IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jouinf/v3y2011i2p153-170.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Attempting the Production of Public Goods through Microfinance

Author

Listed:
  • Philip Mader

Abstract

This article critically evaluates attempts to create public goods via microfinance loans in reference to the specific example of water and sanitation. The microfinancing of water and sanitation is a private business model which requires households to privately recognise, internalise and capitalise the bene-fits from improved water and sanitation. But household water and sanitation, being closely linked to underlying common pool resources, and being merit goods, have strong public goods characteristics and therefore depend on collective solutions. Two cases, from Vietnam and India, are presented and evaluated. Despite their dissimilar settings and designs, evidence is found that both projects encountered similar and comparable problems at the collective level which individual microfinance loans could not address. The problems encountered warn against an emergent micro-privatisation of water and sanitation through microfinance. JEL Classification: O16, O18, Q25, Z18

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Mader, 2011. "Attempting the Production of Public Goods through Microfinance," Journal of Infrastructure Development, India Development Foundation, vol. 3(2), pages 153-170, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jouinf:v:3:y:2011:i:2:p:153-170
    DOI: 10.1177/097493061100300204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/097493061100300204
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/097493061100300204?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karlan, Dean S. & Zinman, Jonathan, 2009. "Expanding Microenterprise Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts in Manila," Center Discussion Papers 52600, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    2. Karlan, Dean & Zinman, Jonathan, 2009. "Expanding Microenterprise Credit Access: Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts in Manila," Working Papers 68, Yale University, Department of Economics.
    3. Byström, Hans N.E., 2008. "The Microfinance Collateralized Debt Obligation: A Modern Robin Hood?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 2109-2126, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mader, Philip, 2011. "Making the poor pay for public goods via microfinance: Economic and political pitfalls in the case of water and sanitation," MPIfG Discussion Paper 11/14, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    2. Silvia Magri & Valentina Michelangeli & Sabrina Pastorelli & Raffaella Pico, 2019. "The expansion of consumer credit in Italy and in the Euro Area: what are the drivers and the risks?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 500, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    3. de Quidt, Jonathan & Fetzer, Thiemo & Ghatak, Maitreesh, 2018. "Commercialization and the decline of joint liability microcredit," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 209-225.
    4. Asad K. Ghalib & Issam Malki & Katsushi S. Imai, 2012. "Microfinance and its role in household poverty reduction: findings from Pakistan," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 17312, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    5. Singh, Nirvikar, 2018. "Financial Inclusion: Concepts, Issues and Policies for India," MPRA Paper 91047, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Marc J. Epstein & Kristi Yuthas, 2011. "The Critical Role Of Trust In Microfinance Success: Identifying Problems And Solutions," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(04), pages 477-497.
    7. Maitra, Pushkar & Mani, Subha, 2017. "Learning and earning: Evidence from a randomized evaluation in India," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 116-130.
    8. Abbas Ali Chandio & Fayyaz Ahmad & Ghulam Raza Sargani & Asad Amin & Martinson Ankrah Twumasi, 2022. "Analyzing the effective role of formal credit and technological development for rice cultivation," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 683-711, June.
    9. Ruiz, Claudia, 2013. "From pawn shops to banks : the impact of formal credit on informal households," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6634, The World Bank.
    10. Xavier Giné & Pamela Jakiela & Dean Karlan & Jonathan Morduch, 2010. "Microfinance Games," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 60-95, July.
    11. Nusrat Abedin Jimi & Plamen V. Nikolov & Mohammad Abdul Malek & Subal Kumbhakar, 2019. "The effects of access to credit on productivity: separating technological changes from changes in technical efficiency," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 37-55, December.
    12. Dean Karlan & Jonathan Zinman, 2010. "Expanding Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions to Estimate the Impacts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 433-464, January.
    13. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5380 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Takeshi Inoue & Shigeyuki Hamori, 2013. "Financial permeation as a role of microfinance: has microfinance actually been a viable financial intermediary for helping the poor?," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(20), pages 1567-1578, October.
    15. Surajeet Chakravarty & Sumedh Dalwai & Pradeep Kumar, 2020. "Incentives and Performance of Agents in a Microfinance Bank," Discussion Papers 2002, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    16. World Bank, 2013. "Opening Doors : Gender Equality and Development in the Middle East and North Africa," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 12552.
    17. Natalie Cox, 2017. "Pricing, Selection, and Welfare in the Student Loan Market: Evidence from Borrower Repayment Decisions," Working Papers 2017-2, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    18. Daniel Kandie & Khan Jahirul Islam, 2022. "A new era of microfinance: The digital microcredit and its impact on poverty," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(3), pages 469-492, April.
    19. Anis Chowdhury, 2009. "Microfinance as a Poverty Reduction Tool—A Critical Assessment," Working Papers 89, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    20. Hammler, Katharina, 2011. "Mikrokredite: Eine kritische empirische Bestandsaufnahme," Briefing Papers 6, Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE).
    21. Nikodem Szumilo & Enrico Vanino, 2021. "Are Government and Bank Loans Substitutes or Complements? Evidence from Spatial Discontinuity in Equity Loans," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 49(3), pages 968-996, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Microfinance; water and sanitation; public goods; Samuelson; cost recovery;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • Z18 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:sae:jouinf:v:3:y:2011:i:2:p:153-170. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.idfresearch.org .

    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.