Les développements actuels de microfinance encouragent les IMF à fournir un éventail plus large de services financiers au sein d'un portefeuille multiservices comprenant de la micro-épargne, de la micro-assurance, des services bancaires mobiles. L'une des caractéristiques de cette tendance s'exprime par la volonté des IMF de développer le marché de l'épargne afin d'atteindre les clients les plus pauvres mais également d'attirer des dépôts à moindre coûts. L'évolution rapide de la microfinance a également engendré un processus de commercialisation qui implique l'ouverture du secteur aux pratiques marchandes et qui se concrétise par un changement des modes de financement des IMF. Le domaine de la microfinance est donc sujet à de nombreuses modifications qui touchent aussi bien les pratiques des IMF, que leur organisation ou leur mode de financement. L'objectif de cette thèse est alors de contribuer à la compréhension de l'impact de ces modifications sur le développement et l'efficacité des sociétés de microfinance. Pour se faire, nous nous proposons d'explorer trois thèmes particuliers, correspondant aux trois chapitres de la thèse. Premièrement, nous chercherons à identifier des mécanismes originaux d'incitations relatifs aux nouvelles pratiques des IMF (en particulier l'offre couplée de services financiers) et permettant d'assurer l'exécution des contrats de financement. Deuxièmement, nous tenterons d'évaluer la performance des IMF offrant des services de microfinance couplés (crédit plus épargne) par rapport aux IMF traditionnelles. Enfin, nous étudierons l'impact des nouvelles modalités de financement des IMF sur leurs performances à la fois financières et sociales. / It has been commonly acknowledged that in order to reach the target clienteles with loans at attractive terms and conditions, an appropriate technology for delivering financial services must be developed. Next to this, current developments in microfinance industry encourage MFIs to offer wide-ranging services within a multiservice portfolio including microsavings, microinsurance, remittances, mobile banking etc. One of the main pillars of this trend has become MFIs increasing interest in the expansion into the savings market to reach more poor clients as well as to lower costs by attracting presumably cheaper deposits. Joint services are tailored to better meet needs of the poor and aim at building sustainable financial systems and establishing closer and long-term relationship with clients. Furthermore, the rapid evolution of microfinance has generated another essential and closely related trend: commercialization. The focus of this dissertation is on three emerging issues associated with the development of microfinance sector: incentive mechanisms to address contract enforcement and screening problems, performance of MFIs though the lenses of combined microfinance services (credit plus savings), and performance of MFIs though the lenses of capital structure. The essays in the dissertation vary in research methodology: one essay is theoretical and two are empirical. Moreover, the data come from diverse microfinance units: Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) online database and Microfinance Centre for Central & Eastern Europe and the New Independent States (MFC). As far as methods are concerned the empirical essays use less frequently applied methodologies in microfinance studies: seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) and propensity score matching (PSM).

<p>I denna uppsats undersöks hur moral hazard påverkas i grupplån vid frånvaro av sociala band, övervakning, och kontinuerliga krediter. Undersökningen förklarar grupplån i teori men presenterar även empiriskt material från andra författares artiklar. Undersökningen visar att de sociala banden inte har den avgörande betydelsen som teorin förutsätter. Vidare konstateras att nära övervakning och låntagarens behov av framtida lån har stor betydelse för att reducera moral hazard.</p>

I denna uppsats undersöks hur moral hazard påverkas i grupplån vid frånvaro av sociala band, övervakning, och kontinuerliga krediter. Undersökningen förklarar grupplån i teori men presenterar även empiriskt material från andra författares artiklar. Undersökningen visar att de sociala banden inte har den avgörande betydelsen som teorin förutsätter. Vidare konstateras att nära övervakning och låntagarens behov av framtida lån har stor betydelse för att reducera moral hazard.

