Business Commons^™

Challenges To Microfinance Commercialization, Anita Campion

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

This paper was presented to audiences in Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines through a World Bank multimedia distance education program in October 2001. The presentation addressed some of the core obstacles to microfinance commercialization, defined here as the application of market-based principles to providing financial services to the poor. The paper discusses some of the challenges to microfinance commercialization, such as inappropriate donor subsidies, poor regulation and supervision, and limited management capacity of microfinance institutions. Given the initial target audience of primarily World Bank employees, the paper concludes with a discussion on what donor can do to move microfinance …

To Pay Or Not To Pay?: Local Institutional Differences And The Viability Of Rural Credit In Nicaragua, Johan Bastiaensen, Ben D'Exelle

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Innovative credit enterprises, aiming to expand the frontier of the rural credit market, can attain financial sustainabihty and broadened social outreach if they embed financial operations in local institutions, such as social networks and prevailing rules. Only in this way can the "rules of the game" imposed by the credit enterprise gain the local legitimacy that is necessary to reduce transaction costs sufficiently. The nature of preexisting local institutional environments, therefore, has a profound effect on the performance of credit enterprises. Our analysis of a rural microcredit program in two neighboring villages in Nicaragua indicates that existing patron-client structures, conditioned …

Community Savings Funds: Providing Access To Basic Financial Services In Marginalized Rural Areas Of Mexico, Gabriala Zapata

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

The Community Savings Funds (CSFs) promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture in Mexico seek to provide marginalized community groups with a simple mechanism that allows them to save and administer their own funds securely, efficiently, and profitably, according to their own needs and priorities. Specially trained promoters help set up CSFs for a period of one year—using a standardized Toolkit—after which they are expected to work autonomously. There are 540 CSFs in 12 states with over 12,800 members and savings totaling 4.45 million pesos (US 5445,000). This paper describes the characteristics of the CSF model and the results to date. …

Care's Mata Masu Dubara (Women On The Move) Program In Niger: Successful Financial Intermediation In The Rural Sahel, William J. Grant, Henry C. Allen [email protected]

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

CARE's Mata Masu Dubara (MMD) project is a women's time-bound accumulating savings and credit association (ASCA) program in rural Niger. Over the past decade, CARE has facilitated the creation of over 5,500 active women's groups with over 162,000, providing the purest forms of financial intermediation to their members in some of the poorest parts of Niger. Working from a very simple and appropriately adapted savings based product, sustainability and replication of the associations is easy to achieve. Due to the overwhelming demand for the product, CARE's role has evolved from service provider creating the associations to a facilitator that trains …

Front Matter, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

The New Microfinance: An Essay On The Self-Help Group Movement In India, Kim Wilson

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Indian NGOs have created at least one million self-help groups with 17,000,000 members since the self-help group concept was developed by MYRADA in the late 1980s. India is unique in that banks are permitted to lend directly to unregistered self-help groups and by May 2001, banks and cooperatives had financed 461,478 of these groups, with almost 200,000 new self-help groups financed between May 2000 and May 2001, indicating an accelerated process of expansion. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) trains banks and refinances their loans. The key to NABARD's success is decentralization. Responsibility for group development and …

Evaluation And Microenterprise Programs In The United States, Mark Schreiner

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Microenterprise programs attempt to help poor people start or strengthen small businesses. Funding and political support have grown rapidly. Is microenterprise a good use of scarce development funds? Unfortunately, most evaluations have been case studies in what not to do. Because benefits and costs cannot be measured completely nor with perfect certainty, rigorous evaluations should support their necessarily subjective judgements with logic and explicit assumptions. The usefulness of an evaluation lies not in its (apparent) incontrovert-ibility but rather in its clarity of assumptions and in its openness to meaningful review and critique.

