Do banks and microfinance institutions compete? Microevidence from Madagascar

In recent years, both microfinance institutions (MFIs) and banks across the world have been converging towards the financing of small enterprises with high financing needs. This paper scrutinizes whether banks and MFIs compete each other as a result of recent transformations in both industries. In doing so, we study whether the loan strategy of a microfinance institution is shaped by the local presence of a bank. Specifically, we investigate whether bank proximity
influences loan conditions provided by one of the largest microfinance institutions in Madagascar. We employ an original panel dataset of 32,374 loans granted to 14,834 borrowers over the period 2008-2014. We find that the closer a bank is located to a given MFI borrower, the larger the loan obtained and the less collateral required. These results are insensitive to several robustness tests for possible endogeneity of distance, sample selection issue, and alternative specifications. In addition, findings are stronger for larger and more established (older) firms in line with our hypothesis.