This dissertation examined whether or not microcredit, the provision of small loans to people usually excluded from mainstream financial institutions, demonstrably improved health for typical borrowers in Indonesia. The underlying idea behind microcredit is that loans will increase borrowers’ income and lead to positive changes in their lives, including their health. However, microcredit may actually be harmful to borrowers’ health because of stress associated with repayment obligations, extra working hours needed to start a business and tensions caused by shifting power dynamics in the household. Moreover, for some borrowers, a loan may facilitate increased spending on so-called temptation goods that are damaging to health, such as tobacco and processed foods. Previous research has not adequately explored these competing positive and negative pathways linking microcredit and health. The project consisted of three parts: a systematic review and two empirical papers. The systematic review synthesized the scientific literature related to individual microcredit loans, health-related temptation spending, psychological stress and self-reported health outcomes in adults. The empirical papers estimated the causal effect of microcredit on household expenditures on tobacco and processed foods, and individual psychological distress and self-rated health. Both empirical papers used data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey, a longitudinal study that followed more than 7,000 households over 21 years. After adjusting for confounding, people living in borrowing households had levels of psychological distress and self-rated health that were similar to people living in non-borrowing households. These predominantly null findings were relatively robust across multiple models. Microcredit households did spend substantially more money on tobacco than non-borrowers. This difference was driven by households with male borrowers. Still, tobacco spending ultimately did not affect health outcomes. Based on empirical evidence from this dissertation along with findings from other studies, policymakers and practitioners should recalibrate their high expectations of microcredit as a socially transformative intervention. At the same time, fears about the unintended health consequences of microcredit may have been exaggerated. Reliance on longitudinal data generated insights into microcredit and health that could not be established from randomized controlled trials.

Com o objetivo de concluir quanto ao alcance e aos limites das microfinanças na luta contra a pobreza, este trabalho contém duas partes principais, sendo uma centrada na discussão sobre desenvolvimento e a outra enfocando a literatura empírica sobre impacto de programas de microfinanças e de microcrédito em seus beneficiários. Tendo por base a discussão realizada dos estudos empíricos mais rigorosos, em termos de isolamento do efeito da participação em programas financeiros voltados aos pobres ? isto é, basicamente, estudos que controlaram as variáveis observáveis e as não observáveis ?, pode-se concluir que as iniciativas microfinanceiras podem trazer benefícios diretamente aos componentes de famílias pobres. Tais benefícios estão ligados principalmente à esfera da estabilização do consumo. Por outro lado, deve-se reconhecer que, apesar de seus benefícios bastante apreciáveis, as microfinanças não podem ser consideradas uma espécie de panacéia. Em relação a essa questão, o mérito deste trabalho está em discutir essas limitações não tão-somente do ponto de vista dos resultados que não são encontrados pelos estudos, mas também sob o enfoque amplo da compreensão das bases de funcionamento da sociedade. De acordo com a linha de análise adotada, apoiada em textos de Celso Furtado e de Milton Santos, a sociedade subdesenvolvida se pautaria, por seu funcionamento, por criar uma massa de subaproveitados, e tal fator pode ser visto como uma peça-chave para compreender a economia dos pobres e seus princípios de organização que, por sua vez, constituem o contexto onde operam as microfinanças. Assim, essa visão do subdesenvolvimento, além de contribuir para o entendimento da vida econômica dos pobres, contribui de maneira decisiva para a delimitação das possibilidades das iniciativas microfinanceiras, não esperando delas solução para dificuldades criadas e realimentadas, fundamentalmente, pelo modo como a sociedade funciona. Entre as questões suscitadas a partir dos achados empíricos discutidos, o trabalho referese, ainda, ao aparato regulatório sobre o setor microfinanceiro no Brasil, considerando o seu eventual aprimoramento, no sentido de tornar as iniciativas potencialmente mais benéficas aos pobres. / Aiming at debating the scope of microfinance in the fight against poverty, this paper is divided into two main parts, one of which centered in the discussion of development and the other, focused on the empirical literature about the impact of microfinance and microcredit programs on the beneficiary parts. Based on the discussion included in the most rigorous empirical studies, regarding the isolation of the effect of participation in financial programs aimed at the poor ? that is, basically, studies that controlled the observable and non-observable variables -, it is possible to conclude that the microfinance initiatives can directly benefit the components of poor families. Such benefits are mainly linked to the stabilization of consumption. On the other hand, despite the extremely pleasant benefits, the microfinance cannot be considered a kind of panacea. Regarding this issue, the merit of this paper is to debate these limitations not only from the point-of-view of the lack of results that are showed in the studies, but also under the broad scope of comprehending the society functioning bases. According to the line of analysis adopted, based on texts by Celso Furtado and Milton Santos, the underdeveloped society creates, due to its functioning, a great group of underused people, and this fact can be seen as a key to comprehend the economy of the poor and their principles of organization, which are part of the scenario that encompasses microfinance. Therefore, this view of the underdevelopment, in addition to contributing for the understanding of the economic life of the poor, highly contributes for the delimitation of the possibilities of microfinance programs, which should not be expected to solve the difficulties that are created and fed, basically, by the way society works. Among the questions raised as a result of the discussions of empirical studies, the paper still refers to the regulatory aspects underlying the microfinance sector in Brazil, considering its eventual improvement, aiming at turning the initiatives potentially more favorable to the poor.

thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Johannesburg, August 2015 / Financial inclusion is promoted as an important economic development program to solve the lack of access to formal financial services for billions of people around the world. The concept “financial inclusion” has entered mainstream business and development discourses as an all-encompassing term for innovation in financial services for the poor. South African policymakers and financial service providers have embraced this approach to address some of the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. A number of examples are held up as successes of financial inclusion such as India’s “Jan Dhan Yojana” initiative. The program, launched in August 2014, signed up 75 million people to new bank accounts in under three months. South African policymakers and financial service providers have also embraced financial inclusion to address the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. Several consequences challenge this optimistic view. The first issue is the high level of dormancy across various services. India’s account has up to 75% dormancy, much like South Africa’s Mzansi account launched expressly for financial inclusion in 2005. It was abandoned by 2012 due to lack of use. The second major issue is adverse inclusion that arises after people are “financially included” and they end up worse off than before. In August 2014 African Bank, the largest lender to low-income individuals in South Africa, failed because it had issued loans to customers who eventually could not afford to repay them. Despite these issues, the focus of financial inclusion remains on targets of density, penetration and geographic access as measured in the World Bank’s Findex, a global financial inclusion database. Practitioners and researchers tend to be concerned with how people as borrowers, savers, bank account users and mobile phone users access and use financial services. Yet an unexplored issue is how these subject positions came to be, how they are maintained and the specific rationalities that accompany them. Following Foucault, this study is an attempt to understand how the concept of financial inclusion has functioned in our society to create human beings as subjects. This is a seven-year genealogical research project of South Africa’s national financial inclusion effort. Over this period, three discourse clusters were identified and analysed. The first cluster consists of 12 texts produced by a range of public, private and civil society institutions. The second cluster of academic discourses on financial inclusion consists of 3 83 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2009 and 2013. The third cluster is a collection of texts from local sources in two townships produced by those individuals who are often the subjects in the other discourse clusters. The analysis reveals dominant modes of objectification in each cluster and the synthesis enables the search for evidence of a regime of truth on financial inclusion. Evidence indicates that dominant discourses of financial inclusion, irrespective of origin, limit subjects to existing practices of money management. Therefore, despite claims of the sweeping changes that can result from financial inclusion, this study argues that this form of development discourse perpetuates existing concentrations of wealth. Counter-narratives that link financial inclusion and asset building offer an important break in this dominance / MT2016

<p>The first of the two essays in this dissertation uses primary data from Bangladesh to explore the role of microloan repayment frequency (weekly vs. bi-weekly, assigned randomly) on loan repayment performance of microfinance borrowers after controlling for their inherently distinct time preferences. The findings show that the borrowers’ individual time preference is an important determinant of their repayment behavior. Specifically, the repayment performance of present-biased borrowers improves significantly when they happen to be assigned to the weekly repayment schedule instead of the bi-weekly schedule. Also, irrespective of time preference, borrowers are found to invest more in new businesses under a more flexible (i.e., bi-weekly) repayment schedule. Overall, our findings suggest that instead of a "one size fits all" approach, by offering loans with a weekly (bi-weekly) repayment schedule matched to the present-biased (time-consistent) borrowers, the MFIs might be able to minimize their transaction costs while ensuring high repayment rates. This would also benefit the borrowers by enabling them to venture into new business investments. </p> Using primary data from Bangladesh, the second essay seeks to examine two aspects of religiosity that might affect the microfinance borrowers’ repayment performance. First, whether individual religiosity influences repayment behavior. Second, whether the impact of religiosity changes with borrowers’ age, and level of community religiosity. The results show religiosity to be a significant determinant of a borrower’s repayment behavior, as individuals with higher religiosity are found to be better borrowers. Also, the positive impact of religiosity is stronger for older borrowers, and for borrowers who live in comparatively less religious community. These findings indicate that MFIs can take into consideration the degree of individual and community religiosity to decide on the intensity of supervision required for borrowers. Borrowers with higher level of religiosity can possibly go on with minimal level of supervision as they are less likely to default. This reduced supervision would reduce travel costs incurred by MFI staff, making operations more cost-effective. This will also help free up loan officers’ and borrowers’ time. Thus, MFIs and borrowers can take advantage of this and invest time to other productive activities. The MFIs can also make better use of the freed-up staff to increase coverage.

