Group Versus Individual Liability A Field Experiment In The Philippines

Group liability is often portrayed as the key innovation that led to the explosion of the microcredit movement, which started with the Grameen Bank in the 1970s and continues on today with hundreds of institutions around the world. Group lending claims to improve repayment rates and lower transactio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Gine, Xavier
Other Authors: Karlan, Dean S.
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C The World Bank 2006
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: World Bank E-Library Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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245 0 0 |a Group Versus Individual Liability  |h Elektronische Ressource  |b A Field Experiment In The Philippines  |c Gine, Xavier 
260 |a Washington, D.C  |b The World Bank  |c 2006 
300 |a 38 p. 
653 |a Micro-Enterprises 
653 |a Financial Literacy 
653 |a Exchange 
653 |a Political Power 
653 |a Bank Policy 
653 |a Liability 
653 |a Good 
653 |a Lender 
653 |a Loans 
653 |a Debt Markets 
653 |a Microcredit Microfinance 
653 |a Joint Liability 
653 |a Finance and Financial Sector Development 
653 |a Conversion 
653 |a Financial Markets 
653 |a Group Lending 
700 1 |a Karlan, Dean S. 
700 1 |a Gine, Xavier 
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082 0 |a 330 
520 |a Group liability is often portrayed as the key innovation that led to the explosion of the microcredit movement, which started with the Grameen Bank in the 1970s and continues on today with hundreds of institutions around the world. Group lending claims to improve repayment rates and lower transaction costs when lending to the poor by providing incentives for peers to screen, monitor, and enforce each other's loans. However, some argue that group liability creates excessive pressure and discourages good clients from borrowing, jeopardizing both growth and sustainability. Therefore, it remains unclear whether group liability improves the lender's overall profitability and the poor's access to financial markets. The authors worked with a bank in the Philippines to conduct a field experiment to examine these issues. They randomly assigned half of the 169 pre-existing group liability 'centers' of approximately twenty women to individual-liability centers (treatment) and kept the other half as-is with group liability (control). We find that the conversion to individual liability does not affect the repayment rate, and leads to higher growth in center size by attracting new clients