Microfinance is generally seen as a way to fix credit markets and unleash the productive capacities of poor people who … are dependent on self-employment. The microfinance sector has grown quickly since the 1990s, paving the way for other …, generating a backlash against microfinance. This paper reconsiders the claims about microfinance, highlighting the diversity in …

Microfinance is often criticized for not adequately addressing seasonality and hard-core poverty. In Bangladesh, a … program known as PRIME was introduced in 2006 to address both concerns. Unlike regular microfinance, PRIME introduces a … microfinance scheme that offers a flexible repayment schedule and consumption smoothing, as well as production, loans. It targets …

, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines, to highlight key aspects of their characteristics and experience of … example, measured management practices differ widely across local governments of a single state in Nigeria. Surveys of civil …

Nigeria. The threshold expenditure for the middle class in Nigeria is found to be 378.39 Naira per capita per day (2010 PPP …). Relying on this threshold and through survey-to-survey imputation the size of Nigeria's middle class in 2003 is also estimated … percent to 19 percent. Nevertheless the results still paint a heterogeneous picture of poverty and the middle class in Nigeria …

This paper evaluates effectiveness of microfinance using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method applied to data … the original study and provide more nuanced evidence by comparing Microfinance Institution (MFI) borrowers to those … true microfinance impact. The results suggest that microfinance can make a modest difference for some households in several …