indirect effects of an aid program how do cash transfers affect ineligibles consumption cash transfers to eligible households indirectly increase the consumption of ineligible households living in the same villages this effect operates through insurance and credit markets ineligible households benefit from the transfers by receiving more gifts and loans and by reducing their savings thus the transfers benefit the local economy at large looking only at the effect on the treated underestimates the impact one should analyze the effects of this class of programs on the entire local economy rather than on the treated only and use a village level randomization rather than selecting treatment and control subjects from the same community

does microcredit increase household welfare in the absence of microinsurance summary this study answers the question does a combination of microcredit and microinsurance improve the wellbeing of low income households we examine this challenge through heckman sample selection instrumental variable and treatment effect models the findings indicate that households using microcredit in combination with microinsurance derive significant gains in terms of welfare improvement microcredit may be good but its benefit to the poor is enhanced and sustained if the poverty trapping risks are covered with microinsurance to this extent combining microcredit with microinsurance will empower the poor to make a sustainable exit from poverty

adoption of improved maize varieties in southern ethiopia factors and strategy options abstract this paper identifies factors that influence the decision behavior of farmers in southern ethiopia in adopting improved maize varieties by estimating a logistic regression data for this study came from 222 farmers interviewed as part of a national adoption survey conducted in three selected maize growing administrative zones of southern ethiopia in 1998 the paper also assesses the impact of pure and mixed strategy options on the probability of adoption of improved maize varieties through simulation under different scenarios as far as pure strategies are concerned the credit strategy is more powerful than the others in terms of raising the probability of adoption however results from the analysis of pure versus mixed strategies imply that mixed strategies are no necessarily much better than pure strategies

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

from correlates and characteristics to causes thinking about poverty from a chronic poverty perspective summary poverty and poverty reduction are currently the central concerns of development discourse and policy despite recent theoretical advances poverty analysis continues to be dominated by an income consumption conception of poverty we argue for understandings of poverty that go beyond measurement led conceptualizations to more adequately expose the causes of poverty chronic poverty is one such concept its focus on poverty duration and dynamics highlights the forms of social relations that produce poverty and which are often embedded within political institutions and economic structures poverty reduction does not simply require good policy it requires creating the capacity of poorer people to influence and hold accountable those who make policies

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

community currencies and sustainable development a systematic review community or complementary currency systems have spread all around the world most often they have been promoted as tools to foster sustainable development albeit they differ in terms of specific objectives while many case studies have tried to assess the actual impact of these systems there has been no global analysis summarizing their global impact this paper aims to fill the gap by exploring whether complementary currencies contribute to the three pillars of sustainable development we use the systematic review methodology on an original dataset gathering most academic publications on the topic in english french and spanish our main findings suggest that community currencies mostly contribute to social sustainability and that their economic benefits are somewhat limited due to their small scale and the lack of awareness on their scope moreover very few studies explicitly identify environmental outcomes finally this review reveals some limits regarding current methods for impact assessment in this field therefore it encourages more standardization to provide greater accuracy and strengthen the legitimacy of community currencies in order to foster their continued development

the role of education on the adoption of chemical fertiliser under different socioeconomic environments in ethiopia studies on input adoption consider education as one of the most important factors that affect adoption decisions however very little is known about the spill over effect of intra household education on the adoption process and about the impact of education on adoption decisions under different socioeconomic conditions we investigate these two issues using a discrete choice model the results indicate that the decision making process is a decentralised one in which educated adult members of the household actively participate in the decision making process this casts doubt on the traditional assumption that the household head is the sole decision maker the results reveal that there is a substantial and statistically significant intra household spill over effect of education on the adoption decision of households the results of the study also show that the coefficient of the education and the environment interaction variable is negative and statistically significant this demonstrates that education and socioeconomic environments could be substitutes in modern environments and complementary in traditional ones this implies that the expansion of education in traditional areas may be more attractive than in modern areas since education is usually the only means to enhance the ability of farmers to acquire synthesise and respond to innovations such as chemical fertiliser

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

competition between microfinance ngos evidence from kiva summary this paper investigates empirically the effect of competition between microfinance ngos seeking subsidized capital from individual social investors although ngo behavior in competitive environments is often subject to controversy there is little formal empirical evidence to illustrate theoretical findings and inform policy using data from kiva an online peer to peer p2p microfinance platform we find that competition has a sizable negative impact on projects funding speed and that the effect is stronger between close substitutes this is important because competition for subsidized capital implies organizational pressures similar to those faced when ngos compete for donations

promoting high input maize technologies in africa the sasakawa global 2000 experience in ethiopia and mozambique abstract critics argue that high external input technologies heit are too costly for african farmers and that programs to promote them are economically unsustainable this paper assesses sasakawa global 2000 programs in ethiopia and mozambique using financial and economic analysis yield models and subsector analysis the sg 2000 technology was much more profitable in ethiopia than in mozambique but varied depending on production location fertilizer and transport costs domestic and international prices regional surplus or deficit conditions and production as import substitute or export the case studies provide further evidence that high input technologies can be successfully introduced through well funded high profile programs but not conclusive evidence that such programs can be scaled up and sustained five major implications are discussed concerning 1 prospects for scaling up and sustaining heit adoption 2 the need for expanded profitability analysis 3 the role of trade prospects and policies 4 institution building requirements and 5 infrastructure investments to reduce marketing costs

