Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or "loan funds," were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-nineteenth century. Monitored by a central regulatory authority, funds in the system were successful in mitigating informational, moral hazard...

Ireland's loan funds were a long-lived, self-sustaining, large-scale microfinance organization that made millions of loans, without collateral, to the poor. During the first hundred years of their life-cycle, a period of growth ending in the 1840s, they adapted constantly and obtained...