Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are special financial institutions. They have both a social nature and a for-profit nature. Their performance has been traditionally measured by means of financial ratios. The paper goes beyond simple financial ratios using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to measure the efficiency of MFIs. Special care is taken in the specification of the DEA model. We take a methodological approach based on multivariate analysis. We rank DEA efficiencies under different models and specifications; e.g. particular sets of inputs and outputs. This serves to explore what is behind a DEA score. The results show that we can explain MFIs efficiency by means of four principal components of efficiency, and this way we are able to understand differences between DEA scores. It is shown that there are country effects on efficiency; and effects that depend on non-governmental organization (NGO)/non-NGO status of the MFI.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Omega.
Volume (Year): 35 (2007) Issue (Month): 2 (April) Pages: 131-142 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)