women and budget deficits if women have different economic preferences than men then female economic and political empowerment is likely to change economic policy and in turn perhaps macroeconomic outcomes in this paper we narrow the focus to fiscal policy and we investigate whether female enfranchisement affects government budget deficits in a difference in differences regression for swiss cantonal panel data we find that the inclusion of women in the electorate has reduced deficits by a statistically significant amount

the output composition puzzle a difference in the monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area and u s we revisit recent evidence on how monetary policy affects output and prices in the u s and in the euro area the response patterns to a shift in monetary policy are similar in most respects but differ noticeably as to the composition of output changes in the euro area investment is the predominant driver of output changes while in the u s consumption shifts are significantly more important we dub this difference the output composition puzzle and explore its implications and several potential explanations for it while the evidence seems to point at differences in consumption responses rather than investment as the proximate cause for this fact the source of the consumption difference remains a puzzle

understanding heterogeneous preferences in random utility models a latent class approach a finite mixture approach toconditional logit models is developed in whichlatent classes are used to promoteunderstanding of systematic heterogeneity the model is applied to wilderness recreationin which a branded choice experiment involvingchoice of one park from a demand system wasadministered to a sample of recreationists the basis of membership in the classes orsegments in the sample involved attitudinalmeasures of motivations for taking a trip aswell as their stated preferences overwilderness park attributes the econometricanalysis suggested that four classes of peopleexist in the sample using the model toexamine welfare measures of some hypotheticalpolicy changes identified markedly differentwelfare effects than the standard singlesegment model and provided insight into thedifferential impact of alternative policies

whose business is it anyway this article examines how gender may account for productivity gaps across enterprises first using data from six countries in sub saharan africa the article demonstrates that the extent and significance of any productivity gap by gender depends critically on the criteria used to classify an enterprise using a definition of female participation in ownership there are few differences in average performance measures however a 12 productivity gap emerges when a tighter definition based on decision making control is used second the article examines which entrepreneurial characteristics education management skills experience and the motivation for being an entrepreneur are most associated with higher productivity the findings reveal that there are some gender gaps in the prevalence of these characteristics but that these do not account for the overall gender productivity gap rather while women benefit as much as men from education and management skills there are non linear impacts by gender in the benefits of having a family background in entrepreneurship sons rather than daughters benefit from having a father that was an entrepreneur or from joining a family enterprise

who benefits the interactional determinants of microfinance s varied effects abstractsince its emergence as a development tool scholars and practitioners have questioned microfinance s short and long term impacts but have had insufficient empirical evidence to assess them to address this gap this paper draws on mixed method research to assess the effects of microfinance loan and educational services over time it explores why even within the same microfinance institution mfi some borrowers benefit from microfinance services more than others in the short term and examines how this translates into long term impacts the article identifies understudied sources of intra group variation the diversity and choices of borrowers and mfi employees interacting with each other and their broader contexts

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

credit constraints credit unions and small scale producers in guatemala abstract efficient and equitable development outcomes may depend in part on whether formal financial institutions leave low wealth producers tightly constrained in their access to credit if so can cooperative institutions efficiently relax these constraints these issues are explored using survey data gathered from 950 small scale producer households in areas of guatemala with market oriented credit unions that mobilize savings and make unsubsidized loans nonprice rationing by banks is found to be common among lower wealth households while credit unions relax credit constraints for a significant portion of those rationed by banks but not the poorest of the study households

the effect of agriculture on repayment efficiency a look at mfi borrowing groups there is a widely held industry assumption from microfinance institutions that agricultural loans have poorer repayment rates which has resulted in many loans being provided for small businesses as opposed to agricultural purposes using data from a sample of 100 borrowing groups from a south indian microfinance institutions mfi this study challenges this belief by analyzing the repayment efficiency of borrowing groups and reflects on the implications for agricultural microfinance loans the analysis is run using bayesian stochastic frontier estimation with an exponential hierarchical prior on the efficiency term our results indicate that the average efficiency of the borrowing groups analyzed was approximately 75 and that having a higher percentage of agricultural loans increased borrowing group efficiency while gains in efficiency also rose as the size of the borrowing group increases

