Search results for "Microfinance"
showing 10 items of 95 documents
International Debt Financing and Performance of Microfinance Institutions
2013
Using data from 319 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 68 developing countries, we study the degree to which international debt investments are related to the financial and social performances of MFIs. We find that commercial investments are mainly related to financial performance and level of professionalisation of the MFIs. The targeting of women is not a priority, even though international commercial investors target MFIs that provide small loans. Subsidised investments, however, are mainly driven by the targeting of women, while financial performance and the level of professionalisation of the MFI is not a priority.
You Cannot Save Alone - Financial and Social Mobilization in Savings and Credit Groups
2007
Savings and credit groups are becoming increasingly popular, both as a cost-efficient alternative to mainstream microfinance and as a mean to mobilize people around individual and common challenges. Whether donors should promote and support Self Help Microfinance Groups that confine themselves to financial intermediation only - the specialist, or minimalist approach - or if they should support those pursuing a more integrated approach and incorporate a broader set of activities, is increasingly being debated. The study proposes a framework to better analyze and understand the different group-models, their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, the study outlines how social and financial…
Earnings Quality in Nonprofit Versus For-Profit Organizations: Evidence From the Microfinance Industry
2013
This study uses data from the microfinance industry to analyze differences in earnings quality between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. The two sets of organizations differ with respect to both governance mechanisms and managerial incentives, and little research has been conducted to investigate how such differences affect the quality of financial reporting. Overall, we find little evidence of differences in earnings quality between our two samples in the aggregate. We do, however, observe significant differences among the types of nonprofit organizations; this finding suggests that the concept of a “nonprofit level of earnings quality” is ill defined.
Female leaders and financial inclusion: Evidence from microfinance institutions
2023
This research advances the hypothesis that female leaders – chief executive officers (CEOs), chairs, and directors – of a microfinance institution (MFI) give more priority to the poorest families in loan provision than male leaders do. We differentiate between a depth and a width dimension of financial inclusion. The data set is a unique global panel of MFIs collected from MFI raters’ reports. Our sample is also unique in the sense that about one-third of all MFIs have a female CEO. The problem of endogeneity for the female leader is resolved by running Heckman’s two-step endogenous dummy variable estimation with an instrument for the female leader. We find evidence of greater depth financi…
The interaction effect of gender and ethnicity in loan approval: A Bayesian estimation with data from a laboratory field experiment
2019
Microfinance targets women and uses loan provision as a tool for empowerment, which translates into better household nutrition, improved education, and a scale down of domestic violence. However, ethnic discrimination in microfinance may exist in countries with a segregated indigenous population. We assessed this possibility with a field experiment in Bolivia. The controlled laboratory experiment evaluated whether credit officers rejected microloan applications based on the interaction effect of ethnicity and gender of potential borrowers. Point estimates of a Bayesian mixed‐effects logistic regression, estimated with the experimental data, indicate that nonindigenous women have double the …
Which Governance Mechanisms Promote Efficiency in Reaching Poor Clients? Evidence from Rated Microfinance Institutions
2009
Accepted version of an article from the journal: European Financial Management. Also available from Wiley: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-036X.2009.00524.x
Audit Quality and Corporate Governance: Evidence from the Microfinance Industry
2012
This study uses a unique, hand-collected sample of microfinance institutions from 73 countries that typically are not investigated in accounting research to analyze the relationships between audit quality and governance mechanisms. We examine two measures of audit quality, namely, the use of Big Four auditors and the presence of internal auditors who report to the boards of these institutions. The empirical analysis of this study reveals that these two quality metrics are highly related, although we also demonstrate that these metrics capture distinctive aspects of audit quality. In particular, the presence of internal auditors is related to other indicators of stricter governance, whereas …
Essays on the Performance, Subsidization and Internationalization of Social Enterprises
2020
Social enterprises are hybrid organizations that tackle societal challenges by using conventional business models. Being hybrid organizations means that social enterprises pursue dual objectives: social (developmental) and financial. By taking performance, subsidization and internationalization perspectives, this thesis contributes to understanding the hybridity of social enterprises and how this hybridity drives their general operations and key decisions such as foreign market selection and targeting strategy.
Roles Of Stakeholders In Strategic Decision-Making Of Microfinance Organizations
2010
Microfinance organizations provide financial services to low income people. These organizations have been increasing dramatically worldwide. This increment calls attention for these organizations and their boards to make strategic decisions which enable them perform well and compete with each other. Based on literature, this paper identifies six types of microfinance stakeholders who sit on boards. These are clients, employees, government, donors, creditors and owners. This paper discusses the different roles of these stakeholders when they sit on boards of microfinance organizations and these roles are further explained to show how they contribute to the process of making strategic decisio…
Microfinance beyond self-employment: Evidence for firms in Bulgaria
2017
This paper provides new evidence on the impact of microfinance on job creation beyond self-employment. We examine wage-employment effects for a typical program in Eastern Europe with average loan sizes that are considerably above what has been studied so far. We apply propensity score matching extended by a difference-in-differences estimator to panel data from an individual-lending program to firms in Bulgaria. Our results indicate that microcredit has very positive effects on job creation. Participating firms have on average 2.5 (or 33 percent) more employees two years after receiving a microcredit than matched non-participants. This strong effect seems to be related to a certain loan siz…