Knowledge mapping of microfinance performance research: a bibliometric analysis

Purpose - Performance assessment of microfinance institutions (MFIs) has long been a question of considerable research interest. The dual goals - financial performance and social performance of MFIs widely studied yet remain unsolved in the existing literature. To assess the knowledge structure of research in this area and to aid future research, we review the literature with bibliometric analysis. Design/methodology/approach - Our study has used bibliographic data of 1,252 scientific documents indexed in the Scopus database from 1995 to 2020 (June 05). We have used the "bibliometrix" package in R language to analyze the data and illustrate the findings. Findings - We find that there has been an increasing trend in publications, especially from 2006 onwards. Various bibliometric indicators allow us to follow the progression of knowledge along with identifying the most contributing and impactful authors, publication sources, institutions and countries. We illustrate the major research themes and identify that "poverty alleviations", "group lending" and "credit scoring" are the major emerging and specialized themes besides the basic research evolved around "microfinance" or "microcredit". Our further analysis of thematic evolution over different time frames reveals that "financial performance" aspect is getting more attention in recent times in evaluating the performance of MFIs. Originality/value - The insights of knowledge accumulated from our bibliometric review and thematic analysis provide researchers with an efficient comprehension of the advancement of the research on microfinance performance and offer avenues for future scientific endeavors.