Microfinance in Northeast Thailand: Who Benefits and How Much?

Brett Coleman ()
Additional contact information
Brett Coleman: Asian Development Bank

No 9, ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: Using data from a unique survey conducted in 1995–1996, this paper controls for endogenous self-selection and program placement. Results indicate that even prior to program intervention, participants tend to be significantly wealthier than nonparticipants, and the wealthiest villagers are almost twice as likely to participate in the program as the poorer villagers. Moreover, the wealthiest in the village often become program committee members and use their positions to borrow substantially more than rank and file members. However, local information on individual creditworthiness is also used in member selection. Results demonstrate that microfinance loans positively affect many measures of household welfare for the wealthy committee members, but the impact is largely insignificant for poorer rank and file members. Policy recommendations include increased vigilance in targeting the poor, greater efforts to publicly disseminate the rules and purpose of the village bank program, and introduction and enforcement of eligibility criteria based on wealth while continuing to allow villagers to self-select.

Keywords: microfinance; program placement; self-selection; village bank program; wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 I38 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2002-04-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.adb.org/publications/microfinance-nort ... enefits-and-how-much Full text (text/html)

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:ris:adbewp:0009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City, 1550 Metro Manila, Philippines. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Orlee Velarde ().