Group lending without joint liability

Thiemo Fetzer, Jonathan de Quidt and Maitreesh Ghatak

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper contrasts individual liability lending with and without groups to joint liability lending. By doing so, we shed light on an apparent shift away from joint liability lending towards individual liability lending by some microfinance institutions First we show that individual lending with or without groups may constitute a welfare improvement so long as borrowers have sufficient social capital to sustain mutual insurance. Second, we explore how a purely mechanical argument in favor of the use of groups - namely lower transaction costs - may actually be used explicitly by lenders to encourage the creation of social capital. We also carry out some simulations to evaluate quantitatively the welfare impact of alternative forms of lending, and how they relate to social capital.

Keywords: microfinance; group lending; joint liability; mutual insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/58088/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Group lending without joint liability (2016)
Working Paper: Group Lending Without Joint Liability (2013)
Working Paper: Group Lending Without Joint Liability (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:58088

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().