The microcredit program Banco Social, created by the Paraná State government, started operating in 2001 as a complex institutional arrangement involving many public agencies. Its original institutional design has been modified in several attempts to deal with operational obstacles and to make the program self-financing. This essay studies its main modifications under the lenses of transaction cost economics, examining their nature and impact with regard to information asymmetry, opportunism, and bounded rationality. It becomes noticeable that the Program strained somehow to harmonize its social aim and the imperatives of self-funding.
state agencies; microcredit; institutional design; transaction costs; governance
