women leaders and social performance evidence from financial cooperatives in senegal how do women leaders such as board members and top managers influence the social performance of organizations this paper addresses the question by exploiting a unique database from a senegalese network of 36 financial cooperatives we scrutinize the loan granting decisions made jointly by the locally elected board and the top manager assigned by the central union of the network our findings are threefold first female dominated boards favor social orientation second female managers tend to align their strategy with local boards preferences third the central union tends to assign male managers to female dominated boards probably to curb the boards social orientation

gender norms in financial markets evidence from kenya abstract the role of institutions rules and norms in markets is increasingly recognized in development discourse this paper considers the role of gender relations for rules and norms in financial markets using evidence from central kenya it develops a framework for establishing the influence of gender on the demand for and access to financial services so explaining the gender differentiated use of rotating savings and credit associations roscas it first analyzes intrahousehold norms related to income and expenditure flows and their management so identifying gendered patterns of demand second by conceptualizing financial intermediaries as operating within rules and norms it allows the influence of gender relations on access to financial services to be more systematically investigated

regional price level variations and real household incomes in the united kingdom 1979 80 1993 johnston r mckinney m and stark t 1996 regional price level variations and real household incomes in the united kingdom 1979 80 1993 reg studies 30 567 578 for the years 1979 80 to 1993 relative regional price indices rrpis are construced under a variety of definitions the base data are an amalgamation of figures from the reward group s cost of living comparisons and the family expenditure surveys the rrpis are then used to adjust regional household weekly incomes and the impact examined on the inequality of income inequality is decomposed into within region and between region components both components are seen to increase over the time period but both the level and increase in the former are substantially larger than the latter a general conclusion is that inequality within regions far exceeds that between regions johnston r mckinney m et stark t 1996 la variation du niveau des prix regional et les revenus menagers reels au royaume uni de 1979 80 a 1993 reg studies 30 567 578

microfinance literature a sustainability level perspective survey abstract since the early microcredit programs up to the present microfinance has grown exponentially as it has the academic interest on it as a research subject considering that this sector has impact in terms of sustainability any research in the field requires an analysis with wide criteria which should include the economic environmental social and governance dimensions eesg as well as their interrelationships the objectives of this survey are to investigate the contributions of microfinance sectoral scholarly research to sustainability through a systematic literature review using content analysis method contextualizing the scientific production and studying its terminology according to the eesg criteria and under global reporting initiative framework and finally to identify research gaps and to propose future research paths

measuring the spatial price differences in china with regional price parity methods the measurement of prices has been an important field in economics and a spatial price index is very useful in comparing the standards of living and well being across regions in a country this paper intends to measure the regional price parities rpps across different provincial areas in china with an urban sample of 140 goods and services in 2015 according to the framework of the international comparison program icp methodology the results show that the rpps that were estimated with commonly used approaches such as the gini elteto koves szulc geks geary khamis gk and weighted country product dummy wcpd are only slightly different the rpps of three regions including guangdong shanghai and zhejiang are greater than 1 with beijing 1 while the other 27 regions are all lower than 1 which represents price levels that are less than beijing in the extrapolation of the rpps from 2000 to 2014 a significant descending trend is found for the standard deviation series of the rpps over time that shows that the price differences across regions decreased during the extrapolating period this finding provides evidence of a phenomenon of spatial price converging in china finally a study on the deflation of provincial aggregates with the rpps reveals that the spatial price adjustment will change the ranks or relative importance of different regions in the country especially the measurement of income inequality proves that the gini coefficients of provincial income deflated by the rppgeks are all lower than the gini coefficients of unadjusted incomes

estimating uk regional price indices 1974 96 hayes p 2005 estimating uk regional price indices 1974 96 regional studies 39 333 344 this paper examines the behaviour and construction of regional expenditure indices published in the croner reward regional cost of living surveys for 1974 96 it identifies a number of problems in using these data as an appropriate deflator to the new earnings survey regional wages series in examining labour supply side decisions instead an alternative method with which to construct regional prices is recommended using a combination of data from croner reward from the published retail price index rpi and from the expenditure and food survey efs formerly known as the family expenditure survey whilst these new data suggest that regional inflation rates were not significantly different from one another over the sample period they point to an episode of increased regional price variation over the late 1980s and early 1990s this paper suggests that these alternative indices would be of interest when examin

