Abstract

This thesis investigates the impacts of for-profit and not-for-profit MFIs’ performance on economic development through a panel analysis between 2003 and 2018. The empirical results illustrate financial and social performances of for-profit and not-for-profit MFIs have their respective statistically significant influence on the host country’s poverty level and economic growth rate. However, due to the difference in corporate characteristics and strategic objectives between these two types of MFIs, the statistical and economic significance of the correlations against poverty or the growth index is not necessarily the same between the same performance metric of for-profit and that of not-for-profit MFIs. Furthermore, compared with the operating performances, consisting of financial and social performance, of not-for-profit MFIs, those of for-profit MFIs impose stronger impacts on real GDP growth, reflected in three transmission channels, including capital investment, export, and imports.……