Research and evaluation on the development impact of credit infrastructure reforms

Request for expression of interest (eoi) Research and evaluation on the development impact of credit infrastructure reforms
I. CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND
1.1 About The World Bank Group
The World Bank Group works to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet through a combination of financing, knowledge, and expertise. It consists of the World Bank, including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA); the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org, ida.worldbank.org/en/home, www.miga.org, www.ifc.org, and www.icsid.worldbank.org.
1.2 About SECO
SECO is the federal government's centre of excellence for all core issues relating to economic and labour market policy. SECO’s aim is to contribute to sustained economic growth, high employment and fair working conditions, by creating the necessary regulatory, economic and foreign policy framework.
1.3 About GFIP 2.0
Phase 2 of the Global Financial Infrastructure Program (GFIP 2) is a 6-year SECO1-supported global program aimed at delivering tailored financial infrastructure reforms to promote access to finance to under-served individuals and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). GFIP 2 focuses on three key areas:
1. Credit information systems: Assist governments and other stakeholders in establishing and/or reforming their credit reporting systems to enable the flow of reliable credit-related information in a safe and efficient manner.
2. Secured transactions and asset-based lending: Develop flexible and innovative credit products to increase lending to SMEs using movables as collateral.
3. Insolvency and debt resolution: Design tailor-made reforms of existing insolvency frameworks, as well as out-of-court restructuring solutions (a particularly important tool in times of systemic crises). GFIP 2 has a global knowledge management component and a regional focus with country-level projects.
1.4 Background to the Assignment
Access to credit for individuals and businesses remains severely constrained across much of the developing world. Weak legal and institutional frameworks for lending and debt resolution — combined with the absence of reliable credit information, limited ability to leverage productive assets, and low predictability for lenders — create a financial environment that is particularly unfavorable for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). These constraints reinforce cycles of low investment, limited employment growth, and exclusion from formal financial systems, disproportionately affecting women-owned businesses and firms in lower-income markets.
Since July 2016, with SECO support, IFC has rolled out the Global Financial Infrastructure Program (GFIP) across multiple regions. Through this program, IFC supported partner countries to develop credit reporting and secured transactions systems, as well as insolvency and debt resolution reforms, contributing to greater financial stability and inclusion and to expanded financial access for female- and male-owned MSMEs.
One of SECO’s key requirements has been to develop a rigorous methodology to measure the development impact of credit infrastructure reforms — going beyond headline output metrics such as the value of financing facilitated and the number of MSMEs reached. Specifically, SECO and IFC wish to understand whether and to what extent two critical dimensions of credit infrastructure reform translate into measurable improvements in firms’ access to finance: (i) credit information systems (CIS) — particularly credit bureaus and credit registries and (ii) movable collateral registries and secured transactions reforms. This assignment will address both reform dimensions through two components within a single research study sharing a common methodological framework.
The commissioned research builds on a well-established evidence based on credit infrastructure and firms’ access to finance, including prior cross-country studies by IFC and World Bank researchers using Enterprise Survey data (e.g., Love, Martínez Pería, and Singh, 2013 and 2016) that documented significant effects of credit bureau and movable collateral registry introduction on firm-level credit access. However, the data landscape has evolved substantially since these studies were undertaken, and new econometric methods have become the methodological standard in applied economics. An updated, extended, and methodologically refreshed study across both reform dimensions is therefore both timely and highly relevant to SECO and to IFC’s operational programs.
II. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
This assignment examines the development impact of credit infrastructure reform on firms’ access to finance and firms’ ability to create new jobs. Credit infrastructure reform is understood broadly to encompass the range of legal, institutional, and informational improvements that shape the functioning of credit markets — including the introduction and strengthening of credit bureaus and credit registries, the establishment of movable collateral registries, and reforms to secured transactions. The assignment will produce two complementary research papers sharing a common methodological approach, one focused on credit information reforms and one on secured transactions reforms, together providing a comprehensive empirical assessment of how credit infrastructure reform affects firm financing outcomes.
