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Measuring the Impact of Microfinance
Alimukhamedova, Nargiza ; Hanousek, Jan (advisor) ; Brown, Martin (referee) ; Ibragimov, Rustam (referee)
Microfinance emerged in the 1970's, aiming to help lift people out of poverty and promote economic growth by providing financial services to low-income households. Despite its global popularity, evidence supporting its net benefits is mixed; therefore, more comprehensive empirical testing is called for. This Dissertation aims to contribute to the on-going debate in microfinance in the following three dimensions: In the first chapter, the impact of microfinance on macro economies is analysed. Motivated by limited knowledge of the economy-wide effects of microfinance, we aim to measure its impact on economic growth, financial sector development and reductions in income inequality. Measuring aggregate effects including those on non- recipients of microfinance programs constitutes an important contribution. We identify the "promised" impact of microfinance on economic growth measured by real GDP per capita, financial intermediation captured by broad money per capita and income inequality measured by the Gini coefficient. We also estimate the reverse feedback of macro fundamentals on microfinance itself. To estimate the dynamic equations, we use panel vector autoregressions (VARs) based on Arellano-Bover's (1995)and Blundell-Bond's (1998) instrumental variable system estimator, which enables us to...
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Measuring the Impact of Microfinance
Alimukhamedova, Nargiza ; Hanousek, Jan (advisor) ; Brown, Martin (referee) ; Ibragimov, Rustam (referee)
Microfinance emerged in the 1970's, aiming to help lift people out of poverty and promote economic growth by providing financial services to low-income households. Despite its global popularity, evidence supporting its net benefits is mixed; therefore, more comprehensive empirical testing is called for. This Dissertation aims to contribute to the on-going debate in microfinance in the following three dimensions: In the first chapter, the impact of microfinance on macro economies is analysed. Motivated by limited knowledge of the economy-wide effects of microfinance, we aim to measure its impact on economic growth, financial sector development and reductions in income inequality. Measuring aggregate effects including those on non- recipients of microfinance programs constitutes an important contribution. We identify the "promised" impact of microfinance on economic growth measured by real GDP per capita, financial intermediation captured by broad money per capita and income inequality measured by the Gini coefficient. We also estimate the reverse feedback of macro fundamentals on microfinance itself. To estimate the dynamic equations, we use panel vector autoregressions (VARs) based on Arellano-Bover's (1995)and Blundell-Bond's (1998) instrumental variable system estimator, which enables us to...
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