We test whether loan officers discriminate against female business owners in capital decisions affecting real businesses in an Ethiopian business plan competition. Randomizing owner gender across 3,696 evaluations, by 84 loan officers, for 916 businesses, we find no effect on prize scores or consideration for a loan. Incentivized beliefs about future performance did not differ by gender, ruling out statistical and taste-based discrimination. Machine learning predictions of future business performance show that loan officers beliefs were accurate. Gender does not meaningfully improve predictions, implying no trade-off between gender equity and effective capital allocation.

We introduce a new mobile money interface that permits Sri Lankans to deposit mobile airtime balances directly into a formal bank account. Randomizing access and prices, we find a small increase in savings deposits with the partner institution and formal banks more generally, but no change in overall savings. When the deposit transaction costs are completely removed, only 26% use the mobile deposit service and only 7% use it frequently. Our results imply that deposit transaction costs are not a significant barrier to increasing savings, limiting the potential gains of mobile-linked savings products for financial inclusion.