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

new concepts of aggregated money the federal reserve board s recent redefinition of its monetary aggregates followed three years of intensive board staff research on monetary aggregation while the new aggregates ultimately were selected along conventional lines some of the staff s research was oriented towards more fundamental changes in monetary aggregation methods this paper reviews such proposals which are based upon the rigorous application of index number and aggregation theory and of principal components analysis in the construction of economic monetary aggregates the usefulness of aggregation and index number theory in acquiring price indices is widely known the theory of the true cost of living index is an application of aggregation theory examples of applied index number theory include the commerce department s implicit price deflator which is a paasche index and the labor department s consumer price index which is a laspeyres index somewhat less well known is the fact that dual to the theory of economic price aggregates and indices is a theory of economic quantity aggregates and indices an example of a highly reputable quantity index is the divisia quantity index the monetary aggregates traditionally are thought to measure the supplied quantity of an economic good called money whenever monetary aggregates are used in the context of economic theory rather than as simple accounting identities the theory of economic quantity aggregation is specifically applicable however published monetary aggregates in all countries have always been computed as simple sums but as fisher 1922 p 29 observed in the conclusion to his classic treatise on index number theory the simple arithmetic average produces one of the very worst of index numbers and if this book has no other effect than to lead to the total abandonment of the simple arithmetic type of index number it will have served a useful purpose with an example of the simple sum index fisher 1922 p 363 found that the bias alone reaches 36 percent although index number theory has not yet found its way into the monetary theory literature all of the literature on index number theory and aggregation theory for the past half century supports the result long ago deduced by fisher 1922 p 361 that the simple arithmetic index should not be used the views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the board of governors of the federal reserve system this research was partially supported by national science foundation grant soc 76 84459 we are deeply indebted to the conference session s discussant of this paper w erwin diewert for volunteering to cede his allocated journal space to us so that the paper could take its current extended form federal reserve board washington d c

financial access and exclusion in kenya and uganda abstract policy emphasis has recently shifted to finance for all given evidence that financial sector development contributes to growth but effects on poverty do not arise from pro poor provision we argue that given this policy goal analyses of barriers to access must be country specific and go beyond the emphasis on transactions costs to incorporate the effects of social institutions since these contribute to discrimination this paper uses data from financial access surveys carried out in 2006 in kenya and uganda to investigate the socio economic demographic and geographical factors influencing access to and exclusion from formal semi formal and informal financial services

micro entrepreneurship and subjective well being evidence from rural bangladesh abstract microcredit has long been hailed as a powerful tool to promote livelihoods and reduce poverty through entrepreneurship however its impacts on people s subjective well being remain underexplored we present a unified theoretical framework for analyzing the effect of microcredit enabled entrepreneurship on overall life satisfaction a key manifestation of subjective well being empirically we apply an instrumental variable approach to a unique census like household survey conducted in three villages of bangladesh in 2013 in spite of having no direct effects we find that microcredit borrowing has an indirect negative effect on overall life satisfaction through increased worry on a positive note we find that female micro borrowers experience an increase in satisfaction with financial security and achievement in life we also provide evidence that micro borrowers with higher levels of assets experience an increase in satisfaction with financial security

can targeted food programs improve nutrition an empirical analysis of india s public distribution system abstract despite the widespread belief that a substantial assault on poverty requires targeting scarce resources toward the poor practitioners frequently claim that targeted programs deliver fewer benefits to poor households than do universal programs this article evaluates this concern through an analysis of india s targeted food distribution program the public distribution system it first examines the case for targeting by assessing the responsiveness of caloric intake to the amount of the food grain subsidy a low elasticity suggests that improvements in nutrition may require large subsidies and hence a targeted program it then examines whether targeting adversely affects the probability of poor households participating in the program the empirical analysis identifies the effect of the program by combining time varying policy changes in the value of the program with cross sectional variation in program benefits generated by variation in market prices the results confirm the low responsiveness

adoption of modern varieties farmers welfare and crop biodiversity evidence from uganda abstract this paper assesses the impact of modern varieties adoption on farmers welfare and crop biodiversity conserved in situ using nationally representative data collected in 2009 2010 in uganda an endogenous switching regression model estimates the net economic and environmental effects of switching from local landraces to modern species results show that after controlling for market and agro ecological factors the local varieties perform better than modern ones in marginalized and climatic vulnerable areas crop biodiversity shows to play a fundamental role in farmers risk minimizing strategies when the available modern varieties are not adaptable to the local context and not supported by the required level of agro intensification rural development policies should consider the heterogeneity in the adoption returns and support diversity conservation as a national strategic asset for a suitable bioprospecting and a best fitting agricultural system implementation

