This paper evaluates whether microcredit programs such as the popular Grameen Bank reach the relatively poor and vulnerable in two Bangladeshi villages. It uses a unique panel dataset with monthly consumption and income data for 229 households before they received loans. We …nd that while microcredit is successful at reaching the poor, it is less successful at reaching the vulnerable. Our results also suggest that microcredit is unsuccessful at reaching the group most prone to destitution, the vulnerable poor. Our main contribution is to explicitly evaluate the targeting of an anti-poverty intervention using the e¢cient risk-sharing framework in Townsend (1994).JEL Codes: O16, I38, Q12

Many believe that a key innovation by the Grameen Bank is to encourage borrowers to help each other in hard times. To analyse this, we study a mechanism design problem where borrowers share information about each other, but their limited side contracting ability prevents them from writing complete insurance contracts. We derive a lending mechanism which efficiently induces mutual insurance. It is necessary for borrowers to submit reports about each other to achieve efficiency. Such cross-reporting increases the bargaining power of unsuccessful borrowers, and is robust to collusion against the bank.

Microfinance institutions and other lenders in developing countries rely on the promise of future loans to induce repayment. However, if borrowers expect that others will default, and so loans will no longer be available in the future, then they will default as well. We refer to such contagion as a borrower run. The optimal lending contract must provide additional repayment incentives to counter this tendency to default.

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