In recent years, microfinance institutions have expanded into group lending with individual liability, leaving out the joint liability clause which was an important feature in earlier lending contracts. Recent experimental evidence indicates that group lending may yield benefits, specifically...

In recent years, microfinance institutions have expanded into group lending with individual liability, leaving out the joint liability clause which was an important feature in earlier lending contracts. Recent experimental evidence indicates that group lending may yield benefits, specifically...

In recent years, microfinance institutions have expanded into group lending with individual liability, leaving out the joint liability clause which was an important feature in earlier lending contracts. Recent experimental evidence indicates that group lending may yield benefits, specifically...

Peer-group mechanisms have been widely used by micro-credit institutions to minimize default risk. However, there are costs associated with establishing and maintaining liability groups. In the case when output is fully observable, we propose a dynamic individual lending mechanism. Assuming that...

This paper focuses on the size of the borrower group in group lending. We show that, when social ties in a community enhance borrowers’ incentives to exert effort, a profit-maximizing financier chooses a group of limited size. Borrowers that would be fundable under moral hazard but have...

In an environment with correlated returns, this paper characterizes optimal lending contracts when the bank faces adverse selection and borrowers have limited liability. Group lending contracts are shown to be dominated by revelation mech- anisms which do not use the ex post observability of the...

This paper contrasts individual liability lending with and without groups to joint liability lending. By doing so, we shed light on an apparent shift away from joint liability lending towards individual liability lending by some microfinance institutions First we show that individual lending...

We examine group-lending under sequential financing. In a model with moral hazard, social capital and endogenous group formation, we identify conditions such that sequential financing with joint liability leads to positive assortative matching between borrowers with and without social capital...

Using data from a recent survey of bank and enterprise managers and government officials in southern China, we present a new explanation for the rise and fall of collectively-owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) based on the willingness of banks to finance collective enterprise...