beta firm size and concentration the asset beta of a firm is defined as the uncertainty about the firm s future value scaled by its current value empirically beta is negatively related to a firm s size and concentration in its major product market this relation has been interpreted as evidence that monopoly power affects beta this paper shows that this empirical result is also consistent with competitive product markets where greater firm size and concentration are due to greater efficiency in production thus the correlation between beta firm size and concentration is not prima facie evidence of widespread monopoly power

failure vs displacement why an innovative anti poverty program showed no net impact in south india abstract we analyze a randomized trial of an innovative anti poverty program in south india part of a series of pilot programs that provide ultra poor households with inputs to create new sustainable livelihoods often tending livestock in contrast with results from other pilots we find no lasting net impact on income or asset accumulation in south india we explore concerns with program implementation data errors and the existence of compelling employment alternatives the baseline consumption data contain systematic errors and income and consumption contain large outliers steps to address the problems leave the central findings largely intact wages for unskilled labor rose sharply in the area while the study was implemented blunting the net impact of the intervention and highlighting one way that treatment effects depend on factors external to the intervention itself such as broader employment opportunities

agricultural workers credit rationing and family networks in rural mexico abstractwe use mixed methods and first hand household data in mexico to investigate credit practices by households engaged in agricultural wage employment quantitative analysis shows evidence of rationing in the formal sector but also suggests the existence of mitigating mechanisms qualitative analysis provides additional insights first income patterns associated with agricultural wage generate income smoothing needs that are sometimes better met by the informal sector second family networks can perform key functions as gateways to the formal sector through specific informal arrangements that inject flexibility into formal rules and procedures

are there lasting impacts of aid to poor areas abstract the paper re visits the site of a large world bank financed rural development program in china 10 years after it began and four years after disbursements ended the program emphasized community participation in multi sectoral interventions including farming animal husbandry infrastructure and social services data were collected on 2000 households in project and non project areas spanning 10 years a double difference estimator of the program s impact on top of pre existing governmental programs reveals sizeable short term income gains that were mostly saved only small and statistically insignificant gains to mean consumption emerged in the longer term though in rough accord with the average gain to permanent income the use of community based beneficiary selection greatly reduced the overall impact given that the educated poor were under covered the main results are robust to corrections for various sources of selection bias including village targeting and interference due to spillover effects generated by the response of local governments to the external aid

understanding the coexistence of formal and informal credit markets in piura peru summary this paper examines why farm households seek informal loans in piura peru where formal lenders offer loans at lower interest rates a panel data econometric analysis reveals that the informal sector serves various types of clients households excluded from the formal sector but also households that prefer informal loans because of lower transaction costs or lower risk an in depth examination of contract terms and loan technologies permits an accurate comparison of effective loan costs and contractual risk across sectors and reveals that proximity and economies of scope enjoyed by informal lenders enable them to substitute information intensive screening and monitoring for contractual risk and supply these various types of clients

the benefits and costs of microfinance evidence from bangladesh abstract using the latest developments from the evaluation literature namely the technique of matching this paper shows a positive but lower than previously thought effect of microfinance on expenditure per capita supply of labour and level of school enrolment for boys and girls for instance participants spend 3 per cent more on average than non participants in control villages this paper also takes into account repayment delays to calculate the cost of credit provision it shows how a better investigation at the individual level of the benefits brought and the cost borne could help microfinance institutions to better select their customers jel classification c14 d10 g21 i38 o12 o16

overcoming selection bias in microcredit impact assessments a case study in peru abstract there are several potential sources of bias in microcredit impact assessments this paper uses a panel data set from a peruvian mfi to test for impact of credit on microenterprise profits while controlling for these biases we find that those who will eventually become borrowers have significantly higher incomes than those who will not become borrowers implying that selection into the lending programme is a substantial problem after controlling for this selection we find that an average microentrepreneur who borrows earns significantly higher enterprise profits than one who does not borrow and that naive models which do not control for selection overestimate this impact fixed effects estimates give roughly the same results as the quasi experimental cross section analysis

