7.3 Microfinanza: dalla teoria alla pratica

MICROFINANZA IN CONTESTI POST-EMERGENZA

Davide Libralesso – Etimos Foundation Onlus (Ilaria Urbinati – Università di Torino, Etimos Foundation; Pierluigi Conzo – Università di Torino, Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica "Cognetti de Martiis")

C’è spesso una stretta correlazione tra situazioni di vulnerabilità economica e una maggiore esposizione e fragilità di fronte alle calamità naturali, che a loro volta generano un ulteriore deterioramento nella condizione economica delle comunità colpite, innescando una sorta di circolo vizioso. Etimos Foundation ha sperimentato in questi anni l’efficacia dell’utilizzo della microfinanza in una pluralità di situazioni post emergenza e di contesti paese: a fronte di calamità naturali come terremoti e tsunami, a seguito di eventi bellici, in Paesi in via di sviluppo, nei Balcani e in alcune regioni italiane. Le catastrofi naturali rappresentano un fattore di shock violento per il contesto su cui si abbattono: di fatto paralizzano il sistema economico, su scala più o meno ampia, impedendo la circolazione del denaro. L’immissione dall’esterno di prodotti e servizi distribuiti gratuitamente alla popolazione rischia di arrecare ulteriori danni, mettendo in ginocchio anche le poche imprese locali attive e funzionanti. La microfinanza usa un approccio diverso, che è quello di ristabilire la liquidità del sistema e di riavviare l’attività di credito degli intermediari finanziari locali, che a loro volta offrono il sostegno necessario alla ripartenza di un grande numero di piccole e microimprese. Diverse analisi d’impatto (nel post tsunami in Sri Lanka e nel post terremoto in Abruzzo) hanno dimostrato la capacità dei programmi di microfinanza di ripristinare rapidamente i livelli preesistenti di benessere economico e psicologico delle popolazioni colpite. Questo anche grazie a una particolare efficacia nell’utilizzo delle risorse a disposizione: un euro investito in microfinanza può entrare in un fondo di garanzia o in un fondo rotativo che lo riutilizzano più volte, attraverso il meccanismo del prestito (e del suo rimborso), moltiplicando il valore iniziale delle risorse investite e il numero di persone che possono essere così aiutate.

THE WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY FOR INSURANCE: EVIDENCE FROM SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Davide Castellani – Università di Bergamo (Belaynesh Tamre - Wolayta Soddo University; Laura Viganò - Università di Bergamo, FinDev)

Rainfall variability is a major problem in Ethiopia. The ability of Ethiopian farmers to deal with drought risk is made more scanty by the extension of land plots which does not allow for a proper crop diversification and by incomplete and inefficient financial markets which limit appropriate financial risk management strategies. Insurance can represent indeed a potential drought risk transfer
mechanisms. However, the sustainability of a traditional drought insurance schemes is flawed by moral hazard, adverse selection, high administrative costs and risks not locally diversifiable. A promising alternative is index-based insurance whereby indemnities are related to an "index", rather than to verifiable losses. Several pilot projects and experiments have been carried out over the last
fifteen years. This work is meant to contribute to such vast literature by reporting the results of the experiments carried out with Ethiopian farmers. Based on a sample of 120 rural households in the Wolayta zone - Southern Ethiopia, we aim to estimate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a drought index-based insurance product. Data were collected in 2013 through a discrete-choice experiment where household-heads were asked to make a choice out of different choice sets. Additional economic, financial and social data have been collected since 2011, within a wider research conducted on a larger sample including the one used in the current experiment. Data are analyzed employing a Mixed Logit model that allows for random preferences and overcomes a problem of the Multinomial Logit model, i.e. the irrelevance of independent alternatives (IIAs). The study is still in the implementation phase. Main preliminary outcomes are exposed in the final part.

SOCIAL INCLUSION THROUGH MICROFINANCE: AN ANALYSIS OF CURRENT APPROACHES AND NEW FOLLOW-UP PROCEDURES

Andrea Bigio – Facoltà di Economia, Università di Torino

In the last twenty years, following a fast and strong expansion, microfinance has been characterized worldwide by a relevant heterogeneity of the actors involved, especially in its main segment, microcredit. The socio-economic vulnerability of the population involved in this project arose the need for new concepts of sustainability, based on a dichotomy between the institutional and the welfarist approaches. Previous impact assessments demonstrated that a proper access to financial services improves life conditions among economically active poor by increasing their entrepreneurship opportunities and thus their income. Though, commercial and institutional approaches can lead astray from the original purpose, considering microfinance merely as a new tool to access financial services and not as a whole range of social processes driven by both financial and social services. Based on a research on the microfinance sector in Jordan, one of the most developed Arab countries in terms of micro-lending provision, this study analyses the different approaches of microfinance adopted in Jordan in the last years, focusing on the socio-economic impacts and the development of a relevant social return, at three levels, personal, communitarian and regional level. The research shows the need for the implementation of new procedures within microfinance institutions (MFIs), based on specific approaches that allow the fulfillment of all the requirements related to the business cycle, in both an economic and a social perspective. From the access to financial service to the management of the micro-enterprise, the population targeted by the MFIs faces a diverse range of challenges, therefore loan officers should act as social workers and business developer, adopting specific follow-up procedures able to contribute to a real social impact.

WHO DOES THE GRACE-PERIOD REALLY GRACE? REPAYMENT FLEXIBILITY IN MICROFINANCE CONTRACTS

Giorgia Barboni – Istituto di Economia, Scuola di Studi Superiodi Sant’Anna

Repayment rigidity in microfinance contracts has always been crucial in order to discipline borrowers and ensure repayments. However, a strict repayment schedule might also inhibit entrepreneurship and force borrowers to undertake low-risk but also low-return investments. A possible solution is therefore to introduce more flexibility in the repayment mechanism. We build a simple adverse selection model where a monopolistic microfinance lender faces two types of present-biased borrowers who have different misperceptions about their future utility; the MFI’s problem

is to decide whether or not to provide a flexible repayment schedule within the microfinance contract. Our main result is that if the pool of clients is made of a sufficiently high share of not too impatient borrowers, it is always more profitable for the lender to provide both a rigid and a flexible repayment schedule than simply a rigid repayment contract. Surprisingly, the flexible contract may be even more profitable than the rigid contract although it doesn’t screen out very present-biased borrowers who enter the flexible schedule but end up not being able to repay in the final period. This implies, however, that more time-consistent borrowers are always charged a higher repayment rate in order to compensate for other  borrowers’ potential default.