IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxford/v40y2024i1p30-43..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Selected microfinance crises: past, present, and future

Author

Listed:
  • Sam Mendelson
  • Daniel Rozas

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic is the most recent—and most severe—crisis to face the microfinance/financial inclusion sector, but it was far from the first. From its earliest years, crises have appeared throughout the modern history of microfinance, and the responses they engendered have included some of the most significant reforms and innovations in the sector. In this paper, we describe selected historical crises—Peru in the 1980s, Grameen in the 1990s, and Andhra Pradesh and others in the 2007–2010 period—through their legacy and impact on the sector’s activities and priorities. We then examine some of the pressures on institutions during the pandemic, through interview data with MFI leaders from the Sentinel Project conducted during 2021–22. We argue that the resilience of the sector to the unprecedented pressures of the pandemic can be traced to many of these historical post-crisis reforms—and consider what this means for future crisis responses.

Suggested Citation

  • Sam Mendelson & Daniel Rozas, 2024. "Selected microfinance crises: past, present, and future," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 40(1), pages 30-43.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:40:y:2024:i:1:p:30-43.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/grad053
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Muhammad Meki & Simon Quinn, 2024. "Microfinance: an overview," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 40(1), pages 1-7.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:40:y:2024:i:1:p:30-43.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.