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

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

programs for the poorest learning from the igvgd program in bangladesh abstract this article examines a program that seeks to reach bangladesh s hardcore poor by combining elements of livelihood protection food aid with livelihood promotion skills training and microfinance bangladesh rural advancement committee s income generation for vulnerable group development program has deepened the outreach of its poverty reduction activity and achieved impressive results detailed local level fieldwork revealed however that program practice differed markedly from program plans this is found to have important implications for both future program design and the understanding of who does not benefit from such innovative programs we conclude that while such programs mixing livelihood protection and promotion should be a major focus for anti poverty strategies there will remain a role for more traditional social welfare schemes

economic and social impacts of an innovative self help group model in india summary we assess the impact of an approach in the indian state of andhra pradesh that combines micro credit with efforts to target the poor address their specific needs and enhance their economic potential our results support the pro poor nature of the program and point toward benefits in terms of female empowerment and nutritional intake but not asset formation or income for program participants and other villagers while study of longer term effects is desirable this suggests that even in the short term the program helped improve consumption smoothing and income diversification

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

evaluating the long run impact of an innovative anti poverty programme evidence using household panel data using a four round panel data set from the first phase of the challenging the frontiers of poverty reduction targeting the ultra poor cfpr tup programme of brac we investigate whether a one off transfer of livestock assets improves well being of the very poor women in bangladesh programme impact is assessed on a wide range of monetary and nonmonetary measures of well being using difference in difference dd as well as matching methods we find significant positive long term impact on food security household savings assets and participation in microfinance participant women are less likely to be in distress occupation and more into self employment however the long term effect is much smaller for most outcomes when compared to short and medium run impacts we conclude by discussing the significance of the institutional and regional context for the observed time path of estimated programme effect

the demand side of social protection lessons from cambodia s labour rights experience summary in fragile states recent efforts to advance the social protection agenda have focused primarily on loosening supply side constraints but the resulting kaleidoscope of donor driven projects has often overlooked the need to create a sense of ownership by beneficiaries in part this is because it is unclear what political and social structures effectively facilitate activism in situations where state society relations are contentious we use cambodia s unusual success creating and sustaining a labor rights regime to illustrate the dynamics behind one type of social regime change that has opened up governance over worker protections in a sustainable and potentially replicable way

direct elicitation of credit constraints conceptual and practical issues with an application to peruvian agriculture abstract this article provides a methodological bridge leading from the well developed theory of credit rationing to the less developed territory of empirically identifying credit constraints we begin by developing a simple model showing that credit constraints may take three forms quantity rationing transaction cost rationing and risk rationing each form adversely affects household resource allocation and thus should be accounted for in empirical analyses of credit market performance we outline a survey strategy to directly elicit households status as unconstrained or constrained in the credit market and if constrained to further identify which of the three nonprice rationing mechanisms is at play we discuss several practical issues that arise due to the use of a combination of factual and interpretative survey questions finally using a farm level data set from peru we illustrate how the methodology can be used to estimate the impacts of credit constraints

adding value to randomization with qualitative analysis the case of microcredit in rural morocco this paper analyzes microcredit demand and use to draw lessons on how households appropriate microcredit services it introduces qualitative analysis to a randomized study findings suggest that microcredit demand and use is shaped not only by agro ecological conditions but by two major partially interrelated factors debt related norms articulated with the perception of the sanction in case of repayment default and the social life of microcredit namely how social actors credit officers and local leaders engage with microcredit on a conceptual perspective we argue that microcredit markets do not result from supply confronting demand but instead are historical political and social constructs

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

identification and estimation of money demand in most natural sciences physics chemistry biology theories are validated by controlled experiment however in other natural sciences astronomy meteorology and in most social sciences including economics the data are characteristically generated not by experiment but by measurement of uncontrolled systems in economics theories take the form of restrictions on the models assumed to generate the data and statistical methods replace experimental controls in testing these restrictions and here is the difficulty in economics particularly macroeconomics the theory used to derive tests ordinarily does not generate a complete specification of which variables are to be held constant when statistical tests are performed on the relation between the dependent variable and the independent variables of primary interest accordingly in such cases there will be a set of often very different candidate regression based tests each of which has equal status with the others since each is based on a different projection of the same underlying multivariate model except in the unlikely event that the explanatory variables are mutually orthogonal the conditional regression coefficients which generally form the basis for the test statistic will depend on the conditioning set we conclude from this that if a theory which does not generate a complete specification of the regression test is nonetheless to have testable implications these implications must be robust over the permissible alternative specifications if the restrictions indicated by the theory are satisfied in some projections but not in others that have an equal claim to represent implications of the theory one cannot conclude that the theory has been confirmed the fact that the observable implications of valid theories must obtain over a broad but usually incompletely specified set of regressions rather than for a single regression introduces a large and unavoidable element of imprecision into hypothesis testing in macroeconomics generally it appears to be appropriate to weaken the statistical criterion for rejecting theories consider for example the theory of money demand which will engage our attention in this paper the tobin baumol square root formula implies that the elasticity of money demand with respect to the interest rate is exactly one half but which interest rate should wealth be held constant inflation in view of such uncertainties it would be inappropriate to insist in a literal minded fashion on rejecting the tobin baumol model if in some regression the measured interest elasticity differed from one half by more than two standard deviations and only then obviously a more flexible approach is called for the practice has been to conclude that the statistical evidence is consistent with the tobin baumol model as long as the interest rate coefficient is negative if it is negative and significant or negative and insignificantly different from minus one half that would provide somewhat stronger confirmation but a positive coefficient particularly a significantly positive coefficient would be viewed as raising questions about the validity of the theory in macroeconomics generally as in the money demand application the typical response to specification uncertainty has been to regard a theory as supported if the signs of the estimated coefficients agree with those expected from theory and as disconfirmed otherwise there is no theoretical justification for this procedure but it seems to be a reasonable course to follow the point that economic theory ordinarily generates incompletely specified statistical university of california santa barbara we have received helpful comments from andrew abel robert clower michael darby robert engle stephen goldfeld david laidler edward leamer robert lucas frederic mishkin and edward prescott thomas hall provided able research assistance

