117. Read the following passage, then answer the question below.

In 1976, an economist in Bangladesh named Muhammad Yunus lent a few dollars to a group of village women who made bamboo furniture. The women, who had been paying moneylenders interest rates that devoured their profit, repaid the loans on time. The experiment grew into the Grameen Bank, and the idea of offering very small loans to the poor, called microfinance, spread to more than a hundred countries. In 2006, Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The appeal of microfinance rests on a simple argument. Poor people are often excluded from formal banks, which see small loans as costly and risky. Without credit, an entrepreneur cannot buy the sewing machine or the seeds that would raise her income. Microfinance institutions tried to solve this problem with group lending: borrowers formed small groups whose members guaranteed one another's loans, so social pressure replaced the collateral they did not have. Repayment rates were high, often above ninety-five percent.

Yet by the 2010s, careful studies had tempered the early enthusiasm. Randomized trials in six countries found that access to microloans increased business activity but produced little measurable change in average household income or in schooling. One explanation is that most borrowers were not 'hidden entrepreneurs'. Many ran businesses only because no other jobs were available, and a loan could not make a small stall in a crowded market more profitable. In some regions, competition among lenders encouraged people to borrow from several sources, leading to debt spirals and, in a notorious episode in India, a wave of suicides that prompted a crackdown.

Defenders note that the trials measured only a short period, and that loans have other benefits that are difficult to capture in income figures: families use credit to smooth out consumption during bad harvests or to cover emergencies. Today, many specialists view microfinance as a useful financial service, but no longer as a cure for poverty.

The word 'which' in the second paragraph refers to