Why do microfinance institutions fail socially? A global empirical examination

We empirically study social failures of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Besides various measures for the financial performance and outreach, we consider the relationship between several institutional variables and social failure. Regarding the relationship with the financial performance, we identify MFIs with good portfolio quality as being less prone to social failure. Also, MFIs with better measures for the quality of outreach appear to be less likely to fail socially. Finally, MFIs with a higher fraction of donations and regulated institutions exhibit a lower probability of social failure, while fast growing MFIs appear to show a positive correlation.