an empirical investigation of rationing constraints in rural credit markets in india abstract the literature on rural credit markets has generally assumed that households are rationed in their access to subsidized formal credit the validity of this assumption depends on the level of effective demand for formal credit in turn a function of the demand for credit and its availability from informal sources this paper estimates the demand and the sector specific costs of credit and hence the extent of formal sector rationing through an analysis of household participation in both the formal and the informal credit sectors the results show that the extent of rationing is considerably less than what is conventionally assumed

understanding the process of agricultural technology adoption mineral fertilizer in eastern dr congo summary we analyze the adoption of mineral fertilizer in south kivu we model technology adoption as a three step process including awareness tryout and adoption and empirically analyze these steps using cross sectional farm household data and bivariate and heckman selection probit models we find that awareness about fertilizer is high 57 and mainly determined by education and social capital tryout is low 13 of aware farmers but positively influenced by extension interventions continued adoption is high 70 of tryout farmers but capital constraints are important and not all extension interventions are effective for continued adoption our results entail implications for extension policies in poor areas

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

national pro poor spending programmes and their effect on income inequality and poverty evidence from vietnam abstractthis article examines the causal effects of the national pro poor targeted programmes ntps on both poverty incidence and inequality in vietnam over the period 2002 2010 while the links between ntps and poverty alleviation and income inequality have previously been analysed independently this study is the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of ntps expenditure on poverty and inequality simultaneously applying the system generalized method of moments estimator to a panel of vietnamese regional data we are unable to establish that ntps have significantly mitigated poverty incidence however we estimate that ntps have significantly increased inequality we offer possible explanations why the ntps have resulted in these unintended outcomes and discuss potential policies which can reduce both poverty and inequality

can micro credit bring development abstract we examine the long run effects of micro credit on development in an occupational choice model similar to banerjee and newman jpe 1993 micro credit is modeled as a pure improvement in the credit market that opens up self employment options to some agents who otherwise could only work for wages or subsist micro credit can either raise or lower long run gdp since it can lower use of both subsistence and full scale industrial technologies it typically lowers long run inequality and poverty by making subsistence payoffs less widespread thus an equity efficiency tradeoff may be involved in the promotion of micro credit however in a worst case scenario micro credit has purely negative long run effects the key to micro credit s long run effects is found to be the graduation rate defined as the rate at which the self employed build up enough wealth to start full scale firms we distinguish between two avenues for graduation winner graduation of those who earn above average returns in self employment and saver graduation due to gradual accumulation of average returns in self employment long run development is not attainable via micro credit if winner graduation is the sole avenue for graduation in contrast if the saving rate and self employment returns of the average micro borrower are jointly high enough then micro credit can bring an economy from stagnation to full development through saver graduation thus the lasting effects of micro credit may partially depend on simultaneous facilitation of micro saving eventual graduation of the average borrower rather than indefinite retention should be the goal of micro banks if micro credit is to be a stepping stone to broad based development rather than at best an anti poverty tool

fertilizer market development a comparative analysis of ethiopia kenya and zambia abstract this article synthesizes case studies from kenya zambia and ethiopia to assess how differences in the implementation of fertilizer marketing policies have affected the costs and risks borne by marketing actors the investment response by private traders and fertilizer consumption financial cost accounting techniques indicate that domestic marketing costs account for 50 or more of farm gate prices the sum of importer wholesaler and retailer profit margins generally account for less than 10 there are opportunities to reduce domestic marketing costs through the following reducing port fees coordinating the timing of fertilizer clearance from the port with up country transport reducing transport costs through port rail and road improvements reducing high fuel taxes and reducing the uncertainty associated with government input distribution programs that impose additional marketing costs on traders estimated reductions in the farm gate price of fertilizer from implementing the full range of options identified in each country range from 11 to 18 price reductions of this magnitude if passed along to farmers would increase farmers effective demand for fertilizer investments in selected publically provided goods often considered outside the scope of fertilizer marketing policy per se strongly affect the costs of fertilizer farmers willingness to pay for it and hence the performance of markets