2.1 Overall Research Objective
The overall research objective is to estimate the causal effect of credit infrastructure reforms on firms’ access to finance, using suitable cross-country quasi-experimental designs. The study will also examine the potential implications of the estimated access-to-finance effects for employment and other development outcomes, drawing on relevant empirical literature. For this assignment, credit infrastructure reforms comprise: (i) credit bureau introduction and improvement; and (ii) movable collateral registry introduction and secured transaction law reform.
2.2 Research Objectives
· Estimate the average cross-country causal effect of credit infrastructure reforms – encompassing credit bureau introduction and improvement as well as movable collateral registry establishment and secured transaction law reforms - on firms’ access to finance, using panel datasets spanning multiple countries and years with staggered difference-in-differences identification.
· Examine heterogeneous treatment effects across firm size (micro, small, medium), age (young vs. established firms), sector, and gender of ownership, to identify which categories of firms benefit most from credit infrastructure reforms — and to generate actionable insights for program design.
· Develop an additional synthesis that uses the estimated effects on firm-level access to finance, together with existing empirical literature on the relationship between access to finance and broader development outcomes, to provide indicative illustrative extrapolations, order-of-magnitude estimates of potential implications for variables such as firm growth, investment, employment, productivity, and financial inclusion.
2.3 Research Questions
· What is the average cross-country effect of credit infrastructure reforms on firms’ probability of having a bank loan and the share of investment financed externally?
· Do the effects of credit infrastructure reform differ by firm size, age, sector, and/or gender of ownership – if yes, to what extent?
· What are the distributional patterns consistent across reform types – if any?
· Do the effects of credit infrastructure reform in countries with weaker baseline financial sector development differ – if yes, to what extent?
· Do GFIP 2.0 country contexts exhibit distinct dynamics – if yes, to what extent?
· What indicative development implications can be inferred from the estimated access-to-finance effects, drawing on existing literature on the relationship between financial access and broader economic outcomes? These extrapolations should be clearly distinguished from the causal estimates produced by the empirical analysis.
III. SCOPE OF WORK
· Develop and apply a common methodological framework for two research components: (i) credit reporting system reforms, covering credit bureau and credit registry and (ii) movable collateral registry and secured transactions reforms, including collateral registry development. Like the previously mentioned reference papers, the study should be global in coverage, focused on emerging markets and developing economies. Adapting the design as needed to reflect differences in reform identification and data availability.
· Construct cross-country panel datasets combining firm-level, reform-level, and macro-financial indicators to analyze the effects of credit infrastructure reforms on firm access to finance. Where data permits, distinguish the effects of legal and regulatory reforms from those of system or registry development.
· Implement the baseline econometric strategy using staggered difference-in-differences and two-way fixed effects models to compare firms in reforming countries with firms in non-reforming countries before and after reform introduction, with country and year fixed effects and standard errors clustered at the country level.
· Assess and apply advanced estimators appropriate for staggered treatment timing and heterogeneous treatment effects, including the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) approach and the Sun and Abraham (2021) interaction-weighted estimator, alongside the baseline specification.
· Produce event-study analysis to test the plausibility of parallel trends and to examine the timing and persistence of reform effects around the introduction of each reform.
· Conduct heterogeneity analysis to estimate differential reform effects by firm size, firm age, sector, gender of ownership/management, level of registry digitalization, intensity of IFC involvement, and country financial sector development; and, for Component 2, by firm asset structure and reliance on movable collateral.
· Prepare a synthesis that translates the estimated firm-level access-to-finance impact into indicative broader development implications. This should draw on credible existing empirical literature on how improved access to finance and credit availability affect outcomes such as firm investment, employment, productivity, sales growth, and broader financial sector development. The synthesis should discuss how the findings relate to the WBG More and Better Jobs agenda, particularly through the potential effects of improved access to productive finance on firm investment, growth and employment.
· Compile and harmonize data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, Orbis, B-ready, historical Doing Business indicators, GFIP 2.0 program records, World Development Indicators, the Global Financial Development database, IMF International Financial Statistics, and targeted desk research. The commissioned team must procure external datasets. GFIP 2.0 program records and IFC operational data will be provided by IFC.
