“…Stage 2: The dependent variable is the governance rating score provided by Planet Rating and is measure on an ordinal scale. the rating is significantly associated with age, outreach, past loans due, operational self-sufficiency, and the outstanding loans, therefore supporting the findings of previous studies in microfinance (Hartarska & Nadolnyak, 2008;Tchakoute Tchuigoua, 2012). Table 6b reports the results of the Heckman model, that is, the result of the ordered logistic regression with control for selection bias, also performed with robust standard errors in order to control for heteroskedasticity on the basis of the sample of rated MFIs.…”