the role of accountants in indian self help groups a trade off between financial and non financial benefits summary self help groups shgs create a platform that allows women to meet on a weekly basis to save and to take loans if needed strict records of all saving and lending are important both to avoid conflicts in the group and to obtain access to bank loans accounting is either done by a group member internal accountant or by another villager external accountant using first hand data on shgs in northern india this paper studies whether economic and non financial returns differ depending on whether shgs meet as independent entities or with external involvement economic theory suggests that repeated interaction between individuals can help build social capital the presence of an external accountant hampers this process indeed repeated interaction is more likely to create non financial benefits in the form of mutual assistance and collective action when the accountant is a group member however these benefits come at a cost as shgs with internal accountants distribute financial benefits more unequally and the accountants themselves receive larger shares than the other members of the groups the analysis shows that the larger shares cannot be explained as a compensation for a better financial performance but that some form of elite capture occurs however other group members implicitly agree on the unequal distribution indeed members are not more likely to leave groups possibly because the loss in financial benefits is outweighed by the gain in non financial benefits

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

why micro credit may leave women worse off non cooperative bargaining and the marriage game in south asia abstract micro credit programmes targeting women continue to grow in south asia although research suggests that wives frequently hand over loans to their husbands women may also be unable to control the income generated by micro enterprises this article presents an intra household bargaining model explaining these findings and showing how credit may leave women worse off while benefiting men this game theoretic model also shows why a woman might rationally choose to give her loan to her husband even though she does not expect to benefit and knows he may not repay finally the article identifies the conditions necessary for micro credit to benefit women

poverty status and the impact of formal credit on technology use and wellbeing among ethiopian smallholders summary this paper examines the impact of formal credit largely microfinance on the use of improved technology and on consumption and asset growth across households in different degrees of asset poverty using data from rural ethiopia the analysis finds no relationship between participation in microfinance programs and the use of technologies or consumption growth among the poorest households even though the use of certain technologies like fertilizer contributes to their asset accumulation over time for other households microfinance has positive effects on both consumption and asset growth as well as on the use of improved technology the findings imply variation in constraints faced by different classes of poor households and suggest the value of asset based poverty classifications in identifying target groups for poverty interventions

interest rates in savings groups thrift or threat summary savings group sg models are praised for achieving financial inclusion for the poorest at a very low cost promoted by international ngos sg models are inspired by indigenous savings and credit associations roscas sg models however differ in that they prescribe lending the pooled savings to group members for an interest the interest rate aims to 1 boost capital accumulation 2 allocate scarce capital efficiently and 3 remunerate and incentivize savers this paper builds on a six month fieldwork conducted in dr congo consisting of direct observations of sg meetings and interviews with sg participants and practitioners we study the gaps between sg practitioners objectives and sg participants perceptions and practices related to the interest rate our research pays particular attention to the local context and local norms that interfere with sg practitioners objectives our analysis highlights three gaps first sg participants turn savings into credit for security purposes rather for rapid capital accumulation second credit allocation decisions are guided by fairness and security concerns rather than efficiency third sg participants often regard the accumulated interest as belonging to the group and to active borrowers rather than to passive savers our results invite development actors to pay greater attention to the potential risks of the sg approach for its participants despite the common appellation savings groups this microfinance innovation builds upon credit and strongly encourages its members to go into debt

estimating the average treatment effect of social safety net programmes in bangladesh since the famine in 1974 the bangladesh government and some national and international agencies have been providing food or cash or both to poor households through the social safety net programmes i seek to estimate how much these programmes affect the well being of poor households most previous studies have estimated impacts of these programmes on calorie consumption simply computing the raw differential however both observed and unobserved characteristics bias this treatment effect using fuzzy regression discontinuity rd design i control for these selection effects

improving the efficiency targeting of malawi s farm input subsidy programme big pain small gain abstract the farm input subsidy programme fisp in malawi was introduced in the 2005 2006 season against a background of bad weather affecting production and prolonged food shortages vouchers are distributed empowering eligible farmers to exchange them for fixed quantities of inputs at subsidized prices since its inception there has been a debate at national level about whether the fisp s potential has been fully exploited with policy makers exploring options to improve the programme proposals include targeting efficient and productive farmers to maximize returns in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of these proposed changes to the existing fisp design by utilizing two waves of the lsms isa survey merged with climatic data we estimate how the national demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria by means of a two stage demand system then we identify more efficient farmers by means of a stochastic frontier approach we observe a mismatch between voucher recipients and efficiency with approximately 60 of vouchers being allocated to the three bottom quintiles of efficiency this mismatch is observed also at the spatial level with more vouchers going to districts characterized by less efficient production while concerns on the distributional impacts of the new criteria are discussed together with some suggestions for spatially diversifying the structuring of the policy and incentivizing crop diversification our results highlight a high substitutability of commercial with subsidized inputs by new eligible farmers consequently simulating the targeting policy variation we obtain an outcome that would lead only to a limited increases in predicted food expenditure ranging from 0 27 to 0 8 and maize production from 0 2 to 1 3 scope for analysing different adjustments in the functioning of fisp are thus proposed to policy makers

