Recent evidence suggests only modest social and economic impacts of microfinance. Favorable cost-benefit ratios then … depend on low costs. This paper uses proprietary data on 1,335 microfinance institutions between 2005 and 2009, jointly … serving 80.1 million borrowers, to calculate the costs of microfinance and other elements of the microfinance business model …

This paper describes important trade-offs that microfinance practitioners, donors, and regulators navigate. Drawing … evidence from large, global surveys of microfinance institutions, the authors find a basic tension between meeting social goals … and maximizing financial performance. For example, non-profit microfinance institutions make far smaller loans on average …

the market, drawing on a data set that includes 346 of the world’s leading microfinance institutions and covers nearly 18 …Microfinance institutions have proved the possibility of providing reliable banking services to poor customers. Their … second aim is to do so in a commercially-viable way. We analyze the tensions and opportunities of microfinance as it embraces …