Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study

An audit study was conducted in Ghana, Mexico and Peru to understand the quality of financial information and products offered to low-income customers. Trained auditors visited multiple financial institutions, seeking credit and savings products. C...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Gine, Xavier, Mazer, Rafael Keenan
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English en_US
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2016
Subjects:	financial information audit study
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26581590/financial-dis-information-evidence-multi-country-audit-study http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24831

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recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-248312021-04-23T14:04:27Z Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study Gine, Xavier Mazer, Rafael Keenan financial information audit study An audit study was conducted in Ghana, Mexico and Peru to understand the quality of financial information and products offered to low-income customers. Trained auditors visited multiple financial institutions, seeking credit and savings products. Consistent with Gabaix and Laibson (2006), staff only provides information about the cost when asked, disclosing less than a third of the total cost voluntarily. In fact, the cost disclosed voluntarily is uncorrelated with the expensiveness of the product. In addition, clients are rarely offered the cheapest product, most likely because staff is incentivized to offer more expensive and thus more profitable products to the institution. This suggests that clients are not provided enough information to be able to compare among products, and that disclosure and transparency policies may be ineffective because they undermine the commercial interest of financial institutions. 2016-08-09T16:58:17Z 2016-08-09T16:58:17Z 2016-07 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26581590/financial-dis-information-evidence-multi-country-audit-study http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24831 English en_US Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7750 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/ World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa Latin America & Caribbean Ghana Mexico Peru
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English en_US
topic	financial information audit study
spellingShingle	financial information audit study Gine, Xavier Mazer, Rafael Keenan Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study
geographic_facet	Africa Latin America & Caribbean Ghana Mexico Peru
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7750
description	An audit study was conducted in Ghana, Mexico and Peru to understand the quality of financial information and products offered to low-income customers. Trained auditors visited multiple financial institutions, seeking credit and savings products. Consistent with Gabaix and Laibson (2006), staff only provides information about the cost when asked, disclosing less than a third of the total cost voluntarily. In fact, the cost disclosed voluntarily is uncorrelated with the expensiveness of the product. In addition, clients are rarely offered the cheapest product, most likely because staff is incentivized to offer more expensive and thus more profitable products to the institution. This suggests that clients are not provided enough information to be able to compare among products, and that disclosure and transparency policies may be ineffective because they undermine the commercial interest of financial institutions.
format	Working Paper
author	Gine, Xavier Mazer, Rafael Keenan
author_facet	Gine, Xavier Mazer, Rafael Keenan
author_sort	Gine, Xavier
title	Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study
title_short	Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study
title_full	Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study
title_fullStr	Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study
title_full_unstemmed	Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study
title_sort	financial (dis-)information : evidence from a multi-country audit study
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2016
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26581590/financial-dis-information-evidence-multi-country-audit-study http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24831
_version_	1764457768451833856

Financial (Dis-)Information : Evidence from a Multi-Country Audit Study

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