the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

understanding developing country stances on post 2012 climate change negotiations comparative analysis of brazil china india mexico and south africa abstract an essential issue in future climate negotiations is how to bring developing countries on board this paper proposes and applies the two level interest based model to analyze the factors that affect the likely stances of the plus five countries brazil china india mexico and south africa on international climate negotiations this study finds mitigation capability to be a crucial factor which consists of at least such sub factors as per capita income energy endowment and economic structure while ecological vulnerability does not seem to play an important role which includes reductions in agricultural outputs sea level rise climate related natural disasters and others the paper proposes six options in an ascending order of stringency that the plus five are likely to adopt the paper suggests that the basic four the plus five excluding mexico particularly china and india are less likely to adopt a voluntary commitment to an emissions cap on the national economy in the near future than mexico which has the highest mitigation capability among all five the basic four are likely to adopt more stringent climate polices with increasing mitigation capabilities suggesting the importance of effective international financial and technology transfer mechanisms and further tighten emission reduction targets from developed countries

a step toward understanding wind power development policy barriers in advanced economies abstract a widely accepted premise regarding wind power development policy is that implementation of economic policy instruments which are designed to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched fossil fuel power generation technologies will significantly catalyze enhanced levels of wind power development activity this paper contests this premise by arguing that non economic barriers to wind power development have the capacity to significantly inhibit wind power development in industrialized nations despite the implementation of economic policy instruments forces which deter wind power development in four economically advanced economies that exhibit phlegmatic progress in wind power development australia canada japan and taiwan are identified and amalgamated into a step framework describing social technical economic and political forces that inhibit wind power development the conclusions of this analysis are twofold first failure to mitigate these step forces may undermine the efficacy of any given economic policy instrument that aims to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched generation technologies second attempts to mitigate these impediments might represent a way to achieve better policy results with less government financial commitment

co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 a structural decomposition analysis abstract this study examines the annual co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 using environmental input output analysis four driving forces including emission intensity economic production structure export composition and total export volume are compared for their contributions to the increase of embodied co2 emissions using a structural decomposition analysis sda technique although offset by the decrease in emission intensity the increase of embodied co2 emissions was driven by changes of the other three factors in particular the change of the export composition was the largest driver primarily due to the increasing fraction of metal products in china s total export relevant policy implications and future research directions are discussed at the end of the paper

group lending repayment incentives and social collateral abstract in this paper we investigate the impact on repayment rates of lending to groups which are made jointly liable for repayment this type of scheme especially in the guise of the grameen bank in bangladesh has received increasing attention we set up and analyze the repayment game which group lending gives rise to our analysis suggests that such schemes have both positive and negative effects on repayment rates the positive effect is that successful group members may have an incentive to repay the loans of group members whose projects have yielded insufficient return to make repayment worthwhile the negative effect arises when the whole group defaults even when some members would have repaid under individual lending we also show how group lending may harness social collateral which serves to mitigate its negative effect

the two faces of competition dynamic resourcefulness and the hypercompetitive shift competition in the american economy has fundamentally changed over the last few decades from static to dynamic this study labels this important change the hypercompetitive shift and documents it across 200 industries of the us manufacturing sector during i958 to 1991 for industries that undergo a hypercompetitive shift there is an increase in the cross firm variance in performance and a rotation in the value rivalry relationship from a negative association to an inverted u as a consequence of these competitive changes the strategic focus of firms shifts from careful exploitation of given highly durable strategic assets to the steady creation of many new rapidly depreciable ones the key driver of hypercompetitive shift is the dynamic resourcefulness of an industry or the ease with which new strategic assets can be created determinants of dynamic resourcefulness include the dynamism of related transactors notably consumers and suppliers the knowledge base of the industry and structural condi

china s capacities for mitigating climate change summary economic growth and structural change have turned china into the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world the country has no international commitments to reduce its emissions but it has developed domestic policies and climate relevant capacities which do have mitigative effects economic and political reforms have supported capacity development however so far china s climate relevant actions have not been influenced by climate considerations potential emission reductions are mainly a by product of measures embedded in energy and transport policies aimed at cutting energy costs and increasing energy security

