Financial Inclusion, Remittances and Entrepreneurship: an experiment in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico

Resumen

This paper presents a Randomized Control Treatment (RCT) that
consisted in providing smartphones, training in business skills and
financial education to individuals in the State of Tlaxcala, Mexico to
study its impact on measures of Financial Inclusion and other household
outcomes in the period 2011-14. The results show statistically
significant effects in measures of usage and quality, but not in measures
of depth or stability of financial services. The results also show positive
effects on micro business activities and wealth, but no effects on
household income and expenditures. All effects are found to be smaller
for households that receive remittances. These results show that, in the
presence of low-cost financial services, households prefer to invest
their savings in micro business activities or real assets and confirm that
households that receive remittances relax their credit constraints.