion of and access to formal banking in India. In collaboration with FINO, one of the largest payment banks in India, the research team will develop and deploy the V-KYC technology and through a randomized control experiment study its impact on financial and business outcomes such as onboarding levels, volume and breadth of transactions, servicing of existing clients, and access to government subsidies and loan instruments. The team will also survey individuals and business owners to measure V-KYC’s effect on respondents’ ability to weather the economic shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic.