农户小额信用贷款的实践评估及可持续发展研究——以肇庆地区为例证的调研报告

从肇庆地区农村信用社的农户小额信用贷款的实践评估来看,农户小额信用贷款能在一定程度上缓解了农民贷款难问题,对于规范农村金融秩序、搞活农信社自身业务经营、促进农村产业结构调整发挥了重要作用,但其服务对象、服务区域等客观上决定了农户小额信用贷款可持续发展面临较大的风险约束。只有进一步构建信用风险、制度风险和操作风险防范体系,构建自然灾害风险和市场风险分担体系以及财务风险补偿体系,农村信用社在农户小额信贷中的作用才能得到充分发挥。     

Is the model “loans‐plus‐savings” better for microfinance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia? A propensity score matching comparison

Microfinance institutions are gradually evolving into multiservice organizations offering not only loans but also savings, and other financial and nonfinancial services. We contribute to the literature aimed at identifying how combining credit with savings affects outreach and sustainability in microfinance institutions (MFIs). We apply the propensity score matching method as well as its augmented dose–response version to compare the performance of loans‐plus‐savings MFIs with that of lending‐only in a sample of 710 observations from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Owing to our unique capital structure data, we control for the use of subsidized capital, which related work ignores while existing evidence points to tradeoffs between subsidies and savings. We find that financial performance and breadth of outreach are positively associated with savings mobilization, while the evidence on depth of outreach points to a possible mission drift.     

小额贷款风险影响因素的关系结构分析

本文首先运用Delphi法和系统工程原理筛选并确定了小额贷款风险的14个影响因素,然后应用解释结构模型分析各影响因素的关系结构,结果表明,贷款人文化程度、贷款数额、产品市场现状、产品发展潜力、贷款有无担保、贷款人技术和能力、贷款人经营水平、贷款人信用状况和贷款人家庭收支状况是小额贷款风险的表层直接影响因素,贷款用途、贷款期限和贷款人经营思路是中层间接影响因素,贷款利率和政府对小额贷款的支持力度是深层根本影响因素。这些研究结果对于科学识别小额贷款风险有着重要意义。     

Can flexible agricultural microfinance loans limit the repayment risk of low diversified farmers?

Using a unique data set from a commercial microfinance institution in Madagascar, this article investigates the credit risk of microfinance loans with flexible repayment schedules for crop farmers. Flexible repayment schedules allow a redistribution of principal payments during periods with low agricultural returns to periods when agricultural returns are high through predefined grace periods. We apply propensity score matching to investigate how different numbers of grace periods reflecting different levels of production diversification affect the credit risk of crop farmers. In this attempt, three delinquency categories reflecting various levels of credit risk are assessed. Moreover, we consider the specifics of the regions where loans were disbursed. Our results reveal that loans with predefined grace periods show significantly higher delinquencies. This effect is significant over all three delinquency categories for loans disbursed to low diversified crop farmers. For the more diversified farmers, this effect is only significant for the lowest delinquency category. Hence, predefined grace periods might bridge periods with low agricultural returns but come at the cost of higher credit risk for the lender. The magnitude of these effects is, however, small.     

Spatial dependence in microfinance credit default

Credit scoring model development is very important for the lending decisions of financial institutions. The creditworthiness of borrowers is evaluated by assessing their hard and soft information. However, microfinance borrowers are very sensitive to a local economic downturn and extreme (weather or climate) events. Therefore, this paper is devoted to extending the standard credit scoring models by taking into account the spatial dependence in credit risk. We estimate a credit scoring model with spatial random effects using the distance matrix based on the borrowers’ locations. We find that including the spatial random effects improves the ability to predict defaults and non-defaults of both individual and group loans. Furthermore, we find that several loan characteristics and demographic information are important determinants of individual loan default but not group loans. Our study provides valuable insights for professionals and academics in credit scoring for microfinance and rural finance.     