· Incorporate feedback from an internal IFC and external academic peer review on the draft cross-country analytical report; document responses to peer reviewer comments in an accompanying response matrix. The commissioned team, in consultation with WBG team, will be responsible for identifying, engaging, and coordinating the external academic peer reviewers.
IV. APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY
The research will employ a common methodological framework, adapted as needed for the specific identification requirements and data characteristics of each reform dimension. The approach described below applies to both the first component (credit bureaus) and second component (movable collateral registries and secured transaction reforms). The methodology described below is indicative; the selected team may propose refinements or alternative estimators, with justification, based on the data landscape and developments in the applied econometrics literature.
1. Baseline Methodological Approach: Staggered Difference-in-Differences
The primary identification strategy for both papers follows Love, Martínez Pería, and Singh (2013, 2016), exploiting variation in the timing of reform adoption across countries in a difference-in-differences (DiD) framework: firms in countries that introduced a credit bureau (Component 1) or a movable collateral registry / enacted secured transaction reform (Component 2) during the sample period are compared to firms in countries that did not, before and after the introduction event, controlling for country and time fixed effects.
The baseline specification is a two-way fixed effects (TWFE) model:
Yᴵᶜₜ = α + β · Reformᶜₜ + γ · Xᴵᶜₜ + δᶜ + θₜ + εᴵᶜₜ
where Y is a measure of credit access for firm i in country c at time t; Reform is an indicator for whether the relevant reform (credit bureau for Component 1; movable collateral registry or secured transaction law for Component 2) is operational in country c at time t (or a measure of its coverage/comprehensiveness); X is a vector of firm and country characteristics; δ and θ are country and year fixed effects respectively; and ε is the error term. Standard errors are clustered at the country level.
2. Advanced Methods for Staggered Treatment
The standard TWFE estimator has documented limitations when treatment is staggered across units and time — as here, since countries adopt credit bureaus and collateral registries at different points — and treatment effects are heterogeneous across cohorts. Recent methodological advances (Callaway & Sant’Anna, 2021; Goodman-Bacon, 2021; de Chaisemartin & D’Haultfoeuille, 2020) have established that TWFE can produce biased estimates in such settings. The team will therefore evaluate and implement modern robust estimators alongside the baseline approach for both papers.
The preferred specification will be the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) estimator, which constructs group-time average treatment effects — comparing each cohort of treated countries to a clean comparison group of not-yet-treated or never-treated countries — and aggregates these into summary treatment effect estimates robust to treatment effect heterogeneity. The Sun and Abraham (2021) interaction-weighted estimator provides a complementary approach implementable within the standard regression framework. Event-study plots will be generated to examine the parallel trends assumption and characterize dynamic treatment effects around the time of each reform.
3. Heterogeneity Analysis
A core contribution of both components is a systematic examination of heterogeneous effects. The team will estimate treatment effect heterogeneity by:
· Firm size: micro (< 10 employees), small (10–49), and medium (50–249 employees), per standard IFC/World Bank definitions;
· Firm age: young firms (< 5 years) vs. established firms;
· Sector: manufacturing, services, retail, and other categories as available in the Enterprise Survey;
· Gender of firm ownership: female-owned or majority-female-managed firms vs. others, where Enterprise Survey data permits;
· Level of digitalization of reform (particularly the registries);
· Intensity of IFC involvement: whether reforms that involved high/low IFC involvement had any differential effects on outcomes (through use of dummy/categorical variables)
· Country financial development: whether the country had below- or above-median financial sector development at the time of reform introduction, to assess whether reforms have larger effects in more financially underdeveloped environments;
· Asset structure (Component 2 only): firms with higher shares of movable assets (manufacturing, agriculture, trade) vs. firms with higher shares of fixed assets, to test whether the effects of secured transaction reform are concentrated among firms most reliant on movable collateral.
· Any other identified/relevant variables.