grid connected renewable energy in china policies and institutions under gradualism developmentalism and socialism abstract this communication displays some of our on going research on the incompleteness of china s advances toward best practice in policy making and institution building for renewables in particular this paper 1 summarizes how chinese policies and institutions for the deployment of renewable electricity are only partially compliant with what is internationally recognized as best practice and 2 contextualizes chinese policies and institutions for renewables in the broader picture of china s political economy much as a political economy perspective has aided the understanding of why chinese economic reforms were partial and unique the said contextualization might help explain why china s policies and institutions for renewables diverge from best practice further given that china proved successful in promoting its economic growth with partial and unique reforms the partiality and uniqueness of its renewables policies and institutions need not impede the rapid development of renewable electricity this on going research has so far combined a review of specialized literature and the business press with semi structured interviews held with relevant actors in policy business and research related to renewable energies

bequest motives and determinants of micro life insurance in sri lanka this paper emphasizes bequest motives by evaluating participation patterns in micro life insurance against insurance demand and supply side factors based on household survey data from sri lanka it presents evidence on the determinants of micro life insurance participation of low income households using probit and tobit models the results provide evidence that micro life insurance is positively correlated with measures of bequest motives such as the number of children or dependents besides better off households are less excluded from micro life insurance markets than their poorer counterparts the study finds a convincing need for the microinsurance sector to be more responsive to the needs of the poor with a key role in providing financial education to understand the need for microinsurance

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

wind power policy in complex adaptive markets abstract this paper aims to advance research into the effectiveness of policies for encouraging technological transition in the energy sector in general and wind power in particular it contends that the ineffectiveness of wind power development policy in most nations stems from a linear approach to policy design that is unsuited to complex adaptive markets the paper argues that in complex adaptive markets policies are required that foster competition on a level playing field insights are extracted from complexity theory to advance four principles for effective wind power policy in such markets these principles include establishing policy initiatives to encourage technological diversity establish clear and progressive short to medium term targets enhance environmental monitoring systems and establish a malleable policy regime that directly resolves emergent challenges while simultaneously sustaining market momentum to ensure long term targets are met in order to demonstrate the applied relevance of these principles the paper applies these concepts to a historical analysis of denmark s wind power development policies

microcredit and the poorest of the poor theory and evidence from bolivia abstract we construct a theoretical framework that describes the social worth of a microfinance organization in terms of the depth worth to users cost to users breadth length and scope of its output we then analyze evidence of depth of outreach for five microfinance organizations in bolivia most of the poor households reached by the microfinance organizations were near the poverty line they were the richest of the poor group lenders had more depth of outreach than individual lenders the urban poorest were more likely to be borrowers but rural borrowers were more likely to be among the poorest

the effect of social capital on group loan repayment evidence from field experiments an important question to microfinance is the relevance of existing social capital in target communities to the performance of group lending this research presents evidence from field experiments in south africa and armenia in which subjects participate in trust and microfinance games we present evidence that personal trust between group members and social homogeneity are more important to group loan repayment than general societal trust or acquaintanceship between members we also find some evidence of reciprocity those who have been helped by other group members in the past are more likely to contribute in the future during the past decade exploring the role that social capital plays in economic behaviour has emerged as one of the most fascinating and fertile areas of economic research although precise definitions of social capital are notoriously difficult to pin down one of the early pioneers of the concept coleman 1988 defines social capital as social structure that facilitates certain actions of actors within the structure in his definition coleman specifically highlights the roles of mutual obligation expectations and trustworthiness social norms social sanctions and the transmission of information important studies in both developed and developing countries have analysed the impact of social capital in economic relationships putnam s celebrated work making democracy work civic traditions in modern italy 1993 and bowling alone america s declining social capital 1995 brought attention to the role that social capital plays in the development of the modern state udry s ground breaking 1994 work in nigeria illustrated how the social capital existing in traditional societies may allow for more efficient credit contracts than in developed economies with weaker social

can first mover and early mover advantages be sustained in an industry with low barriers to entry imitation this study examines whether first mover and early mover advantages can be sustained in an industry where the barriers to entry are generally low and new product innovations can be easily imitated namely the money market mutual fund industry using a simultaneous equation supply and demand model of panel data from a variety of money market fund product categories the study finds that first movers and early movers enjoy both a highly sustainable pricing advantage and a moderately sustainable market share advantage these counterintuitive results are interpreted in terms of the structural characteristics of demand in the industry implications of these results for the ongoing debate between the sustainability and hypercompetition perspectives are discussed 1998 john wiley sons ltd