comparable firms and the precision of equity valuations abstract i investigate the relationship between the amount of information provided by a firm s comparables i e firms in the same line of business as the firm being valued and the precision of the firm s equity valuation when investors have more information previous studies argue that investors can make a more precise estimate of a firm s true equity value and this implies a lower excess stock return volatility around corporate events such as earnings announcements i develop a simple model that shows a negative relationship between the amount of information provided by a firm s comparables and the firm s stock return volatility using alternative measures of information provided by comparables and different definitions of comparables i consistently find a negative and significant relationship between these information measures and stock return volatility ceteris paribus

rotating and accumulating savings and credit associations a development perspective abstract financial self help groups in low income countries consist of two basic types rotating and accumulating savings and credit associations or roscas and ascras in the ascra funds are not immediately withdrawn but are left to grow for loan making comparing the two groups the author finds similarities and differences efforts to rectify the rosca s shortcomings have prompted many innovations and given birth to a hybrid preserving the best of both types in constant adaptation to changing environments

where is the plus in credit plus the case of chiapas mexico abstractit has become common to try and increase the effectiveness of microfinance programmes by adding supplementary services to the financial product however the added value accruing from this credit plus approach has been little analysed we hypothesise that the extent of added value from credit plus depends on the ability of the credit supplier to cultivate trust or social capital amongst clients applying difference in difference estimation we exploit a natural experiment of two credit plus programmes in mexico the findings suggest that credit plus is not universally effective but that it is at its most effective especially with low income groups where bonding within group social capital exists

the impact of group lending in northeast thailand abstract much of the literature on group lending focuses on its high repayment rates rather than its goal of promoting borrower welfare most studies that attempt to measure the impact of group lending neglect the issues of self selection and endogenous program placement thus leading to biased estimates of impact one reason for this neglect is the lack of data that would allow for identification of impact this paper surmounts these problems by using data from a quasi experiment conducted in northeast thailand in 1995 1996 program participants were identified in six control villages 1 year prior to receiving loans surveys were then conducted of these control members treatment members in eight older program villages and nonmembers in both types of village this survey design allows for straightforward estimation of impact the results indicate that program loans are having little impact although naive estimates of impact that fail to account for self selection and endogenous program placement significantly overestimate impact

the short run demand for money a reconsideration the partial adjustment approach to the specification of the short run demand for money has dominated the literature for more than a decade there are three basic problems with this approach first the same lag structure is imposed on all variables and each independent variable enters only as a current value in contrast a rational individual would respond to different variables income interest rates prices with quite different lags second when the general price levelis subject to gradual adjustment hut can move quickly in response to supply shocks the influence of these supply shocks should enter with a negative sign third the estimated equation for real balances may not be a money demand equation at all but rather its coefficients may represent a shifting mixture of demand and supply responses the empirical work examines several alternative dynamic specifications including a generalized partial adjustment framework and the error correction model both of the latter specifications exhibit greater structural stability after 1973 than the standard partial adjustment specification and the generalized partial adjustment model also yields relatively small errors in post sample dynamic simulations shifts in coefficients as the sample period is extended after 1973 are consistent with the interpretation that the real balance equation no longer traces out structural demand parameters hut rather a mixture of demand and supply responses this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

does self help group participation lead to asset creation summary we evaluate the effect of self help group participation on a long term impact parameter namely asset creation indian self help groups shgs are unique in that they are mainly ngo formed microfinance groups but later funded by commercial banks the results reveal that longer membership in shgs positively impacts asset creation robust to various asset specifications with longer participation in shgs members move away from pure agriculture as an income source toward other sources such as livestock income training by ngos positively impacts asset creation but the type of shg linkage per se has no effect

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

rural finance and agricultural technology adoption in ethiopia does the institutional design of lending organizations matter summary it has now become almost a stylized fact that sustained agricultural growth is central to rapid poverty reduction and economic development yet world poverty is largely concentrated in the agrarian societies which have the potential for agricultural productivity growth this is particularly true for sub saharan african countries where the gaps between potential and actual yields remain high minimizing this gap through the promotion of modern inputs such as fertilizer and modern seeds has been at the core of almost all development strategies in ethiopia among other initiatives the country has promoted microfinance institutions and member owned financial cooperatives to alleviate credit constraints of the smallholder farmers this paper analyzes the impacts of these institutions using household survey data and a propensity score matching technique we examine the effects that institutional financial services have on farmers adoption of agricultural technology in ethiopia the results suggest that access to institutional finance has a significant positive impact on both the adoption and extent of technology use however when impacts are disaggregated by type of financial institution and farm size heterogeneities are observed in particular financial cooperatives have a greater impact on technology adoption than microfinance institutions and the results appear to vary depending on farm size and types of inputs the paper concludes with implications for policies to promote adoption of modern agricultural inputs

