Search results for "jel:D44"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Some preliminary but troubling evidence on group credits in microfinance programmes
2010
Group lending programs are said to be the key factor of success of microÂ…nance. They are said to reduce information asymmetries in credit contracts and to increase repayment rates. Despite that, in recent years more and more individual credits without collateral are given, even if there is no mutual monitoring of the borrowers. We use basic descriptive statistics on individual- and group panel data, which we construct out of a World Bank data set. We provide Â…rst evidence that individuals that are not participating in group credits accumulate wealth more quickly than participants of group credit programs.
Reciprocity, matching and conditional cooperation in two public goods games
2005
Previous experimental and empirical evidence has identified social preferences in the voluntary provision of public goods. A number of competing models of such preferences have been proposed. We provide evidence for one model of behavior in these games, reciprocity (or matching, or conditional cooperation). Consistent with previous research, we find that participants in the voluntary contribution mechanism attempt to match the contributions of others in their group. We also examine participants in a related game with different equilibria, the weakest-link mechanism. Here, in contrast, participants contribute so as to match the minimum contribution of others in their group.
To switch or not to switch - Can individual lending do better in microfinance than group lending?
2011
These days it has been witnessed, that banks other individual loans instead of group loans and develop products based on individual liability in developing coun- tries. In order to study this surprising turn, we expand the conventional approach on decision making of individuals. A social prestige function is introduced that re- ‡ects the non-monetary impacts of group membership on the individual and on her decisions. If a borrower possesses more than a critical level of wealth, it is optimal for her to switch to individual borrowing. From a welfare perspective, a mixture of individual and group loans is desirable. However, the average borrower switches from group to individual lending too …