recent development of energy supply and demand in china and energy sector prospects through 2030 abstract facing multiple pressures including its commitment to energy efficiency improvement the current worldwide recession and global warming concerns china is making great efforts to maintain its continuous economic growth and reduce pollutant emissions many policies to encourage investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy have been issued this article provides insights into the latest development of energy production energy consumption and energy strategic planning and policies in china and also describes the analysis carried out by the authors as part of the asian energy security project using the long range energy alternatives planning leap modeling tool of the impacts of implementing new and expected energy and environmental policies

do regulated microfinance institutions achieve better sustainability and outreach cross country evidence in spite of increasing pressure on microfinance institutions mfis operating in developing countries to transform into regulated financial intermediaries to date no study has investigated whether regulated mfis actually achieve better financial results and reach more poor clients than nonregulated mfis this article explores the impact of regulation on mfi performance using newly released data for 114 mfis from 62 countries in an empirical model where performance is specified as a function of mfi specific regulatory macroeconomic and institutional variables consistent with recent cross country evidence on the impact of banking regulations on bank performance barth et al 2004 this article finds that regulatory involvement does not directly affect performance either in terms of operational self sustainability or outreach the article also finds that less leveraged mfis have better sustainability the policy implication is that mfis transformation into regulated financial institutions is may not

markets vs management what drives profitability this study addresses the issue of the relative degree of variance in roa accounted for by industry corporate and sbu effects while controlling for the business cycle and the interaction between the business cycle and industry two key articles schmalensee 1985 and rumelt 1991 are discussed in detail research results on a recent data base compustat using variance components analysis varcomp are presented that not only confirm most of the rumelt 1991 findings but also suggest the existence of a corporate effect heretofore undetected

the impact of ethnic diversity on microenterprise start ups until recently factors determining the decisions made by microfinance institutions mfis to extend loans to business start ups had not been explored recent evidence shows that mfi performance wi

financial sustainability and poverty outreach within a network of village banks in cameroon a multi dea approach abstract microfinance institutions face a double bottom line they perform financial tasks by giving microcredits to their customers and support projects aiming at reducing poverty in doing so they have to be financially self sufficient and to target poor people excluded from the traditional financial systems however a trade off may exist between financial sustainability and poverty outreach for these institutions by using a multi dea approach this paper shows that even if a trade off exists for 15 of the mc 2 mutuelles communautaires de croissance in cameroon there is no trade off for 46 of them in order to increase without trade off financial and social performance of inefficient mc 2 a benchmarking approach combing dea and performance indicators has been developed dea is used for identifying best practices and setting benchmarking goals performance indicators are used for characterizing areas needing improvements and following the evolution of mc 2 toward their goals i e for implementing benchmarking complementarity of both approaches provides a tool box for improving financial and social efficiency and reducing the trade off between financial sustainability and poverty outreach of microfinance institutions

antitrust issues in schumpeterian industries a half century ago joseph schumpeter 1950 chapters 5 8 presented a vision of modern capitalism in which monopolies are common but frequently swept aside by a perennial gale of creative destruction p 84 this gale is driven not by price competition but by competition from the new commodity the new technology competition which strikes not at the margins of the profits of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives p 84 i focus here on the personal computer pc software hereafter simply software industry which resembles this vision i discuss some important issues this industry poses for antitrust policy and in the final section illustrate with examples from the microsoft case

impact of microfinance on schooling evidence from poor rural households in bolivia summary channels for the influence of microfinance programs on a rural household s demand for schooling are identified income growth risk management child labor demand gender empowerment and parent information within a random utility framework a model of household consumption investment in education and borrowing suggests determinants at the individual household and regional levels of the probability of schooling gaps using data from two surveys of households of clients of microfinance organizations in bolivia regression models examine determinants of schooling gaps inferences about otherwise positive microfinance impacts identify potential negative effects of increased child labor demand which challenge usual assumptions and pose dilemmas for policymakers

