http://lists.repec.org/mailman/listinfo/nep-mfd Microfinance 2009-11-07 Olivier Dagnelie http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5086&r=mfd This paper describes important trade-offs that microfinance practitioners, donors, and regulators navigate. Drawing evidence from large, global surveys of microfinance institutions, the authors find a basic tension between meeting social goals and maximizing financial performance. For example, non-profit microfinance institutions make far smaller loans on average and serve more women as a fraction of customers than do commercialized microfinance banks, but their costs per dollar lent are also much higher. Potential trade-offs therefore arise when selecting contracting mechanisms, level of commercialization, rigor of regulation, and the extent of competition. Meaningful interventions in microfinance will require making deliberate choices - and thus embracing and weighing tradeoffs carefully. Cull, Robert, Demirguc-Kunt, Asli, Morduch, Jonathan 2009-10-01 Access to Finance,Debt Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Emerging Markets,Rural Finance http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:09-034&r=mfd We report results from a large randomized natural field experiment conducted in southwestern China in the context of insurance for sows. Our study sheds light on two important questions about microinsurance. First, how does access to formal insurance affect farmers' production decisions? Second, what explains the low takeup rate of formal insurance, despite substantial premium subsidy from the government? We find that providing access to formal insurance significantly increases farmers' tendency to raise sows. We argue that this finding also suggests that farmers are not previously insured efficiently through informal mechanisms. We also provide several pieces of evidence suggesting that trust, or lack thereof, for government-sponsored insurance products is a significant barrier for farmers' willingness to participate in the insurance program. Hongbin Cai, Yuyu Chen, Hanming Fang, Li-An Zhou 2009-09-24 Microinsurance; Trust, Natural Field Experiment