Foreword / James K. Galbraith -- Introduction: setting the scene / Milford Bateman and Kate Maclean -- Background -- The political economy of microfinance / Milford Bateman -- Poverty reduction or the financialization of poverty? / Maren Duvendack and Philip Mader -- Seduction -…
Microfinance, the disbursement of tiny loans to the poor so that they can undertake income-generating activities, is the most popular international development policy of recent years. The contributors to this multidisciplinary volume consider the origins and outcomes of microfin…
The contributors to this multidisciplinary volume consider the origins, evolution, and outcomes of microfinance from a variety of perspectives and contend that it has been an unsuccessful approach to development.
The Carniolan Savings Bank was the first financial institution in the Slovenian territory. It was founded in 1820 in Ljubljana, the capital city of Carniola, a province in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy. This institution collected deposits and managed the credit oper…
The COVID-19 pandemic signals both the unique yet all too familiar reality of global isolation for the Haitian nation-state. Yet, even as the pandemic threatens the Haitian people with a tumultuous economic recession and an ongoing political crisis, it also offers them a new opp…
This dissertation is composed of three essays which examine how access to credit, namely micro credit, impacts economic outcomes at the household and village level in Bangladesh. Chapter 1 reviews the literature on microfinance including its history, its outreach and its impact …
Financial insecurity, inadequate family nutrition, poor health, and low self-esteem are some of the challenges faced by rural women in Southern Nigeria due to lack of income. Although the advantages of microfinance in developing countries are well documented, little is known abo…
This dissertation scrutinizes a pressing policy problem: Financial development interventions for southern Sudanese repatriates by non-state entities. It explores the complicated landscape in which microfinance, an intervention that aims to foster economic development, works towa…
The microfinance programme initiated by the Grameen Bank has become a model of lending to the poor and is now part of the global antipoverty strategy. The present study examines the corporate governance practices of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Bangladesh including the Gr…
Who are the most influential senators in Congress? Is there a small coalition of senators who are influential enough to prevent filibusters? In a different setting of microfinance markets, can we predict the effects of interventions to help policy makers? In order to pursue such…
This study joins the growing research in social science centered on exploring the political implications of individual-targeted development programs by empirically examining the political behavior and attitudes of program participants. It also joins the established literatures i…
Advocates of microlending suggest it is a sustainable intervention that reaches the poor directly and offers them the means to invest and improve their incomes (Khavul, 2010; Morduch, 1999; Yunus, 2007); yet, impact studies of these interventions have suggested they often have l…
CHAPTER 1: Signaling Creditworthiness in Peruvian Microfinance Markets: The Role of Information Sharing. Using borrower-level data from FINCA, one of the leading microfinance institutions (MFI) in Peru, I evaluate the effect of FINCA's decision to share information on individual…
Having its origins in Bangladesh, microcredit has since diffused across South Asia, using this region as a fertile testing ground. As a result of its supposed success in the region, this strategy for alleviating poverty has been legitimated as a development intervention and has …
This thesis consists of three essays on competition and informal credit markets. The first essay investigates, both at a theoretical and at an empirical level, the relationship between creditors' market structure and trade credit. The essay comes to two main results. First, the …
This thesis investigates the extent to which micro-credit programmes are able to contribute the empowerment of women. This thesis brings forth empirical evidence from Turkish Grameen Micro-Credit Project. Field research for the thesis, which was carried out in Diyarbakir, Turkey…
Microfinance programs have become a globally accepted and acclaimed intervention against poverty. These group-based lending and savings programs are exclusively targeted at poor rural women, mostly in developing countries. This dissertation examines the puzzles surrounding why s…
Rural credit programs in developing countries are designed to help the poorest of the poor by providing collateral-free loans at a low cost. In order to properly measure the efficacy of these programs, one needs to examine not only the pecuniary benefits of the programs but also…