modernization and time preferences in tanzania evidence from a large scale elicitation exercise abstract assumptions about individual time preferences are important for explanations of poverty and development data from a large scale elicitation exercise in tanzania show significantly higher levels of impatience in urban areas than in rural areas this result remains robust to adding controls for socio economic differences between rural and urban areas which possibly correlate with time preferences we attribute this to differences in modernisation between urban and rural areas with modernisation leading to increased impatience this is corroborated by the observed positive correlation between impatience and education the latter being an important vehicle of modernisation for traditional societies in tanzania

depth of outreach and financial sustainability of microfinance institutions the primary justification for subsidizing microfinance institutions mfis is their enhancement of social welfare by extending credit to the poor households therefore recent emphasis on their financial self sufficiency has created concern that this may adversely affect the mission of social outreach utilizing data from 702 mfis operating in 83 countries this study shows empirical evidence of a positive complementary relationship between financial sustainability and depth of outreach

energy conservation and emissions reduction in china progress and prospective abstract energy conservation ec has been taken as basic state policy in china for more than 20 years and china achieves 3 9 annual energy saving from 1980 to 2005 in 2006 china central government firstly set up a binding target of reducing gdp energy intensity by 20 in its 11th five year plan fyp at the end of 2010 19 1 reduction in energy intensity has been achieved which is 95 of the target and means 608 million tons stand coal equivalence sce saved 1510 million tons co 2 emission reduced 300 billion rmb saving in energy bill and vast saving in infrastructure investment this paper is systematical review and prospective analysis on energy policy issue in china review on policy evolution and progress of ec and emission reduction er in china during the 11th fyp periods is presented in detail outlook of energy demand and supply into 2050 is presented and the roadmap to realize sustainable energy development is drafted to set the framing constraints for china s energy policy options rationality and feasibility analysis on newly formulated 12th fyp ec and er target is also addressed then lessons from the 11th fyp periods are drawn and factors underlying and limiting the policy formulation and implementation are discussed in details to probe the policy predicament and solutions finally policy suggestions are proposed for long term successful implementation of ec and er in china

remittances and financial inclusion evidence from el salvador this paper investigates the impact of remittances on financial inclusion this is an important issue given recent studies showing that financial inclusion can have significant beneficial effects on households using household level survey data for el salvador the authors examine the impact of remittances on households use of savings and credit instruments from formal financial institutions they find that although remittances have a positive impact on financial inclusion by promoting the use of deposit accounts they do not have a significant and robust effect on the demand for and use of credit from formal institutions if anything by relaxing credit constraints remittances might reduce the need for external financing from financial institutions while at the same time increasing the demand for savings instruments

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

microenterprise finance is there a conflict between growth and poverty alleviation abstract microenterprise finance has generated enormous enthusiasm among aid donors and nongovernment organizations ngos as an instrument for reducing poverty in a manner that is financially self sustaining although something of a consensus has emerged concerning the principles by which such institutions should be designed however we know little about their impact the paper reports on a research project which estimated the impact of 13 microfinance institutions in seven developing countries on poverty and other target variables and attempted to relate such impact to the institutions design features for each of the institutions studied the impact of lending on the recipient household s income tended to increase at a decreasing rate as the recipient s income and asset position improved a relationship which can easily be explained in terms of the greater preference of the poor for consumption loans their greater vulnerability to asset sales forced by adverse income shocks and their limited range of investment opportunities there are significant outliers to this general pattern in particular very poor people who have been able to achieve significant loan impact but they are the exception rather than the rule and the relationship is significant at the 1 level for all the institutions studied except the malawi mudzi fund this relationship defines in the short term an impact frontier which serves as a tradeoff lenders can either focus their lending on the poorest and accept a relatively low total impact on household income or alternatively focus on the not so poor and achieve higher impact the position and slope of the estimated impact curve vary however with the design of the institution for well designed schemes impact at all levels of income is higher than for ill designed schemes hence for many lender institutions the tradeoff can often be moved by appropriate innovations in institutional design in particular modifications to savings loan collection and incentive arrangements for borrowers and staff

