Microfinance in Argentina: a sistematic literature review

Abstract

The microfinance is a set of services specially designed to meet the demands of the population with less economic resources, with the aim of improving their quality of life, and increasing their income and investment in education and health. As a study area, a remarkable increase can be identified from the beginning of the twentieth fist century, gaining importance over the years thanks to the fact that microfinance has achieved the recognition of international organizations in the fight against poverty. The present work carried out a Systematic Literature Review on microfinance, analyzing the volume of publication and the main countries and journals that focus on the subject of study, in Scopus and SciELO databases. At the same time, we detect the books available for consultation in different national libraries that refer to microfinance in Argentina. Finally, we summarize those works that focus on the economic situation of Argentine microfinance market and which are published in these databases. The aim is to identify the main characteristics of this market, its state of development and to obtain an overview of the possible obstacles it faces to expand in a sustainable manner. In addition, we seek to explore the key gaps in the literature and provide some suggestions for future research.