The effect of language use on the financial performance of microfinance banks: Evidence from cross-border activities in 74 countries

This multi-year study examines the relationship between financial performance and language use, observing 405 partnerships between microfinance banks and their international financial partners in 74 countries. Drawing on language research in international business, we find that microfinance banks based in English-speaking, French-speaking, and Spanish-speaking countries have higher performance. Furthermore, the linguistic distance between the home country of a microfinance bank and the home country of its international partner(s) is negatively related to its financial performance. Our large-scale study confirms the effect of language use on organization-level financial performance and extends research on language in multinationals from intra-firm to inter-firm relationships.     

Technical Change in the Peruvian Regulated Microfinance Sector

This study evaluates and quantifies the technical change in the Peruvian regulated microfinance sector during the period 2003–2015 estimating a translog cost function. We found technical deterioration between 2005 and 2015 due to the differentiated effects that the technical innovations, implemented by the MFIs, had on their production costs. In the analysis by groups of MFIs, all groups converged at a technical deterioration rate between 8.6 and 9.13% in the last year. Problems in the implementation, execution, and/or management of the new technologies as well as the difficulty in achieving reductions in the variable costs may explain these results.     

Outreach and performance of microfinance institutions: the importance of portfolio yield

In this paper, we examine the interaction between social outreach and financial return in microfinance. Running multivariate regression models and using 1,805 observations of microfinance institutions between 2004 and 2013, we find strong evidence suggesting that institutions with more social engagement – in terms of outreach to the poor – earn higher portfolio yields. We also find that measures of outreach are associated with increased operating expenses. As return figures are influenced by both costs and yield, and because both increase to a similar degree with the depth of outreach, these two effects lead to a zero sum result on return measures. This finding could explain why existing studies assessing the interaction between social outreach and different measures of financial performance in microfinance (such as return on assets/equity, operating expenses, operational self-sufficiency) have not produced consistent results.     

The size and growth of microfinance institutions

We investigate the relationship between size (measured by total assets and number of active borrowers) and growth for a worldwide sample of microfinance institutions with different ownership forms (micro-banks, NGOs, cooperatives/credit unions and non-bank financial institutions) and commercial orientation (profit and not-for-profit) drawn from 120 countries over the period 2000 to 2014. Using a dynamic panel data model, we find little evidence that size confers growth advantages to microfinance institutions. We find some evidence that growth rates for credit unions and microfinance institutions with a not-for-profit commercial orientation present negative persistence. The variability of growth rates differs across the size distribution of microfinance institutions, and this result is consistent across commercial orientation and ownership form. Other factors affecting the growth of microfinance institutions include age (new microfinance institutions grow faster than young and mature counterparts), levels of bad debt, efficiency and regulation.     

Performance of microfinance institutions in Europe—Does social capital matter?

This paper investigates performance drivers of microfinance suppliers in Europe. As such suppliers, in contrast to advanced microfinance suppliers in developing economies, typically focus on uncollateralized microcredit services to individuals at the margins of society and of labor markets, we draw on the theory of social capital and empirically investigate the role that social capital may play in the overall performance of European microfinance suppliers. We build a unique, unbalanced panel data set of 302 microfinance service providers in Europe covering the years 2008–2015, and measure their performance in terms of credit risk, financial and social performance, and efficiency. Pursuing an econometric approach, we test a series of hypotheses using various measures of conditions conducive to building social capital on both the institutional and the country level, such as the client base of a microfinance supplier and the level of cultural fractionalization in a society. Our findings confirm that a higher intensity of social capital is positively associated with all areas of the performance of microfinance suppliers in Europe. Our conclusions could help in the design and launch of microfinance institutions in those European countries in which microfinance markets are developed not at all or only to a very limited extent. Our paper thus contributes to the nascent literature on microfinance in developed economies by applying and extending the theoretical framework and empirical models on social capital and microfinance that were originally elaborated for developing economies.