Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Globalization As A Signal Of The Next Stage In Cultural Evolution, Lee Stauffer

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

J.G. Macquee The Hittites, George Von-Der-Muhll

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Eiji Hattori. Letters From The Silk Roads: Thinking At The Crossroads Of Civilization., Ashley Souther

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Vol. 04 No. 2 Journal Of Microfinance, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

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.

Integrating Marriage Education Into Perinatal Education, Alan J. Hawkins, Tamara Gilliland, Glenda Christiaens, Jason S. Carroll

Faculty Publications

Couples making the transition to parenthood experience challenges that can threaten the quality and stability of their relationships and the health of family members. Currently, the educational infrastructure to support the delivery of couple-relationship education during the transition to parenthood is limited. Because new-parent couples interact with the health care system at many points during this transition time, an opportunity exists for strengthening couple relationships within the system to improve the well-being of adults and children. in this article, we propose a productive collaboration between marriage/couple educators and health care systems to integrate couple-relationship education into the standard of perinatal …

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.

Legislating Citizenship In The United States: The Impact Of State Building On Woman Sufferage Legislation, 1848-1918, Eric C. Dahlin

Theses and Dissertations

This is a state-level analysis of the impact of state building on woman suffrage legislation in the United States. This study examines all states in which state legislatures were conferred the power to submit a constitutional amendment to the electorate for approval. I use a sequential random-effects logistic regression model to estimate the effects of state building on legislative outcome. Legislative outcome is measured in three stages: whether or not a bill is introduced in either the House or the Senate during a legislative session, whether or not a bill is voted on in either the House or the Senate …

The Relationship Of Corpus Callosum And Cingulate Gyrus Surface Areas With Intelligence Scores In Persons With Early Hydrocephalus, Heather Gerschler

Theses and Dissertations

This study served as a pilot study of cingulate gyrus surface areas and their relation to intelligence in individuals with hydrocephalus. Surface areas of the corpus callosum and cingulate gyrus regions were compared between individuals with early hydrocephalus (n = 9) and controls (n = 7). Subsequently, the surface areas were correlated with full-scale intelligence scores and the verbal and nonverbal discrepancy scores. Corpus collosum surface areas were significantly smaller in participants with hydrocephalus. These areas also robustly correlated with full-scale intelligence scores. Although the cingulate gyrus did not differ significantly between the groups, the cingulate gyrus regions were increasingly …

Nl-Soar And Lg-Soar: Ongoing Work, Deryle W. Lonsdale

Faculty Publications

Goals:

Expand Soar knowledge and explore possible uses on-campus

Provide and support an NL capability to the Soar research community

Toolkits, resources, knowledge repositories

Carry out research into the cognitive modeling of linguistic performance

Legal Theory And The Rule Of Law, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

In "Legal Theory and the Rule of Law" Noel Reynolds maintains that the rule of law can be understood as a set of conditions that rational actors would impose on any authority they would create to act in their stead in creating and administering legally binding rules. The authority and obligation associated with law derive from this fundamental convention, and the principles of the rule of law are the conditions of that agreement, which become thereby governing principles to which legislatures, judges, and enforcement agencies can be held in their official actions. These generally recognized standards are inherent in this …

Parental Substance Use Disorder And The Risk Of Adolescent Drug Abuse: An Event History Analysis, John P. Hoffmann, Felicia G. Cerbone

Faculty Publications

A common observation in the research literature is that children of drug-dependent parents are at significantly heightened risk of adolescent drug use, abuse, and dependence. Recent research indicates that several psychological and interpersonal factors may affect the association between parents’ psychoactive substance use disorder (PSUD) and drug use risks among adolescents, yet studies have failed to examine explicitly whether these factors moderate the association between PSUD and adolescent substance abuse. This paper explores these potential relationships using longitudinal data from a study that has followed three cohorts of adolescents and their families over a 7-year period. The cohorts are defined …

William Mcneill A World History, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Law: A Reassessment For The Twenty-First Century, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

This brief radio address attempts to explain the origins of American liberty and to assess its health at the beginning of the 21st century. The notion of rule of law and the emerging science of constitutionalism enabled America’s founding generation to establish a system of political liberty that continues to stand as a model for all human societies to pursue.

Why Quantitative?, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

It is generally the case that special volumes include studies on a narrowly defined topic of linguistic investigation from a single theoretical standpoint. A glance at the table of contents of the present issuem on the other hand, reveals an eclectic group of papers with topics ranging from second-language acquisition to feature theory. In addition to the variety of topics covered, it should be noted that a wide variety of theoretical frameworks is represented. The present volume contains the work of researchers who assume structuralist, generative, functionalist, and psycholinguistic perspectives. Nevertheless, the thread that ties these studies together is that …

Front Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contributors

The Bridge

No abstract provided.