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Browsing by Author "Nogueira, Serafim Agostinho Gomes"

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  • Microfinance – A Theoretical and Empirical Assessment
    Publication . Nogueira, Serafim Agostinho Gomes; Duarte, Fábio; Gama, Ana Paula
    This master thesis consists in two chapters addressing the topic of Microfinance. Since the emergence, in the 1970s, of Grameen Bank by the hand of Muhammad Yunus, Microfinance industry has gained a space that results from a path that we can analyse theoretically and empirically. The first chapter scrutinizes the theoretical framework on the Microfinance topic. Heeding the call for more research on the role of microfinance for achieving social, economic, and financial inclusion, this paper provides a systematic literature review of the growing research domain depicts the current state of this dynamic setting in which scholars and policy makers investigate and develop microfinance practices—especially in relation to entrepreneurial finance. Using a bibliometric analysis, we identify three main dimensions of microfinance that guide academic research: (1) social considerations, (2) economic effects, and (3) the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The study evidences that most literature continues to concentrate on developing countries, reflecting the success of microfinance as an instrument to promote social and economic development, mainly through microcredit programs. In addition, a keyword co-occurrence analysis reveals that despite growing interest in both financial inclusion and entrepreneurship domains, these areas remain underexplored empirically. The results provide promising opportunities for further research, as well as potential routes to extend current theoretical and empirical analyses of microfinance research to developed countries, according to an entrepreneurial finance context. The second chapter investigates the role of entrepreneurial motivation and repayment performance on credit terms’ in the context of Portuguese microcredit industry. Using data from the organization which first promoted and most consistently developed MC in Portugal – ANDC, covering 2,060 micro-loans granted to micro-entrepreneurs/micro-enterprises between 1999 and 2015, our results show that Portuguese microcredit industry tend to lend higher amounts of credit with longer maturities to entrepreneurs who have lower likelihood of repayment (entrepreneurs moved by necessity). The focus on these riskier entrepreneurs led us to confirming the argument that MC is a prosocial instrument, following its initial belief.
    2020Master thesis Restricted access Show more