The existing literature on microfinance has largely attributed the industry's success to joint liability and peer monitoring, which are direct results of the group lending methodology. Since individual lending has become more common as microfinance has spread beyond Bangladesh, …
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In just 30 years microfinance has transformed from a credit-based rural development scheme that has claimed to reduce poverty and empower poor women, to a 70 billion financial industry. In the process, the traditional NGO-led model has given way to commercialized institutions, r…
The expansion of financial services to the poor, now widely referred to as microfinance, quickly saw tremendous success in Bangladesh beginning in the 1970's and was exported to a number of other countries. For a time microfinance was spoken of as a panacea, in part because it i…
The growth of microfinance over the past two decades has been nothing short of astounding. Fueled by a mixture of good intentions and the potential to earn profit the industry quickly became the development world's new silver bullet to end poverty as many microfinance institutio…
Family disruption, health hazards, degradation, and physical and psychological abuse are common among migrant female headload porters in Southern Ghana. Microfinance is well-documented as a socioeconomic remedial tool for poor women in some developing economies. Little is known,…
The majority of houses in Pakistani cities, as in other developing countries, are not built by the government or the private sector but by the people who live in them. Owner-built housing is still the most popular form of housing production in the region, among all income groups…
The period since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis has witnessed many reforms in the economic structure and financial landscape in Asian economies that have increasingly influenced the global economy and financial discourse. The extents of these reforms not only involve macroecono…
This dissertation includes three essays in microfinance. Using primary data from Bangladesh, the first essay examines the role of bank-borrower relationships in the application and approval of microcredit. The empirical findings suggest that the likelihood of applying, and being…
The first chapter discerns between two alternative objective functions for not-for-profit Microfinance Institutions (MFIs): profit maximization and poverty targeting. I use the strategic branch location choices of the two largest MFIs in a mature, concentrated market to reveal t…
Microcredit organizations often claim that women's participation in such programs will lead to gender empowerment, increased social networks, and economic success; this thesis addresses these major themes and goals of microcredit in the context of Java, Indonesia. This study is …
En Puerto Rico existe un sector de la población que ha sido marginado. Este sector es considerado económicamente pobre, con un nivel de escolaridad bajo y dependientes del sistema benefactor o "wellfare". Sin embargo, a pesar de este cuadro adverso, muchos tratan de romper con e…
An important process is underway in the expansive, rugged, and sparsely populated province of Kalimantan Barat, Indonesian Borneo—the rapid spread of formal financial institutions. Banks are becoming increasingly available to people who, until recently, had no alternative to bei…
This dissertation consists of two chapters. The first chapter is dealing with microfinance's interest rates. Microfinance institutions' (MFIs) high interest rates have been at the center of controversy from the beginning of microfinance. One plausible and widely accepted theory,…
This paper uses pooled data from Turkey's largest microfinance organization to test if loans increase borrower income in the sample. Using savings deposits as a proxy for borrower income, the results show a statistically significant, positive correlation between loans and saving…
This thesis analyzes the rhetoric of Muhammad Yunus as an articulation of a new governing logic, one that reconstitutes the concept of poverty and binds the poor to the apparatus of global capitalism through a new logic of micro-enterprise. Working within a Foucauldian critical …
Since its beginning in Bangladesh in the 1970s, the spread of microfinance worldwide has been impressive. While proponents argue that microfinance has improved the lives of millions of poor people, critics have raised doubts about its efficacy as a poverty alleviation strategy. …
The concept of providing access to financial services to groups of uncollateralized poor entrepreneurs has become a mainstream poverty alleviation tool of the time (Gunjan, Soumyadeep, & Srijit, 2010; Li, Liu, & Deininger, 2009; Pal, 2012). This concept agrees with the notion th…
Microfinance, by providing small loans and savings facilities to those who are excluded from formal banking institutions, is seen by many as one way to help the poor increase their income and productivity. Access to credit is promoted as a way to assist the poor to become self-e…
This study evaluated the impact of the WISDOM microfinance program on household coping capacity and well being in drought-affected regions of Ethiopia. The study assessed the effect of microfinance programs on household income, savings, assets, diet, nutritional status, and copi…