Ireland's loan funds were a long-lived, self-sustaining, large-scale microfinance organization that made millions of loans, without collateral, to the poor. During the first hundred years of their life-cycle, a period of growth ending in the 1840s, they adapted constantly and obtained...

We compare six microcredit organizations of nineteenth-century Europe (credit cooperatives and loan funds) to identify what characteristics were related with successful attainment of the organization's goals. We find that organizations that depended on charity or government for their funding...

Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or quot;loan funds,quot; were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-nineteenth century. Their goal was to relieve poverty by providing credit to the quot;industrious poorquot; at competitive interest rates...

Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or "loan funds," were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-nineteenth century. Monitored by a central regulatory authority, funds in the system were successful in mitigating informational, moral hazard...