Last updated:
10 August 07

Informal finance and the design of microfinance

Schreiner, Mark

This paper describes seven small ways for microfinance to acquire the virtues of informal finance, which are commonly perceived as slashed transaction costs, supply of not just loans but also savings and implicit insurance, sensitivity to the constraints faced by women, substitution of confidence in character for physical collateral, socially enforced and/or self-enforced contracts, and sequences of repeated transactions.

Keywords: Labour and livelihoods; Methods

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