From NGOs to Banks: Does Institutional Transformation Alter the Business Model of Microfinance Institutions?
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd In the microfinance industry an increasing number of providers are undergoing an institutional transformation from NGO to a shareholder-owned and typically regulated financial entity. Little is known about the extent to which this transformation affects the way microfinance institutions (MFIs) conduct their business. Our results obtained by applying an event study methodology to 66 transformed MFIs suggest that portfolio yield is driven down by 3.9 percentage points due to transformation, indicating that clients get more favorable interest rates. MFIs are able to significantly cut down their operational expenses, of which 1.1 percentage points can be attributed to transf…
Why do financial inclusion policies fail in mobilizing savings from the poor ? Lessons from rural south India
© The Authors 2017. Development Policy Review © 2017 Overseas Development Institute Combining multivariate and qualitative analyses, this micro-level study suggests an explanation for the persistence of informal savings in rural south India despite publicly run large-scale programmes to promote bank savings. Gold, in particular, but also Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and private lending, remain the dominant forms of savings. We argue that cultural norms and social institutions, such as social class and caste, shape the nature of savings, and also the propensity and opportunities to save. Gold serves multiple purposes, financial, economic, socio-cultural and political. Fur…
The financial burden of non-communicable chronic diseases in rural Nigeria: Wealth and gender heterogeneity in health care utilization and health expenditures
Objectives Better insights into health care utilization and out-of-pocket expenditures for non-communicable chronic diseases (NCCD) are needed to develop accessible health care and limit the increasing financial burden of NCCDs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Methods A household survey was conducted in rural Kwara State, Nigeria, among 5,761 individuals. Data were obtained using biomedical and socio-economic questionnaires. Health care utilization, NCCD-related health expenditures and distances to health care providers were compared by sex and by wealth quintile, and a Heckman regression model was used to estimate health expenditures taking selection bias in health care utilization into account. Res…
The Differential Impact of Entrepreneurship Education on the Entrepreneurial Intentions of Segments of Students
Inconclusive prior research on the effects of entrepreneurship education may be an aggregation artefact because student subjects were assumed to be homogenous. Accordingly, we examine the impact of entrepreneurship education on student intention, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and attitude towards entrepreneurship among theoretically relevant sub-groups of Norwegian business students. We find that at aggregate level, self-efficacy increases while attitude towards entrepreneurship and intentions remain unchanged. However, on closer examination we find that entrepreneurial self-efficacy and attitude towards entrepreneurship increase for some subgroups of students, decrease for other subgroups…
Contagious loan default
© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Applying survival analysis to a large loan-level dataset for regulatory purposes on group loans provided by Mexican banks, I find that ex-post credit risk is subject to substantial geographic spillover effects. Potential underlying mechanisms include contagious defaulting behavior, which bears the risk of proliferating into a repayment crisis in the event of an economic or political shock, as experiences from similar markets suggest. ispartof: ECONOMICS LETTERS vol:170 pages:14-18 status: Published online