This paper shines light on subsidy-dependent microfinance institutions (MFIs). Firstly, our model shows that subsidy uncertainty can have pervasive effects on MFIs’ poverty-reduction mission. In particular, we argue that supply-driven uncertainty can lead to mission drift. MFIs maximize...

This paper starts from the observation that 23% of the world’s microfinance institutions (MFIs) manage without subsidies. We examine how unsubsidized institutions cope with their social mission. Overall, the lack of subsidies worsens social performances. However, our results show that...

A poverty penalty arises when the poor pay more than the non-poor to access goods and services. An example is the cost to access credit. While still high, microcredit interest rates are lower than the interest rates charged by moneylenders. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) usually justify the...

Poor people were excluded from financial services until microfinance institutions (MFIs) emerged. The mission of MFIs is to alleviate poverty, contributing to women empowerment especially in rural communities. Microcredits can be analyzed under Pareto’s 80/20 Principle. Their clients are...

This paper sheds light on a poorly understood phenomenon in microfinance which is often referred to as a “mission drift”: A tendency reviewed by numerous microfinance institutions to extend larger average loan sizes in the process of scaling–up. We argue that this phenomenon is not driven...