Mobile telephony, social networks and credit access: Evidence from MSMEs in Kenya

Idi Jackson Mdoe and Kariuki Kinyanjui

Cogent Economics & Finance, 2018, vol. 6, issue 1, 1459339

Abstract: Access to credit by micro, small and medium enterprises is key for growth and employment. However, it is hindered by information asymmetry. We investigated the effect of mobile telephony and social networks (group networks) on the probability of access to credit by Micro, Small and Medium enterprises in Kenya. Our analysis employed cross-sectional data, the 2016 FinAccess Household Survey infographics sheet. The analysis assumed a limited dependent variable modelling. Our analysis revealed that micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises with owners who currently have mobile banking, mobile money and group participation, respectively, have 8.8, 6.05 and 1.97 percentage points higher chance of receiving formal credit. In terms of informal credit, the analysis revealed that below five groups participation in an extra group by the MSME owner increases the probability of accessing informal credit by 6.26 percentage points. As policy measures, our analysis implies that owners of MSMEs should participate in groups and take up mobile money and banking to further their MSMEs chances of accessing formal and informal credit. In addition, the findings imply that money lenders should create strategies to tap MSMEs reputation created by groups and mobile telephony.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23322039.2018.1459339 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:oaefxx:v:6:y:2018:i:1:p:1459339

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/OAEF20

DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2018.1459339

Access Statistics for this article

Cogent Economics & Finance is currently edited by Steve Cook, Caroline Elliott, David McMillan, Duncan Watson and Xibin Zhang

More articles in Cogent Economics & Finance from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().