期刊名称:CREDIT Research Paper / University of Nottingham
出版年度:2010
卷号:1
出版社:Nottingham
摘要:This paper uses household data to test whether microfinance institutions created by the
Malawian government in the mid-1990s under its Poverty Alleviation Programme crowded
out access to informal loans. As in several recent studies, the paper adopts policy evaluation
techniques to identify a causal relationship between access to government-sponsored credit
programmes and informal loans. After taking treatment heterogeneity into account with a
multiple treatment model, the paper finds strong evidence of crowding out of formal group
lending on informal sources. In particular, participation in the most widespread microfinance
programme has a negative and significant effect on borrowing from informal sources,
reducing on average the amount that members borrow from informal lenders by more than 70
percent of the average loan value.