Thèse (Ph.D.)--Ohio State University, 1999. / Bibliogr. : f. 283-297.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--The Hague, The Netherlands, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-323).

The aim of this study was to investigate how Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in South Africa balance sustainability with developmental objectives. Twelve semistructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with microfinance subject matter and microfinance institutions. The research found that commercialisation is not compatible with social impact as it leads to mission drift, which can be managed by an inclusive stakeholder governance structure. The trade-off between sustainability and social impact (outreach) was evident for commercial MFIs; while sustainability can be achieved through scale and cost management. In addition, MFIs achieve lower delinquency rate by implementing non-financial interventions such as client training and using group lending methodology that fosters social capital in the client base. The lack of a visible collaboration between MFIs has deprived the industry of a strong voice that can mobilise society to leverage the benefits of microfinance to help South Africa reduce inequalities. Despite the fact that regulatory restrictions concerning savings mobilisation for micro enterprise lenders are inhibiting product innovation and curtailing outreach, microfinance has proved to be a valuable tool that South Africa has not leveraged to alleviate poverty and reduce income inequalities. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The dissertation chooses Vietnam as a typical case to address the gap in microfinance studies. Instead of focusing on the beneficiaries of the microfinance system, as many studies have been done, the subjects of this study are microfinance institutions (MFIs). The objective is to suggest a balanced sustainability approach for MFIs in Vietnam that refers to governance practices, legal environmental, and social and financial objectives as equally important. Particularly, it identifies the constraints and the potential, and suggests workable approaches to support Vietnam microfinance providers in extending and developing services throughout the country in a financially sustainable manner. / 博士(現代アジア研究) / Doctor of Philosophy in Contemporary Asian Studies / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

The development of a community, especially a poor community, hinges on interventions from development workers in government and non government organisations. In the recent past, microfinance has been strongly recommended as an intervention that could assist poor people to improve their quality of life by providing small amounts of money to initiate development enterprises. The microfinance services are provided through microfinance institutions. This study was aimed at establishing the role of microfinance in the socioeconomic development of women in a community. Mpigi Town Council in Uganda was the study area. Fifty respondents were interviewed and eight of these were employees of microfinance institutions and two worked as technical staff from Mpigi District Local Government. Twelve microfinance institutions were identified as providing services to the community in Mpigi Town Council. A variety of literature on microfinance in the developed world, developing world, Africa, Uganda and Mpigi Town Council was reviewed. It was noted that the year 2005 was identified as the International Year of Micro-credit during which its significance would be highlighted. The aim of the international year of microcredit was to improve on the knowledge, access and utilization of micro-credit by poor people in the developing world. During the literature review, it was evident that the literature on the impact of microfinance on the socio-economic development of women in Mpigi Town Council was lacking. By filling this gap, this research will be a referral document for other researchers and a resource book for microfinance institutions during the implementation of their programmes. The study was carried out using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the data that was presented in tables, graphs and numbers to show the role played by microfinance in the socio-economic development of women in a community.The findings of the study reveal that microfinance institutions operating in Mpigi Town Council provide services like training and skills development, insured credit facilities and savings mobilisation, banking facilities, supervision and monitoring of the clients, provision of agriculture inputs like seeds and chemicals and physical items like animals (cows, goats, pigs, sheep etc). The services are particularly provided to women groups, salary earners, and individual women and men. The repayment of the credit facilities is usually through weekly and monthly instalments. The size of the loan depends on the MFI but ranges from one hundred thousand to millions of shillings. The security usually required is group collateral in case of groups, salary in case of salary earners and any other as deemed necessary for the individual by the MFI. The study established that women who accessed the loans from MFIs were able to improve their socio-economic status through starting up and or expanding investments and enterprises, paying school fees for their children, purchase of household items like furniture, land and solar installation, building of houses, confidence building, participation in leadership roles etc. The research also found out that women face some challenges in their access and utilization of the MFI services and these include; small amounts of money disbursed, diversion of funds, high interest rates, low returns on investment, short grace periods, unfavourable repayment schedules and risk of property confiscation by the MFI. The respondents recommended that the government should intervene, especially where interest rate is concerned and centralize it or make it uniform and also monitor the operations of the MFIs so that they offer adequate services to the women. As far as the MFIs are concerned, the respondents recommended that they should lower the interest rate, empathize with their clients, monitor and supervise more vigorously, collaborate with fellow MFIs, increase grace period and enlist the support of employers in the area. For the microfinance beneficiaries, the beneficiaries recommended that they should not divert the funds but should use them for the purpose intended. Furthermore, they should not move from one MFI to another. They ought to acquire the loan when they have some investment already, study the MFI before acquiring the services and support each other as a group to ensure that there is progress in the various undertakings. The results of the research have led to the assertion and affirmation that although the benefits may vary from one beneficiary to another and from one community to another, microfinance has in various ways played a significant role in the socio-economic development of women in Mpigi Town Council. This research report will be used as a document for other researchers and a resource book for the microfinance institutions in Mpigi Town Council. / Development Studies / M.A. (Social Science (Development Studies)

