Research Strategy for the AIMS Core Impact Assessments

The AIMS core impact assessments (CIA) are impact studies of three microenterprise programmes: SEWA Bank in India, Mibanco in Peru, and Zambuko Trust in ZimbabweThis paper:

• Presents the research strategy followed in the three CIA studies in order to test the same set of impact hypotheses;
• Outlines the conceptual challenges (fungibility, attribution, and selection bias) which need to be addressed in similar researches;
• Provides a conceptual framework, based on a household economic portfolio model, which solves the problem of fungibility and develops hypotheses about plausible cause-and-effect relationships between programme services and impacts;
• Examines how and why programme participation leads to changes in household welfare;
• To make inferences about the impact of microenterprise services more plausible, the research relies on a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods.

Overall, the study concludes that:

• The research strategy used in the AIMS CIA advances the methodological frontier for impact assessments of microenterprise programmes;
• The results of studies like CIA can be used to improve the efficacy of microenterprise programmes and to support them in achieving their economic and social objectives.