At present, many microfinance institutions (MFIs) not only lend but also collect savings to serve better the needs of the poor. Little is known, however, if MFIs' overall costs decrease or increase as a consequence, nor it is clear which MFIs may benefit the most from expansion into savings...

Economic conditions such as convexity, homogeneity, homotheticity, and monotonicity are all important assumptions or consequences of assumptions of economic functionals to be estimated. Recent research has seen a renewed interest in imposing constraints in nonparametric regression. We survey the...

We extend a recently developed generalized local polynomial estimator into a semiparametric smooth coefficient framework to estimate a generalized cost function. The advantage of the generalized local polynomial approach is that we can simultaneously choose the degree of polynomial for each...

This paper studies the relation between board size and composition and cost savings (scope economies) from combining savings mobilization and lending by Microfinance Institutions. The findings support the hypothesis that employee representation on the board is associated with positive scope...

There has recently been a dramatic increase in the number of papers that have combined quasi-experimental methods with hedonic property models. This is largely due to the concern that cross-sectional hedonic methods may be severely biased by omitted variables. While the empirical literature has...