4. Data Sources
The studies will draw on three main categories of data:
· Firm-level data: World Bank Enterprise Survey (ES) data, providing comparable firm-level indicators across countries and years — including measures of credit access (whether the firm has a bank loan, share of investment financed by banks, whether access to finance is a major obstacle) and firm characteristics (size, age, sector, ownership, export status). The use of Orbis (Bureau van Dijk) as a complementary source will be highly desirable.
· Credit infrastructure indicators: For Component 1, credit bureau and registry indicators from the World Bank’s B-ready data initiative and desk research, including: presence and introduction date of a credit bureau or registry; coverage rate (% of adult population and % of legal entities); whether positive information is included; and quality of the legal and regulatory framework. For Component 2, indicators on movable collateral registry introduction dates, legal framework comprehensiveness (covering scope of assets, priority rules, enforcement mechanisms), and registry operational quality, drawn from B-ready, Doing Business historical data, GFIP 2.0 program records, and desk research.
· Country-level controls: World Development Indicators (WDI), the Global Financial Development (GFD) database, and IMF International Financial Statistics (IFS) — providing macroeconomic and financial sector controls including GDP per capita, inflation, domestic credit to the private sector (% of GDP), and bank concentration.
V. INDICATIVE SYNTHESIS OF BROADER DEVELOPMENT IMPLICATIONS
In addition to the two complementary research papers, the selected team will prepare a dedicated synthesis chapter in the main analytical report that assesses the potential employment and other broader development and macroeconomic implications of the estimated access-to-finance impacts. This chapter will not constitute a separate econometric analysis of employment or macroeconomic outcomes. Instead, it will use the estimated effects on firm-level access to finance from the two components as the starting point and combine these with findings from existing empirical literature on the relationships between credit availability, firm financing constraints, investment, employment, productivity and growth. The chapter will apply appropriate parameters from this literature to derive indicative estimates of the potential magnitude of selected effects, with particular attention to job creation.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide SECO and IFC with a structured interpretation of what the estimated access-to-finance effects may imply for broader development outcomes. The analysis should explain the relevant transmission channels; transparently document the methodology, parameters, assumptions and data sources used; and, where feasible, assess the sensitivity of the results to key assumptions. Any extrapolated or imputed impacts should be presented as indicative order-of-magnitude estimates rather than causal estimates. The chapter should explicitly discuss the limitations of the analysis, including that the study’s empirical design is not intended to causally estimate employment or economy-wide macroeconomic impacts.
VI. DELIVERABLES AND OUTPUTS
The deliverables from this research activity are:
• Inception report presenting the refined methodology, a data audit (coverage of Enterprise Survey, B-ready, Orbis, GFIP 2.0 records; treatment identification feasibility), preliminary country list, and a detailed work plan.
• Main analytical report (incl. executive summary): A comprehensive cross-country study presenting the methodology, data sources, main econometric findings, heterogeneity analysis, policy implications; and a synthesis chapter on broader development implications. The report will be accessible to a development practitioner audience (non-technical executive summary, clear data visualization) while maintaining full analytical rigor. The report will include the dedicated chapter on employment and broader development effects described in Section V.
• Technical working papers: Two research papers (10-15 pages each) – one for each component - providing full technical details of the econometric approach, robustness checks, and data construction, for an academic and technical audience. The research papers should meet standards of analytical rigor suitable for external peer review and publication. Within the assignment period, the selected team will prepare complete working papers, address comments received through the agreed peer-review process, and finalize the papers for submission to an appropriate working-paper series. The papers should also be prepared with a view to subsequent submission to peer-reviewed academic journals by WBG team, recognizing that journal submission and publication may occur beyond the timeframe of the assignment.
• Non-technical policy briefs: Two 2–4 pages brief – one for each component - summarizing key findings and messages for SECO, IFC operational teams, and broader stakeholder dissemination.
• Data files, code, and replication package: Cleaned analytical datasets, Stata (or equivalent) do-files, and documentation (README) sufficient to reproduce all reported results, delivered together with the final analytical report.
