The paper presents a social innovation as an innovative business model with new social relations and indicates a few short cases to indicate how a social problem was addressed by a social innovation by entrepreneurial actions by microfinance service providers. The cases are from microcredit,...

We analyze in this paper how various forms of State intervention can impact the microcredit market in developed countries. Using a simple model where entrepreneurs borrow without collateral, we study the effect of different policies on microfinance institutions' lending behavior. We first...

France has a rather low rate of enterprise creation. Institutional analysis helps to explain why this is so. Nevertheless, in the last few years since 2003, France has been modernizing its legal framework to stimulate enterprise creation and this has achieved some success. A new regime of...

This paper compares the loans granted to male and female entrepreneurs by a French microfinance institution (MFI). The sample period is split in two: before and after the MFI implemented France's regulatory EUR 10,000 loan ceiling. In the first period, the MFI does not co-finance projects with...

Product diversification involving simultaneously microcredit, savings or insurance services –also called combined microfinance (CMF)- can both leverage and challenge policy outcomes. This paper reviews two complementary questions in this regard: Which are the possible effects of CMF on public...

Documented deficiencies in traditional social transfer mechanisms have led to the emergence of alternative methods for reducing poverty. In many countries, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have become popular instruments for redistributive pro-poor policies. While microcredit programmes have...

Worldwide, microcredit organizations are gradually transforming to multi-servicing organizations offering additional financial services. This paper examines whether combining microcredit with insurance and/or savings enhances their economic performance by increasing their efficiency,...

This paper aims at gaining deeper understanding of the possible effects of combined microfinance (CMF) on social and economic performance outcomes. By means of a case-study on the City of Bridgetown (COB), one of the leading credit unions in Barbados, it explores the possible limits, challenges...