Expanding Microfinance in Brazil: Credit Utilisation and Performance of Small Firms
利用巴西政府小额信贷政策外生变化的自然实验，发现信贷供给增加提高了正规信贷利用率且未挤出非正规信贷，正规信贷改善了企业绩效，女性企业回报更高但男性雇佣更多工人。
We take advantage of the natural experiment generated by the exogenous change in government policy towards microcredit to evaluate the impact of the increased supply of microcredit on the utilisation of credit by micro-entrepreneurs. Based on micro-entrepreneurs' survey and administrative data from a microcredit programme in Brazil, we show that: the increased supply of microcredit raised formal credit utilisation and this does not crowd out the use of informal credit sources; formal credit taking improves business performance; and returns are larger for women- than for men-owned firms, but males employ significantly more workers after taking formal credit than females.