• Presentation to SECO: A formal presentation of findings to SECO's M&E team, to be organized upon completion of the final report.
All outputs, deliverables, and communications are expected to be in English (US) language.
VII. DURATION, TIMELINES AND PAYMENT SCHEDULE
The assignment is expected to start by November 1, 2026, and be completed March 2028. Payment schedule subject to milestones:
· Contract signature and project mobilization by December 15, 2026 — 5%
· Inception Report Received – Methodology finalized by February 28, 2027 - 10%
· Draft cross-country analytical report and replication package by August 2027 - 20%
· Draft cross-country report methodology working paper submitted by October 2027 - 20%
· Final analytical reports and policy briefs, including peer reviews by December 2027 - 20%
· Review by IFC and SECO by January 2028
· Dissemination to SECO, including presentation; by March 2028 - 25%
VIII. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Responding team must demonstrate:
· Organization-level criteria: years of operation, minimum of 3 comparable prior assignments, audited financials if applicable.
· Strong track record in applied cross-country econometric research;
· Prior evidence of capacity to both conduct rigorous technical analysis and synthesize results into reports accessible to non-technical audiences. The selected firm will be supervised by the IFC technical team throughout implementation.
· A team composition that includes at least one academic researcher with a relevant publication record
· Specific role requirements:
o The Team Leader, or at least one other senior team member, must hold a PhD in Economics and have a strong publication record, including publications in leading peer-reviewed economics journals.
o The proposed team must demonstrate relevant expertise in the subject matter and sub-sectors covered by the assignment, evidenced through prior assignments, research, and/or publications. Team members must include Econometrician, Research Analyst.
o The proposal must include the qualifications and expected profile of the external academic peer reviewers proposed for the assignment
Proposal Requirements:
o The proposal should specify the level of effort (LoE), including person-months by role and/or overall person-month estimates for the assignment.
o The proposal should include a signed ethics and conflict-of-interest declaration.
o The proposal should clearly describe the proposed staffing mix, allocation of responsibilities, and quality assurance arrangements.
IX. REPORTING OBLIGATIONS
The team will report administratively to Ms. Ghada O. Teima and Mr. Hourn Thy, and technically to Mr. Sandeep Singh and Mr. Hasan Shahriar of the IFC/World Bank Group (WBG). The team will conduct regular progress review meetings with the project team - on a bi-weekly basis during the inception and analysis phases, and monthly during the report finalization phase - and will provide written progress updates in advance of each meeting. All deliverables outlined in this Terms of Reference shall be submitted to the WBG in draft form for review and feedback prior to finalization.
X. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, CONFIDENTIALITY AND DATA ACCESS
Intellectual Property. Any material created in the fulfillment of this contract — including documents, data, code, copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other proprietary rights in and to the work — shall be the exclusive property of IFC. Such material may not be disclosed publicly or to third parties without the prior written consent of IFC. Any disclosure of information must be in line with data-sharing agreements between IFC and its clients or partners, and with IFC’s data-sharing policies.
Data access and confidentiality. IFC will provide the team with access to the IFC-controlled datasets referenced in the Scope of Work (including GFIP 2.0 program records and any IFC operational data required for the IFC-involvement heterogeneity analysis). The team shall procure any third-party licensed datasets required for the assignment (including but not limited to Orbis) at its own cost unless otherwise agreed in the contract. All data shall be stored and transmitted using secure protocols agreed with IFC, and the team shall not publish or otherwise disseminate any results without prior written consent from IFC.
XI. EVALUATION CRITERIA
Proposals will be evaluated on a combined technical and financial basis, with an expected weighting of 80% technical and 20% financial. Technical sub-criteria includes: (i) team composition and CV quality (30%); (ii) demonstrated methodological soundness, data sources proposed, and understanding of the assignment (25%); (iii) prior comparable assignments and publication track record (15%); (iv) work plan and feasibility (10%). A particular proposal needs to score at least 60% to be eligible for consideration of the financial assessment. IFC reserves the right to interview shortlisted firms before award.