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Microfinance

About: Microfinance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11375 publications have been published within this topic receiving 169239 citations.


Papers
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Posted Content
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the tensions and opportunities of micro finance as it embraces the market, drawing on a data set that includes 346 of the world's leading micro-finance institutions and covers nearly 18 million active borrowers, finding that profit-maximizing investors would have limited interest in most of the institutions that are focusing on the poorest customers and women.
Abstract: Microfinance institutions have proved the possibility of providing reliable banking services to poor customers. Their second aim is to do so in a commercially-viable way. This paper analyzes the tensions and opportunities of microfinance as it embraces the market, drawing on a data set that includes 346 of the world's leading microfinance institutions and covers nearly 18 million active borrowers. The data show remarkable successes in maintaining high rates of loan repayment, but the data also suggest that profit-maximizing investors would have limited interest in most of the institutions that are focusing on the poorest customers and women. Those institutions, as a group, charge their customers the highest fees in the sample but also face particularly high transaction costs, in part due to small transaction sizes. Innovations to overcome the well-known problems of asymmetric information in financial markets were a triumph, but further innovation is needed to overcome the challenges of high costs.

661 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this article, a cross-sectional survey of nearly 1800 households of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh showed that households that are eligible to borrow and have access to the programs do not have notably higher consumption levels than control households, and their children are no more likely to be in school.
Abstract: The microfinance movement has built on innovations in financial intermediation that reduce the costs and risks of lending to poor households. Replications of the movement's flagship, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, have now spread around the world. While programs aim to bring social and economic benefits to clients, few attempts have been made to quantify benefits rigorously. This paper draws on a new cross-sectional survey of nearly 1800 households, some of which are served by the Grameen Bank and two similar programs, and some of which have no access to programs. Households that are eligible to borrow and have access to the programs do not have notably higher consumption levels than control households, and, for the most part, their children are no more likely to be in school. Men also tend to work harder, and women less. More favorably, relative to controls, households eligible for programs have substantially (and significantly) lower variation in consumption and labor supply across seasons. The most important potential impacts are thus associated with the reduction of vulnerability, not of poverty per se. The consumption-smoothing appears to be driven largely by income-smoothing, not by borrowing and lending. The evaluation holds lessons for studies of other programs in low-income countries. While it is common to use fixed effects estimators to control for unobservable variables correlated with the placement of programs, using fixed effects estimators can exacerbate biases when, as here, programs target their programs to specific populations within larger communities.

653 citations

Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe how poor people in developing countries manage their money and contribute to the improvement in microfinancing by showing how a study of the poor managing their own money can lead to the designing of better quality financial services.
Abstract: This work describes how poor people in developing countries manage their money. It attempts to contribute to the improvement in microfinancing by showing how a study of the poor managing their own money can lead to the designing of better quality financial services. The book is intended for secondary school level and undergraduate training courses in microfinance and development, and has been selected as a text for the microfinance training programme, at The Economics Institute, Colorado.

612 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors presented a Journal of Banking & Finance (JBankFin) journal article with the following abstracts and corresponding abstracts: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/jbankfin.2008.11.009
Abstract: Accepted version of article published in the journal: Journal of Banking & Finance Published version available on Science Direct: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2008.11.009

603 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors provide an academic foundation for understanding new financial options that entrepreneurs can now use to start and grow ventures, such as microfinance, crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer lending.
Abstract: New financing alternatives, such as microfinance, crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer lending, have expanded rapidly. To date, few studies have investigated the antecedents and consequences of these financing mechanisms. This special issue provides an academic foundation for understanding new financial options that entrepreneurs can now use to start and grow ventures. In the introductory article, we integrate strands of the literature on emerging innovations in entrepreneurial finance and provide a framework for a systematic approach to new research questions. We conclude with a discussion of the six papers in the special issue and demonstrate how they contribute to the framework.

597 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20241
2023387
2022892
2021393
2020524
2019595