Author(s)

Debapratim Purkayastha¹, Trilochan Tripathy^2*, Biswajit Das³

¹IBS Hyderabad, ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, Hyderabad, India.
²XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, India.
³KIIT School of Management, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, India.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of competition and regulation on Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) outcomes in India. Using data for 60 MFIs from the MIX Market database for a period of five years from 2008-09 to 2012-13, panel models are estimated for the empirical examinations. In the modeling framework, constructed Lerner’s Index as competition proxy and regulate dummy as regulatory intervention proxy are introduced as interest variables along with the MFI specific and Macro specific control variables to examine their effect on MFIs outcomes. The study reveals that competition strengthens the outreach, promotes operating efficiency, deteriorates the loan portfolio quality and adversely affects the MFIs profitability. While the regulatory intervention creates some accommodative space for the MFI borrowers, improves MFIs efficiency partially and dampens loan repayments and portfolio quality and profitability via “roe” in India. Our results have also implications on MFIs, fund provider, regulator, government and policy research practitioners. This study contributes towards filling gap in the literature by extending the analysis of the effect of competition and regulation on MFI outcomes to a cross-section of states in India in a panel data framework.

Competition, Regulation, Microfinance, Efficiency, Outreach, Performance

Purkayastha, D. , Tripathy, T. and Das, B. (2018) Effect of Competition and Regulation on MFIs Outcomes in India. Theoretical Economics Letters, 8, 1161-1178. doi: 10.4236/tel.2018.85077.