mainstreaming microfinance social performance management or mission drift summary what scope is there for the pursuit of explicit development goals in the context of increasing integration of specialized microfinance and commercial banking sectors this question and the idea of mission drift is first analyzed using a model that distinguishes between institutions financial and social performance possibilities preferences and assessment systems the model is used to review findings from action research with an international sample of poverty oriented microfinance institutions that suggest some simple steps for improved social performance management it is then used to illustrate the relationship between social and financial performance more widely across the retail financial services sector and to offer pointers for more policy analysis at this level

low profile or entrepreneurial gender class and cultural adaptation in the global microfinance industry summary this study examines how discourses of entrepreneurial womanhood filtered through a chain of hierarchically positioned actors in global microfinance translate into interactions with borrowers drawing from ethnography interviews and document analysis on a set of entrepreneurial trainings delivered to nonentrepreneurial borrowers in urban india this study argues that parallel conflicting processes of cultural adaptation within the organization and tensions between various actors create an environment in which there is no incentive to cater to the interests of working class clients commercialized microfinance thus may not necessarily produce accountability to client interests

the cost of empowerment multiple sources of women s debt in rural india abstractpoor women borrow from multiple sources this study examines whether the source of debt matters for women s role in household financial decisions drawing on a household survey from rural tamil nadu we categorise women s loans along the lines of accessibility and formality into planned loans and instant loans we find that instant loans support women s bargaining power in various types of household financial decisions whereas planned loans have no impact this surprising result is better understood when the nature of instant loans is examined these are frequently usurious involve coercive enforcement methods and are considered socially debasing hence women who use them perform a convenient role for their households and in return gain some negotiating power

gender and microfinance performance why does the institutional context matter summary this paper investigates why and under which institutional circumstances female membership in microfinance institutions mfi improves mfi performance in terms of debt repayment specifically this paper theorizes that female membership in mfis improves the mfi s performance through enhanced debt repayment especially under adverse cognitive and regulatory institutional conditions we draw upon unique qualitative and quantitative data covering 26 microfinance projects in 22 african eastern european latin american and asian countries this study has implications for the microfinance literature in that it challenges the widely held assumption that female participation has a positive effect on mfi performance under all institutional circumstances

pricing strategy of environmental sustainable supply chain with internalizing externalities abstract the negative impact of business activities on resources and sustainability include pollution and environmental externalities which are becoming more severe and attracting worldwide attention this study investigates a mechanism for motivating supply chain members to collaboratively produce environmentally friendly products efps with an investment in pollution reduction and prevention and by considering environmental regulations and incentive policies from the perspective of supply chain members we focus on studying optimal pricing strategies for environmentally sustainable supply chains and the relationship between firm performance and environmental policy incentives by treating the efp as an investment project its economic feasibility can be evaluated in the context of the supply chain unlike traditional supply chain models in our model government policy incentives are shared within the supply chain through transfer price negotiations between manufacturers and suppliers this study addresses the impact of government policy incentives on value transition and profit allotment in the collaborative supply chain system

the commercialization of the microfinance industry is there a personal mission drift among credit officers recent research suggests that many microfinance institutions increasingly focus on financial performance at the expense of the social component of their dual objectives existing studies typically assume that capital providers and managers mainly drive this so called mission drift in this study we investigate whether personal mission drift at the credit officer level can further explain the reduced emphasis on poorer clients among microfinance institutions we present both qualitative and quantitative evidence that more experienced credit officers tend to serve fewer vulnerable clients specifically we show that all else being equal credit officer experience is negatively correlated with the provision of small loans loans to young clients and loans to clients with disabilities our qualitative analysis suggests that perceived client risk and preferences for increased time efficiency mainly drive more experienced credit officers relative neglect of more vulnerable clients this drift appears to be reinforced by the industry s incentive schemes therefore credit officer incentives and training should be designed to prevent this mission drift which is observed at the microfinance institution level but is actually initiated at the credit officer level

