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A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh Mark Schreiner 2003 Center for Social Development Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, U.S.A. e-mail: Abstract Reports of the success of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh have led to rapid growth in funding for microfinance. But has Grameen been cost-effective? This paper compares output with subsidy for Grameen in a present-value framework.

unlike most
cost- effectiveness analysis
cost-effectiveness analysis
microfinance organizations
repayment before
after floods
lenders require
enforce joint
grameen
loans
members

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Dissertation

Enright

Campus

Schreiner

Washington University in St. Louis

Chittagong

Mahdia

Harris

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A Cost Effectiveness Analysis
of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh
Mark Schreiner
2003
Center for Social Development
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130 4899, U.S.A.
e mail: schreiner@gwbmail.wustl.edu
Abstract
Reports of the success of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh have led to rapid growth in
funding for microfinance. But has Grameen been cost effective? This paper compares
output with subsidy for Grameen in a present value framework. For the time frame
1983 97, subsidy per person year of membership in Grameen was about $20, and
subsidy per dollar year borrowed was about $0.22. Although the paper does not
measure consumer surplus for Grameen users, the evidence in the literature suggests
that surplus probably exceeds subsidy. Grameen—if not necessarily other
microlenders—was probably a worthwhile social investment.
Acknowledgments
This paper extends part of my doctoral dissertation. A later version is published in
Development Policy Review, 2003, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 357–382. I am thankful for help
from the editor, an anonymous referee, and from Asif Dowla, Leslie Enright, Claudio
Gonzalez Vega, Douglas Graham, Iftekhar Hossain, Mrinalini Lhila, Jonathan
Morduch, Michael Sherraden, Jacob Yaron, and the Division of Asset Building and
Community Development of the Ford Foundation.
Author’s Note
Mark Schreiner is a Senior Scholar at the Center for Social Development at Washington
University in St. Louis. He studies ways to help the poor to build assets through
improved access to savings and loans.A Cost Effectiveness Analysis
of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh
Abstract
Reports of the success of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh have led to rapid growth in
funding for microfinance. But has Grameen been cost effective? This paper compares
output with subsidy for Grameen in a present value framework. For the time frame
1983 97, subsidy per person year of membership in Grameen was about $20, and
subsidy per dollar year borrowed was about $0.22. Although the paper does not
measure consumer surplus for Grameen users, the evidence in the literature suggests
that surplus probably exceeds subsidy. Grameen—if not necessarily other
microlenders—was probably a worthwhile social investment.A Cost Effectiveness Analysis
of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh
1. Introduction
Microfinance—defined as efforts to improve poor people’s access to loans and
saving services—may be the fastest growing and most widely recognized anti poverty
tool. The 200 microfinance organizations surveyed in Paxton (1996) held 13 million
loans worth $7 billion and 45 million savings accounts worth $19 billion. Growth will
probably continue, and one movement seeks to establish credit as a human right and to
raise $20 billion to provide microfinance to 100 million of the world’s poorest families
by 2005 (Daley Harris, 2002; Microcredit Summit, 1996).
The spark for microfinance is the story of the Grameen (Village ) Bank of
Bangladesh. Founded in 1976, by 1997 Grameen had a portfolio of $260 million and 2.3
million members, most of them female, very poor, and rural. More than 98 percent of
payments due had been collected. In 1997, the average disbursement was $170,
equivalent to 60 percent of per capita income. Unlike many development projects,
Grameen has thrived, relieving some of the misery caused by floods and cyclones,
corruption, purdah norms that constrain women, and abysmal income and wealth.
Worldwide, microfinance has caught fire. In Bangladesh, Grameen clones have
more than 2.5 million members. Grameen transplants operate in the United States and
1Europe (Conlin, 1998; Rogaly et al ., 1999) as well as in Africa, other parts of Asia, and
Latin America (Hulme, 1990; Thomas, 1995; Taub, 1998; Wall Street Journal, 1998).
Microfinance spread quickly across the globe because few other tools promise to
fight poverty as effectively (Morduch, 1999a). But does microfinance really work? And
if microfinance does work, is it so effective that it should crowd out other types of
development interventions (Rogaly, 1996)? After all, the poor benefit not only from
