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Full-Text Articles in Business

Designing Payment Models For The Poor, Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Sasa Zorc Jan 2023

Designing Payment Models For The Poor, Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Sasa Zorc

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Several basic services, such as energy, clean water and cooking gas, are currently out of reach for millions of people living in poverty. There has been an emergence of private firms that offer these services by, for example, selling solar home systems or clean cooking packages with remote lockout capabilities. These firms deploy a pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) model in which consumers are given the flexibility to manage the amount and frequency of their payments based on their own erratic cash flows. However, because a firm under this model cannot observe how much money the consumers have, they can pay less to …


Obstacles To Accessing Pro-Poor Microcredit Programs In China: Evidence From Penggan Village, Guizhou, Deborah Shu Yi Tan, Track Tze Tuan Tan, Shao Tong Ling, John A. Donaldson Oct 2019

Obstacles To Accessing Pro-Poor Microcredit Programs In China: Evidence From Penggan Village, Guizhou, Deborah Shu Yi Tan, Track Tze Tuan Tan, Shao Tong Ling, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Why do poor farmers not take up microcredit loans, even when the terms are designed to be pro-poor? Fieldwork in a village in China’s Guizhou province revealed a puzzle: although the county government had designed a loan program that was intended to be unusually pro-poor, only three of the 349 eligible households had successfully applied. This article analyzes three potential hypotheses: farmer failure (risk aversion or financial illiteracy), market failure (lack of viable or stable market opportunities), and institutional failure (structural or institutional barriers precluding taking up loans). Based on evidence from intensive interviews, we reject the first hypothesis, and …


Enabling Models Of Inclusive Growth: Addressing The Need For Financial And Social Inclusion, Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, Howard Thomas Feb 2019

Enabling Models Of Inclusive Growth: Addressing The Need For Financial And Social Inclusion, Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

While poverty is falling, the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider and more and more people are being excluded from the means to better themselves. Yuwa Hedrick-Wong and Howard Thomas look at ways to include them.


Social Structure, Reasonable Gain, And Entrepreneurship In Africa, Gerard George, Reddi Kotha, Priti Parikh, Tufool Alnuaimi, Abubakr S. Bahaj Apr 2015

Social Structure, Reasonable Gain, And Entrepreneurship In Africa, Gerard George, Reddi Kotha, Priti Parikh, Tufool Alnuaimi, Abubakr S. Bahaj

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the context of desperate poverty, characterized by households at subsistence level that experience economic loss and social fracture, explanations for why individuals undertake entry into entrepreneurship are limited. We find that individuals rely on their social relationships to enable entrepreneurial activities that have the potential to create a reasonable income gain. In a sample of 1,049 households in rural Kenya, we test whether the disintegration of social structure attenuates entrepreneurial behavior. When coupled with factors such as income loss, gender of the household head, and access to communal resources, social structure plays a pivotal role in entrepreneurial action. We …


Institutional Entrepreneurship, Governance And Poverty: Insights From Emergency Medical Response Services In India, Gerard George, Rekha Rao-Nicholson, Christopher Corbishley, Rahul Bansal Mar 2015

Institutional Entrepreneurship, Governance And Poverty: Insights From Emergency Medical Response Services In India, Gerard George, Rekha Rao-Nicholson, Christopher Corbishley, Rahul Bansal

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We present an in-depth case study of GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute, an Indian public–private partnership (PPP), which successfully brought emergency medical response to remote and urban settings. Drawing insights from the case, we investigate how the organization established itself through institutional entrepreneurship using a process conceptualized as opportunity framing, entrenchment, and propagation. The case and context highlight the need for innovation in organizational design and governance modes to create a new opportunity that connects state actors, private healthcare providers, and the public at large. We consider the role of open innovation and novel business models in creating these …


Infrastructure Provision, Gender And Poverty In Indian Slums, Prithi Parikh, Kun Fu, Himanshu Parikh, Allan Mcrobie, Gerard George Feb 2015

Infrastructure Provision, Gender And Poverty In Indian Slums, Prithi Parikh, Kun Fu, Himanshu Parikh, Allan Mcrobie, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the relationship between infrastructure provision and poverty alleviation by analyzing 500 interviews conducted in serviced and non-serviced slums in India. Using a mixed-method approach of qualitative analysis and regression modeling, we find that infrastructure was associated with a 66% increase in education among females. Service provision increased literacy by 62%, enhanced income by 36%, and reduced health costs by 26%. Evidence suggests that a gender-sensitive consideration of infrastructure is necessary and that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will not suffice. We provide evidence that infrastructure investment is critical for well-being of slum dwellers and women in particular.


A Lack Of Material Resources Causes Harsher Moral Judgments, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau Mar 2014

A Lack Of Material Resources Causes Harsher Moral Judgments, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the research presented here, we tested the idea that a lack of material resources (e.g., low income) causes people to make harsher moral judgments because a lack of material resources is associated with a lower ability to cope with the effects of others' harmful behavior. Consistent with this idea, results from a large cross-cultural survey (Study 1) showed that both a chronic (due to low income) and a situational (due to inflation) lack of material resources were associated with harsher moral judgments. The effect of inflation was stronger for low-income individuals, whom inflation renders relatively more vulnerable. In a …


Stepping Up To The Plate, Singapore Management University Nov 2013

Stepping Up To The Plate, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Rajesh Chakraborti talks about how CSR is embedded in everything that Reliance does, in an attempt to limit poverty in India.