<p>Offering financial services to the unprivileged is a complex task and past attempts have been rather unsuccessful. One commendable effort that has sprung from the failures of commercial banks is microfinance and thanks to innovative ideas microfinance institutions have managed to cope with many of the challenges previously experienced by the formal bank sector in the 1970’s through the 90’s.</p><p>The “new” approach has successfully managed to overcome obstacles such as lack of collateral and information asymmetry. By using joint-liability schemes and by requiring frequent installments microfinance institutions have managed to reduce their risk exposure and by outsourcing the screening process to the borrowers they have dealt with the lack of information on their clients.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what microfinance institutions do that make them more suitable for delivering financial services to the poor. We will look at the supply driven efforts carried out in the past and see how they differ from the demand driven approach taken today.</p><p>We will evaluate some of the most common mechanisms of microfinance and assess their potential contribution to achieving the high repayment rates that many of these institutions obtain today.</p><p>The main finding is that group lending subject to social sanctions should improve the repayment rate. Other mechanisms that may enhance the performance are the use of dynamic incentives and regular repayment schedules. The effect of targeting women and social programs on repayment rates are ambiguous although their empowerment effect is notable.</p><p>By joining forces with NGOs, local authorities and the commercial financial sector microfinance has emerged as a viable poverty reduction tool alongside traditional aid.</p>

Offering financial services to the unprivileged is a complex task and past attempts have been rather unsuccessful. One commendable effort that has sprung from the failures of commercial banks is microfinance and thanks to innovative ideas microfinance institutions have managed to cope with many of the challenges previously experienced by the formal bank sector in the 1970’s through the 90’s. The “new” approach has successfully managed to overcome obstacles such as lack of collateral and information asymmetry. By using joint-liability schemes and by requiring frequent installments microfinance institutions have managed to reduce their risk exposure and by outsourcing the screening process to the borrowers they have dealt with the lack of information on their clients. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what microfinance institutions do that make them more suitable for delivering financial services to the poor. We will look at the supply driven efforts carried out in the past and see how they differ from the demand driven approach taken today. We will evaluate some of the most common mechanisms of microfinance and assess their potential contribution to achieving the high repayment rates that many of these institutions obtain today. The main finding is that group lending subject to social sanctions should improve the repayment rate. Other mechanisms that may enhance the performance are the use of dynamic incentives and regular repayment schedules. The effect of targeting women and social programs on repayment rates are ambiguous although their empowerment effect is notable. By joining forces with NGOs, local authorities and the commercial financial sector microfinance has emerged as a viable poverty reduction tool alongside traditional aid.

Holding educators more accountable for the academic achievement of their students has been a central feature of recent education reforms. In several prominent instances, accountability schemes have set pecuniary performance targets that condition on prior scores as a means of controlling for student heterogeneity. Yet doing so introduces a potential dynamic distortion in incentives: teachers may be less responsive to the reform today in an effort to avoid more onerous targets in future — an instance of the so-called `ratchet effect.' The main chapters of this thesis consider possible dynamic distortions from three distinct but related vantage points. Chapter 2 builds a theoretical foundation for understanding the origin of ratchet effects in an educational context. Given an environment where school-level targets depend on student prior scores, I show that such dynamic gaming behaviour depends crucially on variation in the grade horizon of students, with teachers distorting their effort less when their decision affects fewer future scores within the same school. Chapter 3 analyzes the ratchet effect from an empirical perspective. Making use of rich educational panel data from North Carolina, I exploit variation in the grade span of schools to identify ratchet effects, finding compelling evidence of dynamic distortions using a difference-in-differences approach. I then directly estimate the structural parameters of the corresponding model, allowing for complementarities in production between teacher effort and student ability. Using these estimates, the grade five score in K-5 schools would be about 1.25 standard deviations lower under a counterfactual setting without any accountability scheme and 4.6% of a standard deviation higher if ratchet effects were eliminated via a prescribed reduction in each school's incentive target. Chapter 4 explores a potentially important class of mechanisms through which the identified dynamic effects might arise. In particular, school principals may re-allocate teachers across classrooms differentially by grade. By examining the yearly change in teacher assignments to tested subjects, I find evidence that principals re-sort higher quality teachers to higher grades and focus more costly re-sorting on lower grades in response to the reform, which is consistent with the overarching dynamic objective and results of the prior chapter.