gender biases in bank lending lessons from microcredit in france the evidence on gender discrimination in lending remains controversial to capture gender biases in banks loan allocations we observe the impact on the applicants of a microfinance institution mfi and exploit the natural experiment of a regulatory change imposing a strict eur 10 000 loan ceiling on microcredit descriptive statistics indicate that the presence of the ceiling is associated both with bank mfi co financing and with harsher treatment of female borrowers to investigate causal links we develop an econometric approach that addresses the concerns of selection biases multicollinearity and endogeneity our empirical findings suggest that the change in the mfi s gender related attitude was triggered by banks through co financing hence we speculate that co financing pushes ceiling constrained mfis to import whatever biases in loan granting that the banks are prone to overall this paper stresses that apparently benign regulations such as loan ceilings can significantly harm the women s empowerment efforts made by mfis

microfinance mission drift summary claims have been made that microfinance institutions mfis experience mission drift as they increasingly cater to customers who are better off than their original customers we investigate mission drift using average loan size as a main proxy and the mfis lending methodology main market and gender bias as further mission drift measures we employ a large data set of rated multi country mfis spanning 11 years and perform panel data estimations with instruments we find that the average loan size has not increased in the industry as a whole nor is there a tendency toward more individual loans or a higher proportion of lending to urban costumers regressions show that an increase in average profit and average cost tends to increase average loan and the other drift measures more focus should be given to cost efficiency in the mfi

unsubsidized microfinance institutions this paper starts from the observation that 23 of the world s microfinance institutions mfis manage without subsidies we examine how unsubsidized institutions cope with their social mission overall the lack of subsidies worsens social performances however our results show that strategies to achieve financial self sufficiency differ substantially across regions african and asian mfis compensate for non subsidization by charging higher interest rates in eastern europe and central asia unsubsidized mfis find it more suitable to target less poor clients unsubsidized latin american mfis tend to reduce their share of female borrowers

microcredit an answer to the gender problem in funding microfinance institutions mfis target people excluded from the traditional banking system by providing start up capital to these under financed individuals they enable a greater number of women to start their own business particularly in sectors where initial capital requirements are high our study follows a portfolio of 3 640 microcredit applicants in france over the 2000 2006 time period identifying mfi client profiles and bringing to light gender differences in borrowers compared to a wider sample of entrepreneurs this study shows that the male female gap found amongst company creators is also maintained amongst the clienteles of mfis empirical results also suggest that gender is a decisive factor regarding the amount of credit provided to borrowers when comparing with other factors in the borrower and firm profile thus to a certain extent mfis are found to reinforce gender inequalities in france

reforms with a female face gender liberalization and economic policy in andhra pradesh india summary the state of andhra pradesh india provides a case study of a liberalization program with an emphasis on women s empowerment based on the state budget data and fieldwork data from two villages this paper investigates the content of this policy regime to argue that women s empowerment policies were ultimately constrained by the policy context of liberalization the state lowered shares of expenditure upon social reproduction and the substantive content of women s empowerment policy was reduced to a thrift and micro credit program fieldwork data indicate the latter lacks administrative support and relies upon the expenditure of time and resources by participants themselves re emphasizing class and caste inequalities among women and undermining the broader project of empowerment

regional prices and real incomes in the uk official figures on regional incomes in the uk are compiled on a nominal basis this paper develops a contemporary measure of relative regional prices in the uk which suggests that the impact on r

financial performance and outreach a global analysis of leading microbanks microfinance contracts have proven able to secure high rates of loan repayment in the face of limited liability and information asymmetries but high repayment rates have not translated easily into profits for most microbanks profitability though is at the heart of the promise that microfinance can deliver poverty reduction while not relying on ongoing subsidy the authors examine why this promise remains unmet for most institutions using a data set with unusually high quality financial information on 124 institutions in 49 countries they explore the patterns of profitability loan repayment and cost reduction the authors find that institutional design and orientation matter substantially lenders that do not use group based methods to overcome incentive problems experience weaker portfolio quality and lower profit rates when interest rates are raised substantially for these individual based lenders one key to achieving profitability is investing more heavily in staff costs a finding consistent with the economics of information but contrary to the conventional wisdom that profitability is largely a function of minimizing cost

