In this paper we present a model of competition between informal lending and group lending. The paper is organized as follows. The second paragraph reviews the economic literature that analyzes separately group contracts and informal lending markets. The third paragraph tries to answer the...

In recent years, an important number of impact studies have attempted to examine the effect of credit on income poverty; however, many of these studies have not paid sufficient attention to the problems of endogeneity and selection bias. The few exceptional cases have employed econometric...

Limited borrower information may create targeting distortions in credit markets. Community-based lending programs may reduce these distortions by exploiting information transmitted in local networks, but connections may create asymmetries in power. This paper analyzes how local leaders balance...

If the demand for credit by the poor changes little when interest rates increase, lenders can raise fees to cost-covering levels without losing customers. This claim is at the core of sustainable microfinance strategies that aim to provide banking services to the poor while eschewing long-term...

Loans granted by banks to several entrepreneurs jointly, but for their own individual business and/or projects, are rarely studied. Analyzing 32 million month-loan observations from the Bolivian credit register, we establish that group loans comprise a sizeable part of the formal credit market,...

We study the provision of financial services to small firms, consumers, and workers in developing countries as part of value chain relationships: value chain microfinance (VCMF). We first explore how VCMF can both overcome barriers to financial access - including asymmetric information,...

This paper investigates how gender disparities affect the time to default of both group and individual micro-finance loans. We also document and control for the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on micro-finance loan borrower’s time to repay capacity. We use two large proprietary samples of bank...

This paper investigates how gender disparities affect the time to repay group micro-finance loans using survival analysis and hazard decomposition techniques. We also control for the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the time needed by micro-finance loan borrowers to repay. We use a large...

Microcredit institutions typically apply rigid and fixed repayment schedules when disbursing loans in order to reduce transaction costs, simplify procedures, and inculcate fiscal discipline for better repayment behavior. Microcredit clients, however, often have neither smooth income nor singular...

In this paper we consider that a representative of a not so affluent rural household has three options. He (she) may join in a microfinance system operating on the basis of individual liability credit contract, or on the basis of joint liability loan contract through forming self-help group or...