Do Interest Rates Matter? Credit Demand in the Dhaka Slums
Do Interest Rates Matter? Credit Demand in the Dhaka Slums
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1396062
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发表时间：
2005-10
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Rajeev Dehejia;J. Morduch;Heather Montgomery
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Rajeev Dehejia;J. Morduch;Heather Montgomery
如果利率上升时穷人的信贷需求变化不大，贷款机构就可以将费用提高到成本覆盖水平，而不会失去客户。这一主张是可持续小额信贷战略的核心，旨在为穷人提供银行服务，同时避免长期补贴，但迄今为止，几乎没有直接证据证明这一点。本文使用孟加拉国达卡贫民窟信用合作社 SafeSave 的数据来研究借款人对贷款利率上涨的敏感程度。利用意外的分行间利率变化，我们估计贷款需求的利率弹性范围为 -0.73 至 -1.04。较不富裕的账户持有人比（相对）较富裕的借款人对利率更敏感（弹性为 -0.86 与 -0.26 相比），因此，当银行提高利率时，其投资组合将远离最贫困的借款人。
If the demand for credit by the poor changes little when interest rates increase, lenders can raise fees to cost-covering levels without losing customers. This claim is at the core of sustainable microfinance strategies that aim to provide banking services to the poor while eschewing long-term subsidies, but, so far, there is little direct evidence of this. This paper uses data from SafeSave, a credit cooperative in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, to examine how sensitive borrowers are to increases in the interest rate on loans. Using unanticipated between-branch variation in the interest rate we estimate interest elasticities of loan demand ranging from -0.73 to -1.04. Less wealthy accountholders are more sensitive to the interest rate than (relatively) wealthier borrowers (an elasticity of -0.86 compared to -0.26), and consequently the bank’s portfolio shifts away from its poorest borrowers when it increases the interest rate.