Holding educators more accountable for the academic achievement of their students has been a central feature of recent education reforms. In several prominent instances, accountability schemes have set pecuniary performance targets that condition on prior scores as a means of controlling for student heterogeneity. Yet doing so introduces a potential dynamic distortion in incentives: teachers may be less responsive to the reform today in an effort to avoid more onerous targets in future — an instance of the so-called `ratchet effect.' The main chapters of this thesis consider possible dynamic distortions from three distinct but related vantage points. Chapter 2 builds a theoretical foundation for understanding the origin of ratchet effects in an educational context. Given an environment where school-level targets depend on student prior scores, I show that such dynamic gaming behaviour depends crucially on variation in the grade horizon of students, with teachers distorting their effort less when their decision affects fewer future scores within the same school. Chapter 3 analyzes the ratchet effect from an empirical perspective. Making use of rich educational panel data from North Carolina, I exploit variation in the grade span of schools to identify ratchet effects, finding compelling evidence of dynamic distortions using a difference-in-differences approach. I then directly estimate the structural parameters of the corresponding model, allowing for complementarities in production between teacher effort and student ability. Using these estimates, the grade five score in K-5 schools would be about 1.25 standard deviations lower under a counterfactual setting without any accountability scheme and 4.6% of a standard deviation higher if ratchet effects were eliminated via a prescribed reduction in each school's incentive target. Chapter 4 explores a potentially important class of mechanisms through which the identified dynamic effects might arise. In particular, school principals may re-allocate teachers across classrooms differentially by grade. By examining the yearly change in teacher assignments to tested subjects, I find evidence that principals re-sort higher quality teachers to higher grades and focus more costly re-sorting on lower grades in response to the reform, which is consistent with the overarching dynamic objective and results of the prior chapter.

Cette thèse étudie la question des incitations dynamiques des agents économiques à frauder. Le premier chapitre introduit un modèle dynamique de fraude fiscale afin d’étudier l’impact de l’audit rétroactif sur le respect des obligations fiscales des agents économiques.Il permet de montrer qu’un accroissement de la période de prescription entraîne une diminution de la fraude fiscale et de déterminer le montant des recettes fiscales attendues par l’autorité fiscale pour différentes politiques d’audit. On établit que les audits rétroactifs génèrent des recettes fiscales espérées supérieures à celles des audits statiques. Le deuxième chapitre propose une approche théorique et expérimentale des incitations dynamiques des agents économiques à frauder. Les résultats expérimentaux confirment les prédictions théoriques : un accroissement de la période de prescription implique une augmentation des déclarations de revenus des agents. Le dernier chapitre introduit une deuxième étude expérimentale en laboratoire, dans le but de comparer l’efficience des deux politiques d’audit fiscal : l’audit rétroactif et l’audit statique (restreint à la période courante). Le principal résultat suggère que les politiques d’audit rétroactif sont plus efficaces pour réduire la fraude fiscale que les politiques d’audit statique fondées sur des fréquences d’audit élevées. / This thesis studies taxpayers' dynamic incentives to evade taxes. The first chapter introduces a dynamic model of tax evasion. We prove that higher limitation periods increase tax compliance. We also determine the expected tax revenues generated by retroactive and static auditing policies, with respect to the levels of tax rates and expected discounted penalties. We obtain that retroactive auditing generates higher expected tax revenues than static auditing. The second chapter provides theoretical and experimental evidence about subjects' incentives to evade taxes, with respect to a retroactive inspection policy. Our experimental results confirm theoretical predictions, i.e. higher limitation periods increase agents' compliance. The third chapter introduces a second laboratory experiment, in order to compare the efficiency of two main audit schemes: retroactive versus static auditing. We find that retroactive auditing policies are more efficient in enhancing tax compliance, than policies of static auditing accompanied by high audit rates.

It has been commonly acknowledged that in order to reach the target clienteles with loans at attractive terms and conditions, an appropriate technology for delivering financial services must be developed. Next to this, current developments in microfinance industry encourage MFIs to offer wide-ranging services within a multiservice portfolio including microsavings, microinsurance, remittances, mobile banking etc. One of the main pillars of this trend has become MFIs increasing interest in the expansion into the savings market to reach more poor clients as well as to lower costs by attracting presumably cheaper deposits. Joint services are tailored to better meet needs of the poor and aim at building sustainable financial systems and establishing closer and long-term relationship with clients. Furthermore, the rapid evolution of microfinance has generated another essential and closely related trend: commercialization. The focus of this dissertation is on three emerging issues associated with the development of microfinance sector: incentive mechanisms to address contract enforcement and screening problems, performance of MFIs though the lenses of combined microfinance services (credit plus savings), and performance of MFIs though the lenses of capital structure. The essays in the dissertation vary in research methodology: one essay is theoretical and two are empirical. Moreover, the data come from diverse microfinance units: Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) online database and Microfinance Centre for Central & Eastern Europe and the New Independent States (MFC). As far as methods are concerned the empirical essays use less frequently applied methodologies in microfinance studies: seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) and propensity score matching (PSM).

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