Thesis advisor: Robert Murphy / Thesis advisor: Hiroshi Nakazato / Microfinance and the notion of helping the poor help themselves by providing small loans to serve as startup capital and encourage entrepreneurship has been increasing in popularity as the new panacea to poverty since its development by Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank. In order to accurately identify the validity of this claim, this thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the academic studies that have been done to date in order to determine what we know about the effectiveness of these programs. By analyzing studies based on three major questions: Who is being studied? What variables are being studied? and How is the analysis done? This research addresses the differences between conclusions and finds that overall, microfinance may be effective for some populations, but is not necessarily worthy of such high acclaim. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: International Studies Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies.

Microfinance can play an important role in the growth of an economy. Thus, we are interested in developing models that could simply estimate the probability of default of a customer and the probability of the microfinance being at risk based on probability of default of customers.

Dans ce document, nous évaluons l’impact de la microfinance sur des entrepreneurs panaméens, aussi bien sur leur niveau de performance de leurs entreprises que sur leur niveau de vie. Nous allons utiliser une méthode de différence-en-différence et un appariement pour voir l’effet des institutions financières sur les entrepreneurs. La principale contribution de ce mémoire est d’évaluer l’impact des prêts sur les entrepreneurs à travers le temps et pour ce, nous utilisons la différence-en-différence dynamique. D’après nos résultats, la microfinance ne semble pas avoir une influence significative sur les entrepreneurs avec la différence-en-différence. Ce constat est valable aussi bien sur les variables de performances des entrepreneurs que sur les variables de bien-être. Cependant, l’obtention de prêt auprès d’une IMF a un effet sur le revenu avec le modèle d’appariement.

The Poverty Stoplight is a tool that has been implemented in Paraguay since 2010 to measure poverty. It is a self-diagnostic visual survey to assist poor families to assess their level of poverty across the 50 indicators and to develop personalized poverty elimination plans. The tool uses stoplight colors (red, yellow, and green), illustrations, maps, electronic tablets, and simple software to create dashboards and indexes. Although it can be used in a wide variety of settings, it was created in order to fill a gap that exists among poverty measurement tools that are used by the microfinance industry. Most of these tools are focused on monetary poverty, and only one uses a constructivist approach to understand poverty. Despite trends in academic literature to consider poverty a multidimensional phenomenon and to measure poverty through hybrid positivist and constructivist methods, the Poverty Stoplight is the only tool used by the microfinance industry that attempts to accomplish this. The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to the academic literature by analyzing the practical benefits and difficulties that measuring multidimensional poverty through a combination of epistemological paradigms entails. To do so, in this dissertation I evaluate the robustness of a specific implementation of these two trends: the metric aspect of the Poverty Stoplight. In order to do this, I seek to answer four research questions: is the Poverty Stoplight (1) reliable, (2) valid, (3) practical and (4) does it have discriminatory power"u2014from a positivist and constructivist point of view. My analysis is based on data I collected through four methods: (1) application of the visual survey tool, (2) focus groups, (3) semi-structured interviews, and a (4) participatory wealth ranking. While results suggest that there is test-retest reliability, consequential validity, content validity and criterion-related validity, problems related to generalizability compromise internal consistency reliability and construct validity. Taken as a whole, the Poverty Stoplight has limited robustness. I end this dissertation with recommendations to make it a more robust tool, such as separating the Poverty Stoplight metric from the coaching methodology or reformulating indicators and dimensions in order for these to better represent poverty. / Martin Burt