are technology intensive industries more dynamically competitive no and yes a substantial body of research in management and related public policy fields concludes that recent decades saw greater dynamic competition throughout technology intensive ti industries with widespread steady increase in ti industry and business performance instability as key implications we set this conclusion within a broader framework of purportedly increasing dynamic competition among ti industry businesses and then test for evidence of its performance implications in a large sample of u s businesses operating from 1978 to 1997 in 31 industries with high average research and development expenditure to sales ratios in the full sample we find no evidence of sustained increase in ti industry and business performance instability nor any evidence of significant cross sectional differences in performance instability between ti and non ti industry businesses over these 20 years for a small segment of very high performing businesses from ti industries however we do uncover evidence of declining performance stability and cross sectional differences in performance stability we conclude that assumptions of widespread long term increase in dynamic competition lack robust evidentiary support it is premature to embrace and apply broadly new theoretical perspectives management practices and public policies to ti industry competitive dynamics that may be slightly changed since the late 1970s yet there may be increasing dynamic competition among very high performing ti industry businesses in that small realm careful application of new perspectives practices and policies may lead to deeper insight on business behavior and performance in ti industries

eating your own lunch protection through preemption recent discussions of management practices among successful high technology companies suggest that one key strategy for success is to eat your own lunch before someone else does the implication is that in intensely competitive or hypercompetitive markets firms with a leading position should aggressively cannibalize their own current advantages with next generation advantages before competitors step in to steal the market given the pace of technological and other types of change such strategy often requires creating next generation advantages while the current advantages are still profitable that is trading current profits for future market leadership we capture the tradeoff between a market leader s willingness to reap profits with its current set of advantages and its desire to maintain market leadership by investing in the next generation using a competitive model that determines the equilibrium launch time of a next generation advantage we find that in absence of lower launch costs for an

financial inclusion gender dimension and economic impact on poor households summary we examine the question in the context of gender dimension what is the evidence of the impact of the financial inclusion programs on poor households represented by women relative to that represented by men by constructing a good counterfactual and comparison group we employ the difference in difference estimator approach with panel least squares and generalized methods of moments using standard errors for a robust analysis we notice that income growth cagr net of inflation effect was 8 40 for women as against 3 97 for men indicating that the gender of participating poor undoubtedly affects the outcomes of these programs

outreach and performance of microfinance institutions the importance of portfolio yield in this paper we examine the interaction between social outreach and financial return in microfinance running multivariate regression models and using 1 805 observations of microfinance instituti

the persistence of shocks to profitability in this study we use data for 1981 through 1994 on a large sample of u s companies to examine the persistence of incremental industry corporate parent and business specific effects on profitability our results indicate that the incremental effects of industry on profitability persist longer than the incremental effects of the corporate parent and of the specific business changes in industry structure have a more persistent impact on profitability than do changes in firm structure

thy neighbor s keeper the design of a credit cooperative with theory and a test economists now appreciate that resource allocation in less economically developed economies is profoundly influenced by non firm economic institutions however our theories of non firm institutions often suggest different answers to many questions including those of policy this paper illustrates a method for discriminating between alternative theories using data from german credit cooperatives from the nineteenth and early twentieth century germany we build a model of credit cooperatives designed to provide monitoring incentives and test this using nineteenth century data authors

will recent boom in coal power lead to a bust in china a micro economic analysis abstract in this paper by adopting the levelized cost of electricity model and the financial appraisal method we provide an economic interpretation for china s recent coal power bubble under weak demand growth the study surveys the economics of a typical 600 mw newly built pure condensing coal fired power plant in six case provinces shanxi inner mongolia xinjiang hebei jiangsu and guangdong where the profitability margins of coal power are above national average by the end of 2015 results indicate that the continuous falling in coal prices have lowered the generation costs but there has been insufficient adjustment to the benchmark on grid tariff enabling coal power to obtain unprecedented excess profits such excess profits have spurred the investment and caused local government to over rely on coal power under economic downturn however in the context of cost escalation by deteriorated operation efficiency higher environmental and climate change compliance costs and fierce market competition the profitability of coal power will dissipate soon integrated power capacity plan consistent with the new economic normal stringent control on the scale of new coal power projects and deep power market reform are the key policy implications of our analysis