El objetivo de esta investigación radica en presentar propuestas de mejora dentro de un marco estratégico para el producto micro financiero “Crédito Mujer” de Mibanco. Se trata de un microcrédito dirigido a mujeres dependientes e independientes a partir de 23 años de edad que deseen financiamiento hasta por 12 meses para capital de trabajo, activo fijo, vivienda y consumo personal. Se analizó el mercado micro financiero peruano donde se encontró una problemática que radica en las escasas oportunidades de desarrollo económico para las mujeres, ya que la mayoría de productos están diseñados en base a las necesidades y características de los hombres. Posteriormente, se investigó a Mibanco y al producto para conocer las capacidades que permitirán desarrollar una ventaja consistente en el tiempo y coherente con el propósito de la empresa. “Crédito Mujer” es un producto piloto que presenta una serie de oportunidades de mejora para aprovechar los elementos del entorno y las fortalezas del producto y del banco. Luego de identificar las oportunidades de mejora, se propone una serie de estrategias para lograr un producto potenciado, diferenciado y rentable. Finalmente, se analizan las propuestas en un Estado de Resultados proyectado del producto “Crédito Mujer” para identificar si la aplicación de las estrategias resultaría atractiva para la empresa. / The goal of this research is to present some proposal to improve the product “Crédito Mujer” of Mibanco under a strategic framework. It is a microcredit aimed at dependent and independent women from 23 years who seek financing up to 12 months for working capital, fixed assets, housing, and personal consumption. The Peruvian micro-financial market was analyzed, and a problem was identified that lies in the few economic development opportunities for women, as most of the products are designed based on the necessities and characteristics of men. Afterward, Mibanco and its products were studied to determine the abilities allowing to develop a consistent advantage over time and coherent with the purpose of the company. “Crédito Mujer” is a pilot product which provides several opportunities for improvement to take advantage of the environmental elements and the product and bank strengths. After having identified the opportunities for improvement, a series of strategies are suggested to achieve an enhanced, differentiated, and profitable product. Finally, the proposals are analyzed in a projected Income Statement of the product “Crédito Mujer” to identify if the implementation of the strategies would be attractive for the company. / Trabajo de investigación

En las últimas décadas, el microcrédito logra expandirse a raíz de la industrialización de las microfinanzas y es aceptado como una herramienta innovadora de desarrollo para la reducción de la pobreza, sin embargo, la historia muestra que las microfinanzas son prácticas ancestrales. La bibliografía nos permite recoger distintas investigaciones que son revisadas para identificar la posible influencia del microcrédito, estas provienen de diversos lugares del mundo y sus resultados pueden ser replicados en cualquier entorno gracias al método utilizado para las evaluaciones. Se descubre que su creciente demanda responde a una necesidad de consumo que influye en el bienestar familiar, lejos de los supuestos relacionados con el emprendiendo empresarial o empoderamiento de la mujer que, a su vez, oculta aspectos negativos como el abuso económico y el trabajo infantil. El microcrédito opera como un producto bancario y su industria trata de solucionar la pobreza desde un punto de vista capitalista eludiendo la verdadera causa del subdesarrollo. Se advierte que el predominio de la deuda incrementa el riesgo de vida de los pobres y pueden generar una eventual burbuja económica en un sector floreciente, no obstante, proporciona el acceso a servicios financieros formales que facilita las actividades diarias de la población. / In recent decades, microcredit has been able to expand as a result of the industrialization of microfinance and is accepted as an innovative development tool for poverty reduction, however, history shows that microfinance is ancestral practices. The bibliography allows us to collect different researches that are reviewed to identify the possible influence of microcredit, these come from different parts of the world and their results can be replicated in any environment thanks to the method used for the evaluations. It is discovered that their growing demand responds to a need for consumption that influences family well-being, far from the assumptions related to entrepreneurship or the empowerment of women that, in turn, hides negative aspects such as economic abuse and child labor. Microcredit operates as a banking product and its industry tries to solve poverty from a capitalist point of view by avoiding the true cause of underdevelopment. It is noted that the predominance of debt increases the risk of life of the poor and can generate an eventual economic bubble in a flourishing sector; however, it provides access to formal financial services that facilitates the daily activities of the population. / Trabajo de Suficiencia Profesional

Poverty alleviation in Buea, Cameroon, has been a problem of concern for decades. The study is vital because managers who control the funds given to the government of Cameroon to help reduce poverty are politicians and do not equitably distribute the funds to all on the pretext that the default rate is high. The purpose of this study was to find better ways to make additional capital available to the microbusiness owners of Buea to open or improve businesses. This qualitative case study design was consistent with the aim of understanding the importance of risk management within the microfinance industry and the risks involved in getting loans and paying them back. The key research question concerned how the microbusiness owners of Buea can obtain additional capital to open new businesses or improve existing businesses. The conceptual framework for this study was Rostow's theory of modernization. Twenty purposively sampled loan officers, bank managers, government officials, and microbusiness owners in Buea were interviewed. Six participants from the population also participated in a focus group. Study findings suggest it is possible for microbusiness owners in Buea to get microloans and start or improve businesses with the use of land titles as collateral or family members as cosigners. The government of Cameroon could improve the financial stability of microbusinesses by facilitating the issuance of land titles or certificates, which are acceptable forms of collateral. This study may contribute to positive social change by improving the financial stability of microbusinesses in Cameroon, and possibly in other socially similar countries.

