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on Microfinance |
| By: | de Mel, Suresh; McKenzie, David; Woodruff, Christopher |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes data from a randomized experiment on mean returns to capital in Sri Lankan micro-enterprises. The findings show greater returns among men than among women; indeed, returns were not different from zero for women. The authors explore different explanations for the lower returns among female owners, and find no evidence that the gender gap is explained by differences in ability, risk aversion, or entrepreneurial attitudes. Differential access to unpaid family labor and social constraints limiting sales to local areas are not important. However, there is evidence that women invested grants differently from men. A smaller share of the smaller grants remained in the female-owned enterprises, and men were more likely to spend the grant on working capital and women on equipment. The gender gap is largest when male-dominated sectors are compared with female-dominated sectors, although female returns are lower than male returns even for females working in the same industries as men. The authors examine the heterogeneity of returns to determine whether any group of businesses owned by women benefit from easing capital constraints. The results suggest there is a large group of high-return male owners and a smaller group of poor, high-ability, female owners who might benefit from more access to capital. |
| Keywords: | Access to Finance,Debt Markets,Gender and Health,,Economic Theory&Research |
| Date: | 2008–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4746&r=mfd |
| By: | Soyolmaa Batbekh and; Keith Blackburn |
| Abstract: | Microfinance (small scale lending to the poor) is integrated into a dynamic macroeconomic model of income distribution. Two-period-lived agents, belonging to overlapping generation of dynastic families, choose between three alternative occupations - subsistence production, small-scale project investment and large-scale project investment. Subsistence activity is costless and riskless, whilst project investment is the opposite and may require external funding from financial institutions with imperfect powers of contract enforcement. In the absence of microfinance, only large-scale, collateralised loans are available through the traditional banking sector. Under such circumstances, initial inequalities persist as only the wealthy are able to acquire these loans, and as the small-scale enterprise is either not feasible or not profitable. With the introduction of microfinance, this venture is made both possible and attractive through the provision of non-collateralised loans and other features of microlending arrangements. Poverty and inequality are reduced as a result. |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:cgbcrp:106&r=mfd |