Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the cost of microfinance intermediation on borrowers’ loan size. The identified transaction cost and credit risk factors tell about what a lender takes into accounts while screening and allocating loan amounts to the borrowers, where the lender has limited information about the client’s ability to repay.

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis is based on the primary data collected from a sample of 498 microfinance institutions (MFI) linked group clients covering two microfinance leading states of India.

Findings

Empirical findings suggest that the cost of microfinance intermediation has an impact on borrowers’ loan size. To reduce the cost, the MFIs lend big loans to clients having a high income, assets, land size, lower informal borrowings and having longer loan experiences. In MFI lending, the younger and less educated people are the ones who demand bigger loan amounts. The geographical distance of borrowers’ location from MFI offices, group size and interest rate are the other factors that influence the loan size.

Originality/value

The past empirical works seem to have not focused on how the cost of microfinance intermediation creates loan size variation among the borrowers in joint liability group lending. The endogeneity problem has not been resolved. The present article thus identifies the factors that influence the individual member loan size by using two-stage least squared regression to tackle the issue of endogeneity.

中文翻译：

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小额信贷集团贷款中影响借款人贷款规模的因素：印度小额信贷机构的一项调查

目的

本文的目的是分析小额信贷中介费用对借款人贷款规模的影响。所确定的交易成本和信用风险因素可以告诉贷方在筛选和分配贷款给借方时要考虑的内容，而贷方对客户还款能力的信息有限。

设计/方法/方法

该分析基于从覆盖印度两个小额信贷领先州的498家小额信贷机构（MFI）关联的集团客户的样本中收集的主要数据。

发现

实证结果表明，小额信贷中介的成本对借款人的贷款规模有影响。为了降低成本，小额信贷机构向收入高，资产高，土地面积大，非正式借款减少且贷款经验更长的客户提供大笔贷款。在小额信贷机构的贷款中，年轻人和文化程度较低的人是要求更大贷款额的人。借款人所在地与小额信贷机构办公室的地理距离，集团规模和利率是影响贷款规模的其他因素。

创意/价值

过去的经验研究似乎并未集中于小额信贷中介的成本如何在连带责任组贷款的借款人之间造成贷款规模变化。内生性问题尚未解决。因此，本文通过使用两阶段最小二乘回归来解决内生性问题，确定了影响个人成员贷款规模的因素。