This report compressed the results of a four-month initiative to identify unmet needs and market opportunities in Colombia, El Salvador, Brazil and Mexico, and present a potential private sector solutions that can address these unmet needs profitably.

This paper surveys housing finance in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama. The development of a secondary mortgage-backed securities market in Costa Rica is very limited despite a broad legal framework, while in El Salvador it is nonexistent and in Panama has not grown due to high liquidity. In...

El presente número de Microempresa ofrece dos artículos principales. En el primero se analizan modelos alternativos de esquemas garantías para instituciones microfinancieras (IFM). Una de las dificultades generalizadas de la mayoría de las IFMs es acceder a fuentes comerciales de...

This paper analyzes a large database provided by INFONAVIT, Mexico's principal mortgage issuer, which contains information on borrowers' repayment behavior. It finds that borrowers who received subsidies do not show higher default rates than borrowers who received no financial assistance....

In Guatemala there are substantial and growing imbalances in the housing market; at the same time, financial markets remain shallow and underdeveloped. The analytical framework applied in this paper starts by identifying the types of market failures responsible for the underdevelopment of the...

Improved microfinance strategies in Peru have increased credit access for microentrepreneurs. To establish effective national credit reporting systems elsewhere in the region, ensured universal reporting cooperation, reliable identification, privacy and consumer protection are needed.