Laços sociais no monitoramento do microcrédito

Abstract

The supply of financial services to those living close to the poverty line is marked, around the world, by the basic dilemma between the social coverage of the target public and the economic sustainability of the organizations supplying those services. Group lending represents an institutional innovation of crucial importance in the attempt to supply credit to the poor population. In the case of the microcredit organization "São Paulo Confia", linked to the São Paulo municipal government, the substitution of real guarantees from the borrowers by groups of endorsement paved the way for a significant reduction in the insolvency, as well as an extension of the social reach of the program. This paper aims to show an intriguing aspect of the functioning of the group lending: in contrast to what the dominant literature predicts, the groups include individuals whose names are pointed as "dirty" by the credit protection services, and transaction costs associated to screening are much lower than usually estimated. This conclusion can be useful for building public policies aimed at the diffusion of the so-called "productive microcredit".