Narratives for Credit

Last registered on September 19, 2025

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Narratives for Credit

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016729

Initial registration date

September 15, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

September 19, 2025, 9:57 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

Afghanistan

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Navid Neshat

Affiliation

Tulane University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Yongseok Kim

PI Affiliation

Tulane University

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-12-01

End date

2026-01-31

Keywords

Finance & Microfinance

Additional Keywords

Narratives, Verbal commitments, Lending, Credit, Entrepreneurs, Loan officers, Trust, Credibility, Credit, Microfirm, Microenterprise

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

G21

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of loan applicants’ narratives on loan approval decisions.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Kim, Yongseok and Navid Neshat. 2025. "Narratives for Credit." AEA RCT Registry. September 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16729-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We use a set of loan applications submitted to a bank in Afghanistan. These applications include standard financial information such as account balances, as well as a non-conventional section where applicants describe in their own words why the bank should trust their credibility and commitment to repayment. We refer to this as the narrative section. Our study examines how loan officers evaluate these narratives by recruiting loan officers to review applications and assign a score indicating how likely they believe the applicant is to repay the loan at maturity. To identify the effect of narratives, each application is evaluated by multiple officers, with randomization occurring across officers: some see the full application, while others see the same application with the narrative section removed.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-12-01

Intervention End Date

2026-01-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

The primary outcome is the loan officer’s evaluation score, measured on a scale from 1 to 10, reflecting how likely they believe the applicant is to repay the loan by the maturity date, where 1 indicates “very unlikely to repay.”

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

This study investigates how loan officers evaluate borrower narratives when making lending decisions. We use a set of loan applications submitted to a bank in Afghanistan. These applications include standard financial information such as account balances, as well as a non-conventional section where applicants describe in their own words why the bank should trust their credibility and commitment to repayment. We refer to this as the narrative section. To examine the effect of narratives, we recruit loan officers toto review applications and assign a score indicating how likely they believe the applicant is to repay the loan at maturity. Randomization occurs at the application level, where the narrative section is either shown or hidden.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization is done by a computer.

Randomization Unit

Loan officer–application pair

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

The number of clusters is equal to the number of loan officer–application pairs included in the experiment, expected to be around 2,500 evaluations (25 officers × 100 applications each).

Sample size: planned number of observations

Approximately 2,500 loan officer–application evaluations (about 25 officers reviewing 100 applications each).

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Narrative shown (full application): ~50 percent of observations (≈1,250).
Narrative hidden (full application without narrative section): ~50 percent of observations (≈1,250)

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB