Microcredit Impact Assessment: The Brazilian And Chilean Cases

How has microfinance performed in Brazil and Chile?

17 pages

Based in two different sources of data, this paper evaluates Brazilian and Chilean banks and NGOs microcredit programs. Using propensity score and matching techniques, the authors compare the average income of individuals that received microcredit to that of control groups, formed by people with similar characteristics.

The results for the Brazilian data show a high positive impact of microcredit programs, especially for those associated with banks.

In the Chilean case the evidence is weaker for the microcredit administered by bank. As for NGO-based programs, the evidence suggests that their impact on the average income of their clients is actually negative.

[Derived from the author's abstract]

About this Publication

By Aroca, P.

Published

January 2002

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