outreach sustainability and leverage in monitored and peer monitored lending abstract i study the contract design problem facing microfinance lending organizations mfos that want to maximize the impact and outreach of their lending activities to a target population of poor borrowers while remaining financially sustainable tradeoffs between outreach sustainability and financial leverage are shaped by the endogenous monitoring and delegation costs that arise within a chain of agency relationships subject to moral hazard between borrowers loan staff mfo equity owners and outside investors all else equal sustainable mfos that target poorer borrowers must charge higher interest rates have higher staff costs per dollar loaned and are less leveraged analysis of data for 72 mfos tends to support the findings

financial efficiency and social impact of microfinance institutions using self organizing maps summary this paper contributes to the literature by investigating whether the increased focus on financial self sustainability of microfinance institutions has been disadvantageous to the target audience we investigate the association between social efficiency and financial performance using a comprehensive data set that includes 650 microfinance institutions a self organizing map methodology is used to fully capture the existing heterogeneity among institutions the results show that we cannot support the hypothesis that there exists a trade off on the contrary we find evidence of a significant positive relationship between social efficiency and financial performance

outreach and performance of microfinance institutions a panel analysis using a panel of 764 microfinance institutions mfis from 87 countries this study analyses the possible trade off between outreach and performance and shows that greater depth of outreach has a positive impact on the financial performance of an mfi the empirical results of this study should dispel the widely held apprehension that the recent emphasis on attainment of financial sustainability by the mfis could seriously impair their outreach efforts and shows that outreach to the poor can actually bolster financial performance

dynamic capabilities what are they this paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and more generally the resource based view of the firm we argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development strategic decision making and alliancing they are neither vague nor tautological although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence they have significant commonalities across firms popularly termed best practice this suggests that they are more homogeneous fungible equifinal and substitutable than is usually assumed in moderately dynamic markets dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines they are detailed analytic stable processes with predictable outcomes in contrast in high velocity markets they are simple highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes finally well known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities in moderately dynamic markets the evolutionary emphasis is on variation in high velocity markets it is on selection at the level of rbv we conclude that traditional rbv misidentifies the locus of long term competitive advantage in dynamic markets overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage and reaches a boundary condition in high velocity markets copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

the red queen in organizational creation and development we synthesize organization learning theory and organizational ecology to predict systematic patterns in the founding and growth of organizations over time our central argument is that competition triggers organizational learning which in turn intensifies competition that again triggers an adaptive response we model this self exciting dynamic sometimes referred to as the red queen in general evolutionary theory to explain organizational founding and growth rates among the thousands of retail banks that have operated in illinois at any time from 1900 1993 we find strong evidence that red queen evolution led some organizations to grow quickly and to place strong competitive pressure on rivals red queen evolution also helped establish barriers to entry however this same evolutionary process appears to make organizations more susceptible to competency traps ultimately slowing their growth rates and inviting new market entry organizations confronted by a widely varying distribution of competitors grow more slowly and are more likely to face new entrants overall the results suggest that processes of organizational creation and growth emerge from ecologies of learning organizations more generally we discuss the use of ecological theory and models to study the empirical consequences of organizational learning opyright 2002 oxford university press

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

the socio political economy of electricity generation in china abstract in addition to providing a review of electricity generation developments in china this paper features the development of a framework for understanding the socio political economy influencing electricity market development it documents and presents a critical evaluation of the social technological economic and political forces which influence electricity generation policy in china the analysis provides insight into why china s electricity generation shopping basket is being filled with both coal and co2 reduced electricity generation technologies it concludes that installed capacity of hydro power wind power nuclear power and solar pv power will outpace government projections due to inter alia a proclivity on the part of the chinese government to set conservative and achievable targets waning apathy toward pollution associated with coal fired power progressive improvements in grid connection and resilience increased economic viability of these alternative energy sources and government support for these industries as strategic commercial sectors

the patent paradox revisited an empirical study of patenting in the u s semiconductor industry 1979 1995 we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms

inside informality the links between poverty microenterprises and living conditions in nairobi s slums summary using households rather than enterprises as the analytical unit this study of 1 755 households in nairobi s slums reveals that informal household microenterprises are indeed helping offset poverty microenterprises are helping households that are a priori more likely to be poor better microenterprise performance is associated with certain business related factors such as sales area time in and sector of operation but living conditions residential tenure and infrastructure access also strongly influence both creation and success of microenterprises interventions that improve infrastructure and reduce tenure insecurity and rent induced pressures to move may be crucial for incubating microenterprises and reinforcing their contribution to poverty alleviation in nairobi s slums

microfinance institutions transparency in sub saharan africa this study analyses the impact of the ownership structure and macro level factors on microfinance institutions mfis transparency in sub saharan africa ssa using cross sectional data from 223

