Can flexible agricultural microfinance loans limit the repayment risk of low diversified farmers?
利用马达加斯加一家商业小额信贷机构的数据，研究了灵活还款计划对农作物种植者贷款违约风险的影响，发现预定义宽限期虽能缓解低收益期压力，但会增加贷款人的信用风险，尤其对低多样化农民影响显著。
Using a unique data set from a commercial microfinance institution in Madagascar, this article investigates the credit risk of microfinance loans with flexible repayment schedules for crop farmers. Flexible repayment schedules allow a redistribution of principal payments during periods with low agricultural returns to periods when agricultural returns are high through predefined grace periods. We apply propensity score matching to investigate how different numbers of grace periods reflecting different levels of production diversification affect the credit risk of crop farmers. In this attempt, three delinquency categories reflecting various levels of credit risk are assessed. Moreover, we consider the specifics of the regions where loans were disbursed. Our results reveal that loans with predefined grace periods show significantly higher delinquencies. This effect is significant over all three delinquency categories for loans disbursed to low diversified crop farmers. For the more diversified farmers, this effect is only significant for the lowest delinquency category. Hence, predefined grace periods might bridge periods with low agricultural returns but come at the cost of higher credit risk for the lender. The magnitude of these effects is, however, small.