Although microfinance started as a movement to improve women’s economic well-being through increased female entrepreneurship in particular, its impact on women’s attitudes toward and participation in the labour market is not fully understood. We fill...
M.G. Quibria In the wake of the worst famine of Bangladesh of the post-World War era Professor Muhammad Yunus launched a microcredit experiment in...
Carl-Gustav Lindén One important part of ReCom–Research and Communication on Foreign Aid is the sharing of results. October saw the largest effort so...
Improved household accessibility to credit is a significant determinant of intra-household allocation of labor resources with important implications for productivity, income, and poverty status. However, credit accessibility could also have wider...
This paper examines the combined effect of interest rates and poverty levels of microfinance clients on loan size. Cross section data on 2,691 clients and non-clients households from Ghana is used to test the hypothesis of loan price inelasticity...
George Mavrotas While recent years have witnessed new interest in the finance–growth nexus, the relationship between domestic resource mobilization...
Part of Book Towards Gender Equity in Development
Tony Addison UNU-WIDER is having a very active and successful autumn. Our climate change and development policy conference at the end of September...
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
Over the last 35 years, microfinance has been generally regarded as an effective policy tool in the fight against poverty. Yet, the question of whether access to credit leads to poverty reduction and improved wellbeing remains open. To address this...
This paper proposes to organize thinking about the opportunities for improving and extending financial markets and safety nets for the poor, by focusing on factors that may explain why the linkage of local financial networks and safety nets with the...
We examine a simple extension to existing credit contacts for the poor (‘microfinance contracts’), that would allow financial institutions to provide repayment insurance to their clients. The proposed contract uses the repeated nature of loans to...
While microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly important as employers in the developing world, there is little micro-level evidence on gender differences among MFI employees and MFIs’ relation to economic development. We use a unique panel...
Whereas most research into microfinance tends to focus on the impact of access to such services, very little pays attention to what happens over time once a person becomes a client. The paper aims at analysing the conditions of loan renewals as most...
Ha-Joon Chang Many people believe that the lack of entrepreneurship is one of the main causes of poverty in developing countries. However, anyone who...
Part of Book External Finance for Private Sector Development
Part of Book Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial Development
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via savings...
The paper presents a comprehensive survey of the ‘shopping list’ of sources of external finance that are directly channeled to the business sector of developing countries. Generally, our analytical survey covers the 1970-2000 period, and includes the...
Almost everywhere, women are underrepresented in labour markets compared to men. While labour force participation among women of working age (FLFP)...
Using data from the 1995 Malawi Financial Markets and Food Security Survey, this study seeks to discover if women’s relative control over household resources or intra-household bargaining power in rural Malawi, gauged by their access to microcredit...
This study tests the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Burkina Faso using indicators such as the sustainable interest rate and the subsidy dependence index. The results indicate that MFIs outreach performance remains very low...
This paper explores the relationship between microcredit and poverty reduction. To investigate this question, we posit a bare-bone, household model that outlines the economic environment within which various types of family microenterprises operate...
A number of studies document an in-group bias in social dilemma situations. While group structure and dynamics are important in shaping in-group favouritism, less attention has been paid to individual characteristics affecting favouritism. Using data...
Part of Book Vulnerability in Developing Countries
This paper investigates the economic conditions of rural households in China. Historical survey data indicate that over 80 per cent of rural households earn less than 4,500 yuan in net disposable income each year, that for the vast majority of rural...
The donor community has enthusiastically embraced the concept of microfinance as a promising mechanism to attain the objectives of poverty alleviation and microenterprise development. Amid the high expectation, a myth has been inadvertently created...
The paper explores the relationship between financial sector reforms and savings mobilization in Zambia. Although there exists an extensive literature on financial sector development and savings levels in developing countries, there does not seem to...
Part of Book External Finance for Private Sector Development
Microfinance evaluations reveal a positive impact on per capita income, non-land asset value and poverty incidence. Across countries and methodologies, microfinance is most likely to have a short-term positive effect; regionally, the most positive...
Part of Book Insurance Against Poverty
Foreign assistance philosophy no longer favours channeling aid almost exclusively to recipients' public sector; 'a bottomless pit'. Increasing preference has been accorded by the donor multilateral development community to the private sector...
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Oportunidades programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via a bank account is found to have...
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