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

the macroeconomy and microfinance outreach a panel data analysis this study examines the effects of macroeconomic and institutional factors on microfinance institution mfi outreach to capture the performance of the macroeconomy we include proxies for institutional quality economic growth fdi inflow unemployment rate inflation and the prevalence of wage earning jobs further we examine effects on outreach along the dimensions of outreach depth and outreach breadth using data on 1526 mfis from 99 countries over the period 2000 to 2015 our results suggest that environments characterised by high levels of economic performance and good institutions tend to hinder outreach performance these results suggest that mfis depend on a poor economy to thrive given the informal nature of microfinance

new organizational forms and strategies for managing in hypercompetitive environments strong forces of change globalization demographic shifts e g aging population and declining fertility rates advances in information technology demassification of society and hypercompetition are reshaping the competitive landscape worldwide as a result companies in most industries are not only undergoing rapid and radical change but are also experiencing a fundamental shift in the rules of competition and the way the game of competition is played the old genteel stable oligopolies that defined competition during the 20th century are rapidly restructuring in their place are emerging markets fraught with uncertainty diverse global players rapid technological change widespread price wars and seemingly endless reorganization that transition is occurring not only in the united states but also in europe latin america and asia in this issue we demonstrate that as predicted by those early researchers a dramatic and far reaching shift has occurred in the nature of competition in most ind

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

the power industry reform in china 2015 policies evaluations and solutions abstract more than a decade ago in china s electric power industry the investment for generation side and power grids was inadequate and the gap between power supply and demand kept enlarging in order to relief the problems above power industry reform has been carried out in 2002 under the guidance of no 5 document by the central government the reform in 2002 has made a series of achievements including the enhancement of operation efficiency of power industry and the fulfillment of power demand all over the country during the past decade as the rapid development of the society and economy the external environment of china s power industry has changed greatly however the pricing and planning mechanism of china s power industry still operates following the requirements of no 5 document this has led to a number of problems including twisted pricing mechanism irrational power system planning inefficient utilization of renewable energy and so on these problems have not only hindered the development of power industry in china for quite a long time but also brought negative influence on the business operation of upstream and downstream industries therefore chinese government has issued no 9 document in 2015 and launched a new round of power industry reform policies were carried out to form new pricing mechanism new policies about renewable energy generation and power system planning process to solve the problems mentioned above this paper has reviewed the history of reform in 2002 and summarized the existing problems of china s power industry besides the main policies of no 9 document were deeply analyzed and their significance as well as backwards were illustrated at last solutions were proposed accordingly and these solutions have considerable theoretical and practical significance to china s electric power industry reform in the future

how does contract design affect the uptake of microcredit among the ultra poor experimental evidence from the river islands of northern bangladesh abstractthis study examines the demand of microcredit among ultra poor households in northern bangladesh we implemented a field experiment to identify what type of credit is best suited to their demand we found that the uptake rate by the ultra poor is the lowest for regular small cash credit followed by in kind credit we also found that the ultra poor are significantly more likely to join a microcredit programme than the moderately poor if a grace period with longer maturity is attached to a large amount of credit irrespective of whether the credit is provided in cash or in kind

designing credit agent incentives to prevent mission drift in pro poor microfinance institutions abstract credit agents in microfinance institutions mfis must be given incentives to acquire information on potential borrowers and select them in accordance with the mfi s objectives we show that while giving incentives has no cost in for profit mfis it is costly in pro poor mfis when repayment and wealth are positively correlated a pro poor mfi cannot obtain the selection of poor clients in the proportion it wishes with incentives based solely on repayment it then becomes necessary to audit the share of very poor borrowers selected by an agent in order to provide the latter with adequate incentives when audit costs are large pro poor mfis may have to forego selection on wealth and use other targeting devices such as working in impoverished geographical locations driven by donor concerns with mission drift away from the poor audits on the wealth status of clients have been introduced at the level of mfis we show that introducing pro poor incentives requires extending such audits to the level of credit agents

