Most empirical studies in microfinance have disproportionately focused on its downstream effects-effects on the borrower-leaving the important question of how microfinance institutions are affected in the process, largely unanswered-upstream effects. This paper addresses this question by using panel data estimations to empirically investigate the causal effect of microfinance growth on microfinance institution loan portfolio quality. Surprisingly, we find evidence that portfolio quality improves with growth in outreach, which is contrary to the dominant view that higher growth leads to increased default risk. This result is robust across estimation methods and even after controlling for microfinance institutional characteristics and macroeconomic indicators.1 These microfinance markets are Nicaragua, Morocco, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Pakistan. 2 MFIs are different from one another in size, culture and other aspects. An MFI can burgeon from institutions such as banks, cooperatives and non-governmental organizations just to name a few. 3 We also estimated our model during the boom years (not presented in this paper) and found results similar to post-boom estimations. 4 The most recently available data are for year 2013. 698 J. Yimga 6 The four other performance areas are (i) outreach: breadth (number of clients served); (ii) outreach: depth (client poverty level); (iii) financial sustainability (profitability); and (iv) efficiency.Microfinance Growth and Loan Portfolio 701

This paper uses data at the trading day frequency and the method of local projections to quantify the dynamic responses of U.S. airline stock prices to a COVID-19 shock. We show that airline stock prices decline immediately by 0.1 percentage point in response to a 1% COVID-19 shock. In addition, the effect of the shock persists beyond the day on which it occurs, with most airline stock prices falling by as much as 0.6 percentage points after fifteen days. This negative response of airline stock prices to a COVID-19 shock is not explained by a COVID-19-induced increase in airlines’ variable costs, but rather by a COVID-19-induced decrease in air travel, which, in turn decreases revenues, profitability, and stock prices of U.S. airlines.

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This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on flight delays in the U.S. airline industry. Using daily data on COVID-19 cases and flight on-time performance, and controlling for product, carrier and market characteristics, we find that increases in reported COVID-19 cases are associated with reductions in both departure and arrival delays. Specifically, a standard deviation increase in COVID-19 cases reduces arrival delay by 1 min 42 s and departure delay by 2 min, on average. Our results suggest that despite the economic fallout from the pandemic, a silver lining emerges—flights are departing and arriving with less delay amid the pandemic.