SeminarFinancial System Workshop
Wed, Oct 25, 2023
Financial System Workshop：Mobile Money: Innovations in finance and pandemic lessons from Ebola to Covid-19
Title
Mobile Money: Innovations in finance and pandemic lessons from Ebola to Covid-19
Abstract
We study the interaction of past pandemics with financial innovation that increased financial access and helped contain disease spread. Mobile money is an early indicator of how innovation interacts with traditional finance as innovative digital payment and credit systems emerge globally. We create an original dataset containing all mobile money-related policies in our sample. Our data covers 36 countries from 2008-2019. Findings indicate economic growth and financial development play a positive role in the growth of mobile money. Pent-up demand for financial access might be reason for our finding that fragile informal economies have higher mobile money growth.
We find policies that make it harder to transact in mobile money negatively impact growth. Ebola has hurt mobile money growth over the longer term. This is surprising given governments’ deployment of mobile money for disease mitigation. Potential explanations could be the importance of well-paying customers to sustain mobile money providers and ease of adoption by more financially/digitally savvy customers. The mobile money policy lessons can apply to other innovative digital payment and credit systems worldwide.
Author
Purba Mukerji
Date and Time
Wednesday, October 20,2023 15:00-16:30
※No need for prior registeration.
Venue
Seminar Room 3, 2F of Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall)
Speaker
Purba Mukerji
Professor, Department of Economics, Connecticut
https://www.conncoll.edu/directories/faculty-profiles/purba-mukerji/