Financial Efficiency and Social Impact of Microfinance Institutions Using Self-Organizing Maps

Philippe Louis, Alex Seret and Bart Baesens

World Development, 2013, vol. 46, issue C, 197-210

Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature by investigating whether the increased focus on financial self-sustainability of microfinance institutions has been disadvantageous to the target audience. We investigate the association between social efficiency and financial performance using a comprehensive data set that includes 650 microfinance institutions. A self-organizing map methodology is used to fully capture the existing heterogeneity among institutions. The results show that we cannot support the hypothesis that there exists a trade-off. On the contrary, we find evidence of a significant, positive relationship between social efficiency and financial performance.

Keywords: microfinance; self-organizing maps; outreach; social impact; profitability; self-sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X13000521
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:wdevel:v:46:y:2013:i:c:p:197-210

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.02.006

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().