This paper begins with an introduction to the concept of microfinance, lending models in India and key strengths of Indian MFIs. The term microfinance refers to small-scale financial services both credit and savings- that are extended to the poor in rural, semi-urban and urban areas. The poor need microfinance to undertake economic activity, smoothen consumption, mitigate vulnerability to income shocks (in times of illness and natural disasters), increase saving and support self-empowerment. This paper discuss about Nokia initiative to further increase mobile penetration in India via microfinance root. Nokia found most of the people living in village and they don’t have money to buy mobile phone by cash. Nokia had tied up with microfinance institutions SKS microfinance to sell mobile phone which will help poor peoples. Microfinance sector has been growing at upwards of 50 % per annum – even higher than the mobile phone industry. The trend towards marketing in small, relatively poor communities on the part of multinational corporations (MNCs) is picking up as microfinance increases purchasing power amongst rural consumers. This paper will discuss particularly Nokia’s success in microfinance and how it helps Nokia to consider as number one (#1) most trusted brand in India. This paper also analyzes the conceptual framework of micro financing in India and impact of microfinance on rural poor. The role of Self Help Group (SGH) , lending institutions , central bank and Government. The success and controversy faced by microfinance institutions. Many finance experts are discussing and commenting microfinance is India’s subprime. The paper offers some suggestions on what it would take to reform these institutions with an eye to improving access for the poor and entrepreneur skill.

<p>Microfinance and micro-credit practices have become a popular means of local development. In India, their expansion has been largest in Andhra Pradesh. These practices target primarily women, who are encouraged to construct self-help-groups in order to have a social basis for raising collateral and for receiving financial services. Microfinance has been perceived by the public as inducing strong positive effects on women’s empowerment and as strengthening the democratic fibre. From these standpoints, expansion and effects, it has been evaluated and analysed whether microfinance can empower women and if empowered women can make a difference in women’s and societal issues.</p>

L'efficacité de la microfinance, considérée comme mode de financement des exclus de la finance classique, peut être évaluée en terme de pérennité de financement et d'adéquation de celui-ci aux besoins des clients. Cette démarche quasi absente de la littérature, est au centre de cette étude qui propose une relecture de la théorie financière des organisations. Grâce à l'approche qualitative, les rationalités des principaux stakeholders sont analysées et la pertinence relativement contextuelle des indicateurs de performance est discutée. L'approche quantitative tente de modéliser le comportement des emprunteurs et des prêteurs au Kivu en s'appuyant sur les données collectées auprès de 31 institutions de microfinance (IMF) et 260 de leurs clients pour la période allant de 1996 à 2002. Il ressort de notre étude que trop peu d'indicateurs classiques sont compatibles avec les réalités du Kivu. Le ratio de liquidité immédiate et la caution solidaire sont peu significatifs. Seul le portefeuille à risque explique les contre-performances souvent enregistrées par les IMF. Il fournit des résultats (≥ 11 %) supérieurs aux normes théoriques (5 % pour un PaR30) mais significatifs au Kivu dans la mesure les créances irrécouvrables ne sont pas exclues des prêts en retard de paiement, base théorique de détermination du ratio. Les IMF dont le PaR30 dépasse 20 % s'enlisent dans le rationnement de crédit et finissent souvent par cesser tout octroi de crédit. En règle générale, les IMF du Kivu ne mobilisent pas suffisamment l'épargne locale et n'accèdent pas aux fonds commerciaux. La restructuration de l'espace microfinancier local passe par l'institutionnalisation des organisations qui fonctionnent de manière professionnelle. Ceci leur permettra d'accéder à l'épargne du public et au refinancement auprès des banques commerciales parfois en situation de sur-liquidité faiblement rémunérée. A cette occasion, tous les « stakeholders » peuvent tirer parti de l'inversion du cycle d'intermédiation financière (c'est-à-dire l'octroi des microcrédits plus rentables à partir des crédits bancaires à long terme) par les IMF. Nos investigations mettent enfin en exergue d'intéressantes pistes d'économies d'échelle à l'aide des fusions possibles entre quelques organisations de microfinance du Kivu.