ABSTRACT

The paper analyzes the determinants of social outreach of microfinance institutions (MFIs), using three measures of outreach – depth of outreach, breadth of outreach, and outreach to women, and its possible complementarity with financial performance. We use an unbalanced panel of 1,219 MFIs over a period of 20 years to investigate the effect of firm-specific characteristics and the impact of prevailing legal system on social outreach of MFIs. Rejecting the notion of tradeoff between financial performance and social outreach, our empirical results show that better financial performance has a positive association with social outreach. Furthermore, we observe that a common law legal system is more conducive in facilitating social outreach, and MFIs operating under common law legal system achieve better depth of outreach, breadth of outreach, and outreach to women, than MFIs under code law legal system and mixed law legal system. While we had expected nonprofit MFIs to exhibit better social outreach than for profit MFIs, we found empirical evidence of such only in the case of outreach to women. Finally, we find empirical evidence that unregulated MFIs achieve better social outreach than regulated MFIs.

摘要

本文分析了小额信贷机构 (MFI) 社会外展的决定因素，使用了外展的三种衡量标准——外展的深度、外展的广度和对妇女的外展，以及它与财务业绩可能的互补性。我们使用一个由 1,219 家小额信贷机构在 20 年期间的不平衡小组来调查公司特定特征的影响以及现行法律制度对小额信贷机构的社会影响。拒绝财务绩效和社会影响之间权衡的概念，我们的实证结果表明，更好的财务绩效与社会影响呈正相关。此外，我们观察到普通法法律制度更有利于促进社会外展，在普通法法律制度下运作的小额信贷机构实现更好的外展深度、外展广度、和对妇女的外展，而不是根据法典法律体系和混合法律体系的小额信贷机构。虽然我们曾预期非营利性小额信贷机构比营利性小额信贷机构表现出更好的社会外展，但我们仅在对妇女的外展活动中发现了这种情况的经验证据。最后，我们发现经验证据表明，不受监管的小额信贷机构比受监管的小额信贷机构实现了更好的社会影响。