L’émergence de la micro-finance a été vue comme un remède pour un grand nombre de problèmes sociaux issus de la pauvreté en vertu de son efficacité dans l’octroi de crédits, dans l’amélioration de l’équité sociale ainsi que dans la réduction du niveau de pauvreté. Des millions de foyers en dessous du seuil de pauvreté n’ayant pas accès aux services bancaires ont ainsi pu accéder à des services financiers au travers de programmes de micro-finance. Cependant, le développement de la micro-finance ne suit pas un modèle identique pour tous les pays et les Institutions de Micro-finance (IMF) ont eu différents degrés de rentabilité. Beaucoup d’entre elles doivent encore faire face à des contraintes majeures pour fournir de manière efficace des services de micro-finance rentables. L’expansion des programmes de micro-finance reste un grand défi qui fait barrière au développement du secteur de cette dernière. Quelles pourraient être les raisons expliquant cette inefficience ?Cette thèse a pour but de contribuer à l’état des connaissances actuelles ainsi qu’aux recherches sur le développement et les caractéristiques du secteur de la micro-finance en analysant les facteurs stratégiques pouvant avoir un effet sur son développement dans le contexte du Vietnam.Pour ce faire, il sera appliqué à la fois des méthodes de recherche qualitatives et quantitatives.Nous effectuerons une analyse comparative entre l’innovation financière dans le système de micro-finance du Vietnam et deux modèles de référence internationaux : la Grameen Bank et la banque Rakyat d’Indonésie (BRI) afin de déterminer quelles contraintes limitent l’ampleur et la portée des activités de micro-finance au Vietnam ; quels types de modèles de microfinance sont adéquats : que cela soit pour des modèles commerciaux à but lucratif ou pour des projets de micro-finance sociale. Par ailleurs, des analyses empiriques seront portées par les techniques OLS et GMM afin d’examiner l’impact de l’environnement institutionnel ainsi que des facteurs macroéconomiques sur la rentabilité des IMF’s. Les résultats donnent la preuve d’une persistance de la rentabilité et de l’existence d’économies d’échelle en micro-finance. La qualité des prêts semble être un facteur déterminant concernant la rentabilité des IMF’s au Vietnam. Notre analyse confirme également le rôle important de l'État ainsi que le rôle décisif dans l'auto-innovation des institutions de microfinance. / The appearance of microfinance has been known as a remedy for many social ills rooted in poverty because of its efficacy in credit dispensation, social equality enhancement and reduction of poverty. Millions of poor and non-bankable people in developing countries have been provided access to formal financial services through microfinance programs. However, the development of microfinance is not a single model for all country and microfinance institutions (MFIs) have had various degree of sustainability. Many MFIs still face major constraints in their pursuit of effectively delivering microfinance services profitably. Expansion of microfinance programs remains a formidable challenge for the development of microfinance industry. What would be reasons for that inefficiency?This thesis seeks to contribute to the current state of knowledge and research thoroughly on the development and the characteristics of microfinance industry by investigating strategic factors affecting microfinance development in Vietnam context. It applies both qualitative and quantitative research methods.We develop comparative analysis between financial innovation of Vietnam microfinance system and two other international benchmarks namely Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the Bank Rakyat of Indonesia (BRI) to figure out what constraints limit the scale and scope of Vietnam microfinance activities; what types of microfinance models are suitable: whether for-profit commercial models or social microfinance ventures in Vietnam context. Besides, empirical work is carried out using both OLS and GMM techniques to examine the impact of institutional environment as well as macroeconomic factors on MFIs’ profitability. The results present evidence on a dynamic role of profitability and economies of scale in microfinance. Loan quality seems to be a very important determinant of MFI’s profitability in Vietnam. Our analysis also confirms the significant role of State level as well as the decisive role in self-innovation of microfinance institutions.