Abstract
The Dominican Republic’s microfinance sector is considered to be a solid market where overindebtedness prevention best practices are widely, and successfully, implemented. Relying on qualitative data collection tools and analysis, we identify these ‘best practices’ as self-regulation mechanisms, and we show how they fail to fully fulfil their goals in the Dominican market. While financial exclusion supports the idea of a sizeable microcredit market, we argue that the focus on growth and high competition strongly jeopardize the positive social outcomes of microcredit, and that only a paradigm shift within the sector will change the present situation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 919-935 |
| Journal | Journal of International Development |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| Early online date | 7 Sept 2016 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2017 |
Keywords
- Dominican Republic
- financial practices
- microfinance
- over-indebtedness prevention
- self-regulation
Access to Document
- JID Paper Dominican Republic Final version
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Afonso, J.S., Morvant-Roux, S., Guérin, I. & Forcela, D. (2017). Doing Good by Doing Well? Microfinance, Self-Regulation and Borrower’s Over-Indebtedness in the Dominican Republic. Journal of International Development, 29 (7), 919 – 935 which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jid.3244. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.