A Symposium On Savings-Led Microfinance And The Rural Poor, Jeffrey Ashe

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Pact's Women's Empowerment Program In Nepal : A Savings- And Literacy- Led Alternative To Financial Building, Jeffrey Ashe, Lisa Parrott [email protected]

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Pact's Women's Empowerment Program (WEP) in Nepal operated through 6,500 groups with 130,00 women members. These groups mobilized nearly $2,000,000 of assets in less than three years with 94% on loan to 45,000 group members. By mid 2001, WEP had as many outstanding loans as CARD in the Philippines and Compartamos in Mexico, two very well known "credit-led" microfi-nance institutions, while working through three times as many groups. In addition, 65,000 group members learned to read through Pact's innovative curriculum that focused exclusively on managing a group, starting a business, and women's empowerment. WEP was implemented by 240 partners (most …

End Matter, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Ashrai: A Savings-Led Model For Fighting Poverty And Discrimination, Brett Matthews, Ahsan Ali [email protected]

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Ashrai is getting results with a savings-led model among minority peoples in northwest Bangladesh. These people are mostly landless and illiterate, and earn about $50 a year per person. They are a vital population segment that microfinance institutions in Bangladesh and elsewhere are unable to serve successfully. Ashrai began its field work ten years ago by replicating Grameen Bank, but rapidly learned from its clients that they needed savings at least at much as loans, flexible loan repayment schedules structured around seasonal cash flow, and an easing of the requirement that loans be for productive purposes. Ashrai takes an innovative …

Savings And Credit For U.S. Microenterprises : Integrating Individual Development Accounts And Loans For Microenterprise, Caroline E. Glackin, Eliza G. Mahony

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

This paper provides a framework for the integration of two asset-building instruments, Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) and loans for microenterprise. Initially, it provides an overview of the emergence of the asset-based approach to poverty alleviation in the U.S. context and the evolution of IDAs and microenterprise development (MED). Then, it evaluates the potential role of IDAs in reducing risk using conventional lending criteria. The paper summarizes the findings of initial research on integrated programs and highlights four case studies. Finally, the paper provides some preliminary observations regarding potential benefits and challenges of the integrated approach and proposes an agenda for …

Book Review: Inner-City Entrepreneurship Development: The Microcredit Challenge By Nitin Bhatt, Jerry Black

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Unfinished Business: The Need For More Effective Microfinance Exit Monitering, James G. Copestake

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

High rates of exit remain the "Achilles heel" of many micro-finance organizations. After reviewing definitional issues, the paper explores how exit rates adversely affect both their commercial and social objectives. It then reviews case studies of exit monitoring based on routine, questionnaire based and focus group methods, making detailed suggestions as to how data collection, analysis and reporting can be improved.

2002-2003 Operating Budget, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

The Southern University and A & M College Operating Budget for the Fiscal Year 2002-2003.

2002-2003 Revised Operating Budget: Subr Agricultural Extension And Research Programs, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

2002-2003 Revised Operating Budget of the SUBR Agricultural Research and Extension Center Campus.

2002-2003 Operating Budget: Southern University Law Center, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

The 2002-2003 Fiscal Year Operating Budget for the Southern University Law Center Campus.

2002-2003 Operating Budget, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

The Southern University at Shreveport, Operating Budget for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 2003.

2002-2003 Operating Budget, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

The Operating Budget for the Fiscal Year 2002-2003, Southern University System Administration & Board of Supervisors.

2001-2002 Operating Budget: Southern University Agricultural Extension And Research Programs, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

2001-2002 Operating Budget of the Southern University Agricultural Extension and Research Programs Campus.

Ua9 Investing In The Spirit, Wku Development & Alumni Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Development office newsletter regarding donors and donations to Western Kentucky University.

2001-2002 Operating Budget: Southern University At New Orleans, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

2001-2002 Operating Budget of the Southern University at New Orleans Campus.