better financial services but also, for example, from better food, water, roads, or houses.
As it turns out, the cost effectiveness of Grameen—and of microfinance in
general—is unknown. Past attempts to measure subsidies have been flawed (Benjamin,
1994; Hashemi, 1997; Hulme and Mosley, 1996; Khandker et al ., 1995; Morduch, 1999b;
Yaron et al ., 1997). For example, some studies count cash grants as revenue, some
forget to impute an opportunity cost to all resources, and all fail to discount cash flows.
Likewise, past attempts (reviewed in Section 5) to measure benefits of Grameen
have flaws. For example, some research fails to control for what would have happened
in the absence of Grameen, some work does not control for participant self selection or
for non random placement of branches, and no studies measure more than a few of the
multiple aspects of benefits. These shortfalls result not from a lack of competence or
effort but rather from the difficulty of measuring impact.
2Are subsidies for Grameen well spent? If Grameen, one of the best microlenders,
is not worthwhile, then most other microlenders—and microfinance in general—might
not be as useful as many people hope.
The cost effectiveness analysis in this paper uses a present value framework to
compare Grameen’s subsidies with its outputs. Cost effectiveness analysis is used
instead of benefit cost analysis because outputs are much simpler (and less expensive)
to measure than benefits. Likewise, subsidy is simpler to measure than social cost.
For Grameen in the time frame 1983 97, subsidy per person year of membership
was about $20. Likewise, subsidy per dollar year borrowed was about $0.22. The
literature suggests that surplus for Grameen users (not measured here) exceeds these
levels of subsidy. Thus, subsidies for Grameen have been well spent. Of course, the
results apply only to Grameen; other microlenders—and microfinance in general—may
or may not be as cost effective.
Section 2 below outlines how Grameen works. Sections 3 and 4 set up
frameworks to measure subsidy and output in microfinance. Section 5 discusses
implications for Grameen and for microfinance as a whole.
32. How Grameen works
Now this is how the birth of Grameen came about (Yunus, 1998). A young
economist with a freshly minted PhD from the United States had returned to
Chittagong University in Bangladesh to help to build his newly created country, but he
grew frustrated with abstract theory as he watched people starve during the famine of
1974. One day in his quest to find a way to help, he met a bamboo weaver who, for
want of less than $1, was enthralled to a moneylender. From his own pocket, the
professor lent $0.64 to the weaver. By 1976, Grameen was born. When it became a
1bank in 1983, Grameen had 36,000 members and a portfolio of $3.1 million. By 1997, it
had 2.3 million members and a portfolio of $260 million.
Behind the miracle story lies the design of products and incentives that allow
Grameen to make small loans to poor people without physical collateral. This section
describes the design details behind the tale of success.
2.1 Membership
New members are placed in groups of five, with five to eight groups forming a
centre. All members in the centre meet with a loan officer weekly. For the first few
weeks, they learn Grameen rules, save $0.02 a week, learn to sign their names, and
1 All monetary figures are in dollars as of December 1998 ($1 = 48.5 taka).
4memorize a set of vows to self improvement. Each group elects a chair, and each centre
elects a chief. New members also must buy a share of stock in Grameen for $2.
2.2 Loans
Lenders seek to manage repayment risk; all borrowers promise to repay, but,
whether due to choice or to constraint, some break their promise. To control risk, most
lenders require collateral, an asset that the borrower forfeits upon default and that thus
motivates repayment. Most formal lenders require physical assets such as land or
houses. The poor, however, either lack such assets or cannot afford to lose them.
The innovation of Grameen—and of microfinance in general—is to collateralize
the asset of future access to loans. In this sense, microfinance in low income countries
works a lot like credit cards in high income countries; borrowers repay because they
want to preserve future access to loans.
Although Grameen did not invent the threat of termination as an incentive to
fulfill contracts (Stiglitz and Weiss, 1983), it did popularize its combination with a
second design element: default by one group member leads to loss of access for all
members. This joint liability reduces risk in three ways (Conning, 1998).
First, joint liability gives members an incentive to exclude known bad risks. For
outsiders, knowledge of individual character is costly, but, for villagers, it is often a
sunk cost. Thus, joint liability can cut the cost to screen potential borrowers.
5Second, joint liability gives members an incentive to make sure that their fellows
do not squander their loans. This can cut the cost to monitor borrowers.
Third, joint liability gives members an incentive to coax comrades out of arrears
or even to repay their debts for them. Members may also ment