building sustainable hybrid organizations the case of commercial microfinance organizations we explore how new types of hybrid organizations organizations that combine institutional logics in unprecedented ways can develop and maintain their hybrid nature in the absence of a ready to w

financing microfinance institutions subsidies or deposit mobilisation abstractaccording to conventional wisdom dependence on subsidies cannot achieve the double bottom lines of microfinance institutions mfis outreach and financial sustainability the application of market based principles to microfinancing such as deposit mobilisation has been long suggested as an answer to this problem this paper documents the following findings regarding this issue first deposit mobilisation crowds out subsidies second subsidies and deposit mobilisation reduce microcredit interest rates and allow mfis to reach poorer borrowers third subsidies and deposit mobilisation worsen financial sustainability fourth subsidies reduce repayment rates while deposit mobilisation has no impact on repayment overall the results suggest that neither subsidies nor deposit mobilisation solve the traditional problem of trade off between outreach and financial sustainability

microfinance in africa is it either the problem or the solution abstract this article is based on research undertaken on microenterprises in the informal sector in kenya malawi and ghana it seeks to provoke critical reflection on the uncritical enthusiasm that lies behind much proselytizing of microfinance for informal sector microenterprise it questions whether the extensive donor interest in microenterprise finance really addresses the problems of microentrepreneurs or whether it offers the illusion of a quick fix it suggests that the real problems are more profound and cannot be tackled solely by capital injections but require fundamental structural changes of the socioeconomic conditions that define informal sector activity and a fuller understanding of the psyche of informal sector entrepreneurs

can microfinance reach the poorest evidence from a community managed microfinance intervention summary reaching the poorest is an important objective in many development interventions and microfinance is no exception we review performance indicators for effectiveness of targeting described in the literature and suggest a new metric in order to account for extent and severity of poverty as well as the income distribution among the poor when applying this to a panel dataset from a community managed microfinance intervention in northern malawi we find regressive targeting participants are less poor than the general population in the area in addition we provide suggestions as to when and why the poor exit the project

towards a performance measurement framework for community development finance institutions in the uk community development finance institutions cdfis are publicly funded organisations that provide small loans to people in financially underserved areas of the uk policy makers have repeatedly sought to understand and measure the performance of cdfis to ensure the efficient use of public funds but have struggled to identify an appropriate way of doing so in this article we empirically derive a framework that measures the performance of cdfis through an analysis of their stakeholder relationships based on qualitative data from 20 english cdfis we develop a typology of cdfis according to three dimensions organisational structure type of lending and type of market served following on from this we derive several propositions that consider how these dimensions relate to the financial and social performance of cdfis and provide the basis for a performance measurement framework

screening by the company you keep joint liability lending and the peer selection effect we look at an economic environment where borrowers have some information about the nature of each other s projects that lenders do not we show that joint liability lending contracts similar to those used by credit cooperatives and group lending schemes will induce endogenous peer selection in the formation of groups in a way that the instrument of joint liability can be used as a screening device to exploit this local information this can improve welfare and repayment rates if standard screening instruments such as collateral are unavailable

determinants of margin in microfinance institutions abstractmicrofinance institutions mfis lend to the poor however microfinance clients suffer from high interest rates a type of poverty penalty this article analyses the margin determinants in mfis a banking model has been adapted to microfinance this model has been tested using 9 year panel data some factors explaining bank margin also explain mfi margin with operating costs being the most important factor specific microfinance factors are donations and legal status as regulated mfis can collect deposits it has also been found that mfis operating in countries with a high level of financial inclusion have low margins

microenterprise development programs in the united states and in the developing world abstract sparked by examples from bangladesh bolivia indonesia and other developing countries hundreds of microenterprise programs have been started in the united states will these us efforts be successful this paper reviews the evidence and concludes that microenterprise development is much more difficult in the united states than in the developing world the paper suggests some ways to address the challenges of us microenterprise development