Time-Changed L´Evy Processes And Option Pricing, Pete Carr, Liuren Wu

CRIF Working Paper series

As is well known, the classic Black-Scholes option pricing model assumes that returns follow Brownian motion. It is widely recognized that return processes differ from this benchmark in at least three important ways. First, asset prices jump, leading to non-normal return innovations. Second, return volatilities vary stochastically over time. Third, returns and their volatilities are correlated, often negatively for equities. We propose that time-changed L´evy processes be used to simultaneously address these three facets of the underlying asset return process. We show that our framework encompasses almost all of the models proposed in the option pricing literature. Despite the generality …

What Type Of Process Underlies Options? A Simple Robust Test, Peter Carr, Liuren Wu

CRIF Working Paper series

We develop a simple robust test for the presence of continuous and discontinuous (jump) components in the price of an asset underlying an option. Our test examines the prices of at-the-money and out-of-the-money options as the option maturity approaches zero. We show that these prices converge to zero at speeds which depend upon whether the sample path of the underlying asset price process is purely continuous, purely discontinuous, or a mixture of both. By applying the test to S&P 500 index options data, we conclude that the sample path behavior of this index contains both a continuous component and a …

The Internationalization Of Money And Finance And The Globalization Of Financial Markets, James R. Lothian

CRIF Working Paper series

In this paper I combine long multi-country time series data for interest rates and stock returns with the institutional evidence for much earlier centuries amassed by economic historians to study the question of financial globalization and how it has altered since the late classical era. At their longest, for Dutch and English short-term interest rates, the quantitative data that I use extend back slightly more than three centuries. The institutional history provides information on an additional millennium’s worth of experience. The conclusion that I reach is that the internationalization of money and finance and the globalization of financial markets are …

Roundtable Series On Innovative Approaches To Land Conservation And Smart Growth, New England Environmental Finance Center

Smart Growth

A series of six roundtable discussions was conducted by the New England Environmental Finance Center (NE/EFC) from January through May 2002, one in each New England state. The objectives of the series were to consolidate expertise in financing and coordinating projects that combine conservation and development on the landscape, and to identify key areas of unmet need that could be addressed by the NE/EFC. Each discussion entailed several case study presentations and facilitated discussion about what works, what doesn’t work, and what might work in financing and coordinating efforts that combine conservation and development. Key areas of opportunity that emerged …

Invest For Success - Investing In Agriculture In The South West Irrigation Area, Caroline Hatherly, Janet Mccreddin, Georgia Thomas

Farm Systems and Economics published reports

For the South West Irrigation Area to grow and prosper, it is essential that information be gathered and shared, the region promoted, and water used efficiently. The INTERACT project has been developed to do just that and will be a driver for agricultural development into the future.

" Once SWI just delivered water; now it is helping its irrigation industries to grow." Vision statement, South West Irrigation

Banking On Sbi : Interview With Dipankar Basu, Ashok Thampy, Vivek Moorthy

IIMB Management Review

No abstract provided.

Financial Disclosure And Speculative Bubbles: An International Comparison, Benjamas Jirasakuldech, Thomas S. Zorn

Department of Finance: Faculty Publications

This paper examines if a country’s financial disclosure system affects the likelihood of speculative bubbles. We compare stock returns of eight countries that differ in the quality of their disclosure systems as ranked by Saudagaran and Biddle (1992). We examine the hypothesis that stock prices of firms in countries with a low level of financial disclosure are more prone to speculative bubbles. We employ the duration dependence model developed by McQueen and Thorley (1994) to test for the presence of bubbles. We found that the returns in Japan, a country with a relatively low level of disclosure, shows evidence of …

International Money And Common Currencies In Historical Perspective, Gerald P. Dwyer Jr., James R. Lothian

CRIF Working Paper series

We review the history of international monies and the theory related to their adoption and use. There are four key characteristics of these currencies: high unitary value; relatively low inflation rates for long periods; issuance by major economic and trading powers; and spontaneous, as opposed to planned, adoption internationally. The economic theory of the demand for money provides support for the importance of these characteristics. The value of a unit is arbitrary for a fiat money, but the other characteristics are likely to be important for determining any fiat money that will be the international money in the future. If …