Is Group Lending a Collateral for Informal Credit?

Abstract

This article explores how participation in microfinance programs affects informal credit conditions. Using data on the rural credit market of Andhra Pradesh, I provide evidence that group lending participants obtain lower interest rates from the informal credit market. This result can be explained by two main factors. On the one hand, due to joint liability, group lending clients have high incentives to monitor each other, which implies a reduction in the agency costs for moneylenders. On the other hand, as microfinance borrowers are required to invest the credit in income generating activities, they face a lower default risk. Taken together, these two mechanisms may explain why microcredit borrowers are perceived as less risky by informal lenders. Overall, the findings suggest that moneylenders benefit from the duality in the market, thus providing empirical support to recent theoretical research hypothesizing that there is a complementarity relationship between formal and informal credit suppliers.