Description
Book SynopsisThe Handbook of Microfinance showcases an expansive collection of works from leading academics and field practitioners. In an attempt to understand the enormous gap between the limited number of clients that are currently benefiting from microfinance services, and the huge number of potential clients that are not, the selected contributions in this comprehensive handbook have one common thread: the prevailing mismatch between demand by clients of microfinance institutions and potential clients selecting themselves out for their demand for a wider array of financial products which is not being met.The scope of the book is wide, and explores successes and failures, main challenges and debates, methodologies for impact evaluation via random trials, leading trends in Asia versus Latin America, main efforts in Africa, the importance of value chains in Central America, ethical and gender issues, savings, microinsurance, governance, commercialization trends and the potential advantages and disadvantages of it. This exhaustive Handbook also features main lessons from informal finance and 19th-century credit cooperatives addressing the above-mentioned mismatch.
Table of ContentsOn Mission Drift in Microfinance Institutions (B Armendariz & A Szafarz); Rural Microfinance & Agriculture Value Chains: Strategies and Perspectives of the Fondo de Desarrollo Local in Nicaragua (J Bastiaensen & P Marchetti); Insurance for the Poor: Definitions and Innovations (C Churchill); Microfinance Tradeoffs: Regulation, Competition, and Financing (R Cull et al.); Higher Education through Microfinance: The Case of Grameen Bank (A U Dowla); Spanning the Chasm: Uniting Theory and Empirics in Microfinance Research (G Fischer & M Ghatak); Microfinance in Bolivia: Foundation of the Growth, Outreach and Stability of the Financial System (C Gonzalez-Vega & M Villafani-Ibarnegaray); The Gender of Finance and Lessons for Microfinance (I Guerin); Understanding the Diversity and Complexity of Demand for Microfinance Services: Lessons from Informal Finance (I Guerin et al.); The Early German Credit Cooperatives and Microfinance Organizations Today: Similarities and Differences (T Guinnane); Social and Financial Efficiency of Microfinance Institutions (B Gutierrez-Nieto et al.); What External Control Mechanisms Help Microfinance Institutions Meet the Needs of Marginal Clientele? (V Hartarska & D Nadolnyak); The Performance of Microfinance Institutions: Do Macro Conditions Matter? (N Hermes & A Meesters); Ethics in Microfinance (M Hudon); Efficiency (M Hudon & B Balkenhol); Reaching the People Who Microfinance Cannot Reach: Learning from BRAC's Targeting the Ultra PoorA" Programme (D Hulme et al.); Microfinance Evaluation Strategies: Notes on Methodology and Findings (D Karlan & N Goldberg); Corporate Governance Challenges in Microfinance (M Labie & R Mersland); Social Investment in Microfinance: The Trade-off between Risk, Return and Outreach to the Poor (R Lensink & R Galema); Taking Gender Seriously: Towards a Gender Justice Protocol for Financial Services (L Mayoux); Is Microfinance the Adequate Tool to Finance Agriculture? (S Morvant-Roux); What is the Demand for Microcredit? The Case of Two Rural Areas in Morocco and Serbia (W Pariente); Oversight is a Many-Splendored Thing: Choice and Proportionality in Regulating and Supervising Microfinance Institutions (J K Rosengard); Boosting the Poor's Capacity to Save: Instalment Plans and Their Variants (S Rutherford); Corporate Responsibility Versus Social Performances and Financial Inclusion (J-M Servet); Microfinance - A Strategic Management Framework (G Stuart);
