This paper studies TRAIL, a variation on traditional microfinance, where a microfinance institution appoints local intermediaries (traders or informal moneylenders) as agents to recommend borrowers for individual liability loans. Agents earn commissions that depend on loan repayments. There are no peer monitoring, group meetings or savings requirements. The loans are designed to finance agricul...

Mortgage termination due to prepayment is an important issue in pricing of mortgage and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) due to its stochastic nature. In developing countries where MBS is not yet fully developed, mortgage termination affects the flow of funds to the lenders. Recent literature has used option price models (OPM) to analyze prepayments. Prepayment is a ‘call option’ whose price is...

We explore whether loan officer gender affects repayment performance in Cameroonian microfinance institutions (MFIs). After controlling for demand-side factors (borrower characteristics), lending methodology, contract terms, year, and industry fixed effects, we apply a pooled probit model to unique loan-level dataset including more than 7000 loans approved between 2007 2012 by two commercial MF...

We evaluate the effect of the federal students’ financial assistance scheme (BAfoeG) on enrolment rates by exploiting exogenous variation introduced through a discrete shift in repayment regulations. Supported students had to repay the full loan after graduation from their future earnings until 1990. Thereafter, only 50 percent of the loan has become due, the other half of student aid has been ...