policies for a heterogeneous informal sector in latin america abstract the concept of the informal sector has gained increasing acceptance in latin america some 30 million persons now work outside the modern economy in low productivity jobs with marginal incomes many of them are living in poverty international and national policy makers have become aware of the political and economic consequences of this phenomenon and are seeking ways to improve returns and incomes the sector however is composed of different kinds of activities each with its own problems which need to be addressed in different ways policy planners should bear this in mind as they seek solutions the paper recommends three types of measures providing productive assistance to informal enterprises supporting informal sector workers and revising regulations that govern informal sector activities

environmental attitudes as wtp predictors a case study involving endangered species this paper investigates environmental attitudes as significant motives for the behavioral intention of willingness to pay wtp involving endangered species in a choice modeling context and examines the underlying causal mechanism pro environmental attitudes are measured using the new ecological paradigm nep scale although the empirical evidence of this paper supports a significant attitude wtp association the causal mechanism is different from previous theorizing when observed at the parameter level using random parameter logit models the significant causal linkages are evident with both the target good and the payment variable the findings of this paper not only support direct and indirect impacts of general attitudes on wtp but also provide novel findings about the causal mechanism for a significant attitude wtp relationship at the parameter level in a non western case study the impact of past visiting experience was also significant on the relationship undermining the impact of attitudes on wtp

how access to credit affects self employment differences by gender during india s rural banking reform abstract household survey data for 1983 2000 from india s national sample survey organisation are used to examine the impact of credit on self employment among men and women in rural labour households results indicate that credit access encourages women s self employment as own account workers and employers while it discourages men s self employment as unpaid family workers ownership of land a key form of collateral also serves as a strong predictor of self employment among the lower castes in india self employment is less likely for scheduled castes prone to wage activity but more likely for scheduled tribes prone to entrepreneurial work

observing unobservables identifying information asymmetries with a consumer credit field experiment information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice we estimate the presence and importance of hidden information and hidden action problems in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology we randomized 58 000 direct mail offers to former clients of a major south african lender along three dimensions i an initial offer interest rate featured on a direct mail solicitation ii a contract interest rate that was revealed only after a borrower agreed to the initial offer rate and ii a dynamic repayment incentive that was also a surprise and extended preferential pricing on future loans to borrowers who remained in good standing these three randomizations combined with complete knowledge of the lender s information set permit identification of specific types of private information problems our setup distinguishes hidden information effects from selection on the offer rate via unobservable risk and anticipated effort from hidden action effects via moral hazard in effort induced by actual contract terms we find strong evidence of moral hazard and weaker evidence of hidden information problems a rough estimate suggests that perhaps 13 to 21 of default is due to moral hazard asymmetric information thus may help explain the prevalence of credit constraints even in a market that specializes in financing high risk borrowers

giving women credit the strengths and limitations of credit as a tool for alleviating poverty abstract poor women in developing countries often turn to self employment as a way to support themselves and their families but these small scale activities rarely yield enough income to lift them out of poverty recently ngos and donor agencies have sought to assist these women by providing credit which is otherwise largely unavailable to them the broad aims of these programs vary as do the strategies which range from simply offering credit a minimalist approach to providing training and technical assistance as part of the credit package a credit plus approach the channels used bank schemes intermediary programs parallel programs or poverty focused development banks also vary so far the last three channels have been more effective than the first in improving women s access to credit however not enough is known about which strategies have the greatest economic impact for particular groups of women and further evaluation is needed

