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 …

income mobility in Malaysia in 2004-16. On aggregate, there were large reductions in chronic poverty and increases in …This study employs a synthetic panel approach based on nationally representative micro-level data to track poverty and …. Further, the poverty and income dynamics differ notably across geographic dimensions. Such disparities are most striking when …

Given Sub-Saharan Africa's enormous resource needs for growth, poverty reduction, and other Millennium Development …

Regulation allows microfinance institutions to evolve more fully into banks, particularly for institutions aiming to … draw on a new database that combines high-quality financial data on 245 of the world s largest microfinance institutions … profitability. The pattern is consistent with the notion that profit-oriented microfinance institutions absorb the cost of …