Browsing by Author "Romillo, Alfonso Ramon Eugenio C."

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    Women and repayment in Philippine microfinance: tthe gender and dependence effects
    (2019-12-20) Castro, Alenn Gabriel M. ; Romillo, Alfonso Ramon Eugenio C.; Debuque-Gonzales, Margarita
    This paper analyzes the relationships among client gender, institutional conditions, and microfinance institution (MFI) repayment performance using a firm-level dataset covering 123 MFIs in the Philippines during the period 1999-2018. The results indicate that a larger percentage of female borrowers is not associated with lower portfolio-at-risk and lower write-offs in Philippine MFIs. These findings confirm our hypothesis that having more female borrowers in the Philippines does not have a significant effect on microfinance repayment performance. This is in line with the literature on the dependence effect** which states that the gender effect* on repayment is only significant in situations where women are economically disadvantaged and are dependent on microfinance, which is not the case in the Philippines. We observe more significant correlations between MFI financials and repayment performance—this indicates that operational efficiency is a significant factor for MFI sustainability in the Philippines.