This review puts a corporate finance lens on microfinance. Microfinance aims to democratize global financial markets … competing social and commercial firm goals. We frame the analysis with theory that explains why microfinance institutions …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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. This paper analyzes the tensions and opportunities of microfinance as it … embraces the market, drawing on a data set that includes 346 of the world's leading microfinance institutions and covers nearly …

Microfinance contracts have proven able to secure high rates of loan repayment in the face of limited liability and …, though, is at the heart of the promise that microfinance can deliver poverty reduction while not relying on ongoing subsidy …

Microfinance has been heralded as an effective way to address imperfections in credit markets. But from a theoretical … perspective, the success of microfinance contracts has puzzling elements. In particular, the group-based mechanisms often employed … different games that allow them to unpack microfinance mechanisms in a systematic way. They find that risk-taking broadly …