should access to credit be a right discussion on financial ethics increasingly includes the problem of exclusion of the poorer segments of society from the financial system and access to credit this paper explores the ethical dimensions surrounding the concept of a human right to credit if access to credit is directly instrumental to economic development poverty reduction and the improved welfare of all citizens then one can proclaim as nobel prize laureate m yunus has done that it is a moral necessity to establish credit as a right arguments both supporting and opposing the concept of a right to credit are presented while there may be general agreement that access to financial services may provide a pathway out of poverty granting a universal right could induce perverse effects such as overindebtedness bearing in mind the ultimate goal of proponents of this right as well as the potential harmful consequences this paper offers a new perspective on the question of access to credit based on a goal right system

do women borrowers augment financial performance of mfis abstractthere is some consensus that depth of outreach and financial performance of microfinance institutions mfi are positively correlated a majority of microcredit borrowers are women and since the prevalence of female borrowers is even greater among the very poor there should be a positive correlation between female borrowers and financial performance most of the mfis target women as preferred borrowers however no study to date has investigated the relationship between targeting women and mfi s sustainability with respect to profitability and yield utilizing a panel of 892 mfis over a period of 10 years this study shows that increased proportion of women borrowers has a statistically significant positive impact on yield and financial performance of mfis consequently this article also analyses the implication as to whether female borrowers have better repayment rate than male borrowers

micro credit initiatives for equitable and sustainable development who pays abstract there is a growing acknowledgement that micro credit programs have potential for equitable and sustainable development however my anthropological research on the micro credit program of the grameen bank shows that bank workers are expected to increase disbursement of loans among their members and press for high recovery rates to earn profit necessary for economic viability of the institution to ensure timely repayment in the loan centers bank workers and borrowing peers inflict an intense pressure on women clients in the study community many borrowers maintain their regular payment schedules through a process of loan recycling that considerably increases the debt liability on the individual households increases tension and frustration among household members produces new forms of dominance over women and increases violence in society

the impact of mobile financial services usage on microfinance delinquency abstractthis paper studies the impact of mobile financial systems usage on microcredit delinquency ratios in tunisia by using either a two part model or matching econometric procedures our large dataset contains all of the administrative registers that belong to the six branches of enda the incumbent institution leader in tunisia we find a significant reduction of 4 92 days of late repayment for an average user of mfs in an environment where 15 of loans have been paid late at least once we foresee a tremendous opportunity to improve the mfis repayment ratios and consequently provide microcredit customers with more financing for income generating activities

adjustment to job loss in britain s major cities bailey n and turok i 2000 adjustment to job loss in britain s major cities reg studies 34 631 653 this paper examines the labour market consequences of severe employment decline in britain s major cities between 1981 and 1991 using labour market accounts significant adjustment to employment change occurred through out migration and commuting but unemployment in cities also rose although much of it was recorded as inactivity on average women were less able to adjust through out migration or commuting than men while women in lower skilled jobs showed much less adjustment than those in professional or managerial occupations this suggests that the creation of employment opportunities for less skilled occupations brings far greater direct benefits to the resident population of major cities than the creation of professional or managerial employment bailey n et turok i 2000 ajuster ala suppression d emplois dans les grandes villes de grande bretagne reg studies 34 631 653 a partir des ch

gender composition and group dynamics evidence from a laboratory experiment with microfinance clients we investigate the effect of gender composition on the group dynamics of microfinance clients in tanzania using a laboratory experiment we focus on three dimensions i the ability to collaborate

practice what you preach microfinance business models and operational efficiency the microfinance sector has room for pure for profit microfinance institutions mfis non profit organizations and social for profit firms that aim to pursue a double bottom line depending on their business model these institutions target different types of borrowers change the size of their loans and adjust their loan pricing we introduce a simple approach that accommodates a wide range of business models and allows us to estimate the operational efficiency of mfis our empirical results show that mfis with a high depth of outreach are most efficient resulting in higher levels of outreach and profits for the same input mix

repayment performance in group based credit programs in bangladesh an empirical analysis abstract this paper analyzes the repayment rates of 128 credit groups belonging to three group based credit programs in bangladesh the association for social advancement asa the bangladesh rural advancement committee brac and the rangpur dinajpur rural service rdrs using tobit analysis specific tests are performed on the following hypothesized determinants group size size of loans degree of loan rationing enterprise mix within groups demographic characteristics social ties and status and occurrence of idiosyncratic shocks the paper concludes that if basic principles of prudential banking are adhered to repayment rates can be good even in poor and remote communities the important thing for financial institutions is to tailor services such that it becomes worthwhile for the poor to establish a profitable long term association in addition more freedom to members in the process of group formation is recommended

