Determining the Effect of Regulation on Microfinance Institution Financial Self-Sustainability: A Cross-Country Comparison

Abstract

The reduction of poverty, has emerged in a variety of forms and under ambiguous initiatives, from the Millennium Development Goals to microfinance institutions (Sumner & Tribe, 2008). Economically developed democracies have created a pursuit of universal values such as equality, and in return, these democracies have sought funding initiatives that seek to directly or indirectly increase world equality (or its equivalent) in developing countries (Evans, Azene, & Kirigia, 1997; Schreiner, 2012; Trussel & Parsons, 2007). In recent decades, a trend has emerged that seeks to fund programs which reflect the proverb: ‘Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life’. Hence, the current trend is to provide the poor with the tools they need to ‘lift themselves out of poverty’. The current research focusses on one of these programs: microfinance.