Microfinance Effects on Entrepreneurship and Poverty Alleviation: A Bibliometric Analysis

This chapter intends to contribute to the analysis of microfinance effects on entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation through a bibliometric review of the existent literature, to understand the current state of microfinance research, as well as to contribute to the analysis of the influence of microfinance on entrepreneurship, financial development, economic growth, and poverty alleviation. Despite the extensive research on microfinance, no recent study has attempted to update the current state of the research regarding its influence on the other subjects in analysis. This chapter describes the evolutional research studies published in the digital library Scopus, between 2017 and 2020, and compares the results obtained over time. The research is concentrated on the bibliometric analysis in the Scopus database, considering the keyword “microfinance”, and also searching for the keywords “microfinance”, “entrepreneurship”, “financial and development”, “economic and growth”, and “poverty”. Based on the cutting-edge studies, we conclude that there is a lack of longitudinal data, heterogeneity among countries, lack of sociodemographic characteristics analysis, and little cross-country evidence, which would all be relevant issues to be explored empirically in the microfinance literature.