women and repayment in microfinance a global analysis notice this is the author s version of a work that was accepted for publication in world development changes resulting from the publishing process such as peer review editing corrections structural formatting and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication a definitive version was subsequently published in world development 39 5 758 772 http dx doi org 10 1016 j worlddev 2010 10 008

do microfinance institutions benefit from integrating financial and nonfinancial services this article examines the impact of microfinance plus i e coordinated combination of financial and nonfinancial services on the performance of microfinance institutions mfis using a global data set of mfis in 77 countries we find that the provision of nonfinancial services does not harm nor improve mfis financial sustainability and efficiency the results however suggest that the provision of social services is associated with improved loan quality and greater depth of outreach

mission drift and ethical crisis in microfinance institutions what matters abstract in recent years financial interests have increasingly influenced microfinance institutions mfis with financial gain overshadowing service to the poor this phenomenon which we can term mission drift has caused apprehension among academicians as well as policy makers for its negation of the fundamental social ethos of mfis and the mandate of sustainable financial inclusion hence this study aims to identify the factors of mission drift with special emphasis on the role of funding sources we collect data from a sample of 169 mfis in bangladesh from the period of 2009 2014 and deploy static and dynamic panel data estimation techniques the results suggest that commercial fund is susceptible to mission drift as average loan size over gni per capita increases when mfis use more commercial fund in their operation the finding also revealed that when mfis focus more on commercial interest return on assets and operational sustainability they tend to depart further from the original aim of serving the poorest of the poor the findings further suggest that mission drift is influenced by other factors such as macroeconomic conditions and regulatory environment this study underscores the importance for policy to ensure that poor people have viable access to financial services from mfis toward promoting long term sustainable development

microenterprise lending to female entrepreneurs sacrificing economic growth for poverty alleviation abstract this research compares the performance of female and male entrepreneurs in a microenterprise credit program in guatemala previous research and field practice has suggested that targeting credit at female borrowers allows for greater increases in household welfare but that male entrepreneurs may more aggressively expand enterprises when given access to credit in this paper we develop a model that shows that increases in value of home time during childbearing years for women may substantially account for gender differences in responses to credit access empirical results from guatemalan survey data yield estimations consistent with the predictions from our model

are women better bankers to the poor evidence from rural microfinance institutions microfinance institutions mfis provide financial services to the poor and in many ways resemble both banks and non profit organizations many mfis target women because more women than men are poor especially in rural areas studies show that women manage money differently from men and have different leadership styles thus in credit unions and financial firms female and male managers achieve different results in microfinance gender diversity on the board of mfis is beneficial and loans authorized by female loan officers have lower default rates motivated by these findings we ask whether mfis with a female chief executive officer ceo are more efficient at serving the poor without jeopardizing financial sustainability we adapt the banking approach to managerial in efficiency to account for the outreach and sustainability goals of the mfis and evaluate whether mfis outreach efficiency differs by the gender of their respective ceos we estimate a stochastic frontier cost function using the battese coelli 1995 model and the true random effects estimators using panel data from over 250 mfis we find that mfis with female ceos have significantly higher outreach efficiency than mfis with male ceos similar results are found with a two step stochastic frontier approach overall the results suggest that promoting gender diversity at the top levels of mfi management is likely to have both social and financial benefits

subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs evidence from brazil this paper estimates the impact of loan officer subjectivity on microcredit granting by exploiting an exceptionally detailed database from a brazilian microfinance institution the loan officers collect field data meet with applicants and make recommendations to the credit committee which has the final say on both loan approval and loan size ls the loan officer s subjectivity is captured through gender bias our estimations indeed show subjective gender gap in ls this gap is almost exclusively attributable to loan officers we interpret this finding as evidence that despite monitoring and wage incentivization microcredit officers let their subjective preferences interfere with loan granting we conclude by suggesting alternative means to curb subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs