This paper presents a scoring model that predicts the risk of drop-out for borrowers at a microfinance lender in Bolivia. Drop-out risk was greater for women, manufacturers, newer borrowers, and those with more arrears. Out-of-sample tests suggest that scoring may help microfinance lenders to detect segments of their clientele (and even specific current clients) who are at-risk of drop-out. Ack...

Microfinance through joint liability or group lending has received a lot of attention recently from policy makers as well as academicians. It is playing important role in delivering financial services to the ‘socially and economically excluded’ poor, in general, and women, in particular. Grouplending works with various dynamic incentives. One such is the principle of progressive lending which p...

This thesis examines the possibilities for women's empowerment through microfinance. It utilizes the results of a survey conducted in 2009 with clients of the microfinance organization FINCA Honduras. The analysis of these survey results yields important conclusions on FINCA Honduras' ability to empower Honduran women economically, psychologically, and socio-culturally. The original hypothesis ...

This paper uses household data to test whether microfinance institutions created by the Malawian government in the mid-1990s under its Poverty Alleviation Programme crowded out access to informal loans. As in several recent studies, the paper adopts policy evaluation techniques to identify a causal relationship between access to government-sponsored credit programmes and informal loans. After t...

The research aims to study outreach of microfinance in Lucknow district Indian state Uttar Pradesh. With the objective studying explore how effectively is reaching target population. According interpretation, benefits a lot poor households, but not considerably rural women who are living below poverty line. It also has short affiliation with microfinance, few loan cycles, and no connection pove...

To study the impact of the choice of injection points in the diffusion of a new product in a society, we developed a model of word-of-mouth diffusion and then applied it to data on social networks and participation in a newly available microfinance loan program in 43 Indian villages. Our model allows us to distinguish information passing among neighbors from direct influence of neighbors' parti...

A day almost like any other … Mamadou Djiré is in charge of the Djicoroni Para outlet in Bamako, Mali. He is opening up the financial coop because several members will be arriving to withdraw funds from their current accounts or make deposits to cover loan payments. Mamadou takes out the cash drawer from the strongbox opens up his teller window and turns on the pocket computer with its AMIO Tel...

Recent evidence suggests heterogenous impacts of microfinance loans, with limited average effects on enterprise growth among the poor. One possibility is that the rigidity of the classic microcredit contract – widely held to be important for reducing default – inhibits investment in microenterprises. To explore these trade-offs, we provide experimental estimates of the consequences for client r...

Economic prosperity, defined as a movement of people from the economic poor class to the economic middle or rich class of a society, in Africa has been achieved by a few countries. However, most countries, like Nigeria are left still chasing that elusive goal. Entrepreneurs, who spur economic growth in a society, are lacking in Nigeria. Steps taken by the Nigerian government to encourage entrep...

This study examines a method to collect and explore data on the conditions that could lead to crises due to microfinance clients’ over-indebtedness. A simplified version of one of the main approaches to early warning systems, the “signaling approach”, is proposed to construct a composite index for predicting over-indebtedness crises in the microfinance industry. The index is built for a sample ...