Hope as Aspirations, Agency, and Pathways: Poverty Dynamics and Microfinance in Oaxaca, Mexico / Travis J. Lybbert, Bruce Wydick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lybbert, Travis J.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Wydick, Bruce.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22661.

NBER working paper series no. w22661

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Hope as Aspirations, Agency, and Pathways

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

Work in positive psychology decomposes hope into aspirations, agency, and pathways. Operating in the context of an economic model developed with this framework, we review the literature on hope from philosophy, theology, psychology, and its relationship to emerging work on aspirations in development economics. We then present one-month follow-up results from an experimental study based on a hope intervention in Oaxaca, Mexico among 601 indigenous women with access to microfinance loans. Our early experimental results suggest that the intervention raised aspirations approximately a quarter of a standard deviation, significantly raised a hope index among the treated subjects, and had positive but statistically insignificant results on enterprise revenues and profits.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2016.