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

the problem of transaction costs in group based microlending an institutional perspective abstract to be financially viable group based microlending needs to economize on transaction costs for both lenders and borrowers group lending programs vary in their transaction cost characteristics depending on their specific credit delivery arrangements and social contexts this article illustrates these arguments by examining the challenges faced by various group lending programs worldwide it also examines how social capital or the lack of it affects the transaction costs and operations of three typical group lending arrangements group loan with joint liability individual loan with joint liability and individual loan with individual liability

effects of microcredit and other loans on female empowerment in bangladesh the borrower s gender influences intra household resource allocation this article examines microcredit s effectiveness in empowering women borrowers in rural bangladesh it does so by examining how gender specific borrowing activities influence household expenditures which are either specifically of interest to men or women and by examining the effects of all loans rather than only those provided by microcredit organizations the article uses a quasi experimental design to identify the effects of borrowing by men and women by using an original combination of panel data and instrumental variables on subsamples of the surveyed population it finds that the borrower s gender affects how households allocate their resources to different expenditure items and assets that are valued differently by men and women in all the findings suggest that providing greater credit access to women may improve their household bargaining positions

household bargaining and microfinance abstract this paper examines a household bargaining problem where one household member can use external finance to invest in an uncertain business project faced with limited income generating opportunities we show that the household member will consistently choose safe investment projects we also explain why other members of the household can be made worse off from investment even when aggregate household consumption is expected to rise in a dynamic version of the bargaining problem we study incentives for the household to contribute towards loan repayments and identify conditions under which the borrower will transfer control over her loan to her partner

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

can social cohesion be harnessed to repair market failures evidence from group lending in guatemala the success of group lending in developing countries has been attributed to the ability of the institution to mitigate asymmetric information problems in credit markets previous research has offered a number of explanations for this phenomenon social ties between borrowing group members internal group pressure to repay loans and peer monitoring this research presents empirical tests on borrowing group data from guatemala which indicate that peer monitoring significantly effects borrowing group performance through stimulating intra group insurance group pressure is found to have a small effect in deterring moral hazard while the effect of social ties among members is statistically insignificant

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

introducing financial frictions and unemployment into a small open economy model the current nancial crisis has made it abundantly clear that business cycle modeling no longer can abstract from nancial factors it is also becoming increasingly clear that the stylized modeling of labor markets without explicit unemployment that is the current standard approach has its limitations some questions which the dominating extant business cycle models are mute on but that we would like to answer are how important are nancial and labor market frictions for the business cycle dynamics of a

valuing environmental goods and services using benefit transfer the state of the art and science abstract the purpose of this special issue of ecological economics is to elucidate the state of the art and science of environmental benefit transfer and to assist in the design and reporting of future benefit estimation research compiling the insights of thirty two international experts from seven countries the special issue reviews the latest developments in transfer techniques as well as ongoing efforts to standardize and validate them taken together the papers in this special issue provide fresh answers to some long standing questions offer original research insights on state of the art issues and identify fruitful areas for future research this introductory paper provides background and context for the issues addressed by the contributing authors its purpose is to place the interdisciplinary thinking contained here in a comparative context highlighting the need for integration and collaboration to maintain the momentum that has propelled environmental benefit transfer into a widely used approach for estimating the economic value of environmental goods and services worldwide

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 fulfil their promise evidence from cross country data abstractthe concept of microfinance promises poverty reduction and economic growth we empirically challenge this economic and social promise in an attempt to prove its fulfilment our multivariate regressions of economic development variables such as per capita gross national income based on ppp converted to international dollars gni per capita ppp gdp growth as well as gross capital formation and labour participation rate against specific microfinance institutions mfi variables show that the success and performance of mfis significantly influence economic development microfinance directly influences economic growth through the value that mfi performance adds to purchasing power an indirect impact comes from an improvement in capital accumulation and employment rates these insights are valuable as the interdependencies between microfinance and economic development that this article verifies offer new and progressive insights into purposeful action that can be taken to stimulate economic develop

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

how poor women earn income in sub saharan africa and what works against them abstract in sub saharan africa household based agricultural activity remains the foundation of rural livelihoods and women do most of the work their activities are under increasing stress they and their children are falling into poverty even as their need for cash income is increasing although they keep a foothold in the household economy increasingly women are dependent on self employment or wage work for survival they have little access to services and few opportunities to become more productive their situation is exacerbated by continuing male dominance and unequal household responsibilities the informal sector offers opportunities for entrepreneurship especially in trading or small scale agroindustry but unlicensed activity is discouraged in many countries some women also find themselves competing with businesses that are run or licensed by the state several micro level interventions are identified that support women s income earning activities and may halt further deterioration in rural livelihoods