borrowing money exchanging relationships making microfinance fit into local lives in kumaon india summary why don t microfinance clients use programs the way development planners and funders expect why do clients change how microfinance projects function in unanticipated ways previous scholarship on microfinance has overlooked the relevance of already existing borrowing practices and norms to how people engage with and use microfinance over 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the kumaon region of eastern uttarakhand state in northern india i found that kumaonis altered the microfinance program of a local ngo to make it fit with their already existing borrowing practices which were intimately tied to their livelihood strategies kumaoni livelihoods were based on exchange relationships with family friends and neighbors through which they could secure the means for physical and financial survival as well as social and emotional survival these relationships were governed by a moral economy that obligated exchange partners to properly assist one another and ensured balance between partners and across multiple social ties rather than abandoning their exchange relationships kumaonis and local fieldworkers who also relied on these ties altered microfinance so that it fit with this moral economy and became another node in the already existing networks of assistance if they had not been able to alter projects kumaonis would likely have stopped participating as other groups in similar circumstances around the globe have done although the microfinance program was a success in the eyes of beneficiaries senior staff members and donors remained unaware of why projects changed on the ground to ensure that development programs can be made relevant to people s lives and cultural values development practitioners must relinquish control over the minutiae of development and allow local level workers to negotiate the details of projects with participants

estimating the divisional cost of capital an analysis of the pure play technique this paper suggests that the pure play technique can be used in conjunction with the capital asset pricing model to determine the cost of equity capital for the divisions of a multidivision firm since the beta for a division is unobservable in the marketplace a proxy beta derived from a publicly traded firm whose operations are as similar as possible to the division in question is used as the measure of the division s systematic risk to provide empirical support for using the pure play technique a sample of multidivision firms and pure play associated with each division is examined it is shown that an appropriately weighted average of the betas of the pure play firms closely approximates the beta of the multidivision firm

imperfect substitutes the local political economy of informal finance and microfinance in rural china and india abstract banking authorities in both china and india have attempted to limit most forms of informal finance by regulating them banning them and allowing certain types of microfinance institutions the latter policy aims to increase the availability of credit to low income entrepreneurs and eliminate their reliance on usurious financing nonetheless the intended clients of microfinance continue to draw on informal finance in both rural china and india this article argues that the persistence of informal finance may be traced to four complementary reasons the limited supply of formal credit limits in state capacity to implement its policies the political and economic segmentation of local markets and the institutional weaknesses of many microfinance programs

high noon for microfinance impact evaluations re investigating the evidence from bangladesh recently microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified it such as pitt and khandker chemin applied propensity score matching to the pitt and khandker data finding different impacts but does not disaggregate by gender of borrower we first replicate chemin and extend his analysis in two ways we test the robustness of propensity score matching results to selection on unobservables using sensitivity analysis and we investigate propensity score matching estimates of impacts by gender of borrowers the mainly insignificant impacts of microfinance differ greatly by gender of borrower but are all vulnerable to selection on unobservables we are therefore not convinced that the relationships between microfinance and outcomes are causal with these data

the search for a stable money demand function a survey of the post 1973 literature phe question of whether the demnand function for money is stable is one of the most important recurring issues in the theory and application of macroeconomic policy what is being sought in a stable demand function is a set of necessary conditions for money to exert a predictable influence on the economy so that the central bank s control of the money supply can be a useful instrument of economic policy as such the notion of a stable demand function appears to involve three key elements e g john t boorman 1976 p 317 and david e w laidler 1977 pp 34 35 first the demand for money relation should be highly predictable in a statistical sense as measured by the usual goodness of fit statistics precision of estimated coefficients and presumably its ability to forecast accurately out of sample second a stable demand function for money has relatively few arguments a relationship that requires knowledge about a large number of variables in order to pin it down is in effect not predictable finally the variables that appear as arguments in the function should represent significant links to spending and economic activity in the real sector in sum a stable demand function for money means that the quantity of money is predictably related to a small set of key variables linking money to the real sector of the economy the importance of a stable money demand function for monetary policy can be illustrated with the standard is lm model in which interest rates and gnp are the endogenous variables in this context a stable demand function for money translates into a well defined relationship between money interest rates and gnp

uncertainty in the monetary aggregates sources measurement and policy effects for a variety of reasons observed data on the monetary aggregates are subject to uncertainty or error in some instances first published data are revised at a later date due to errors in preliminary data which can be observed and corrected in others the error persists in the final data cutting across this classification are the numerous sources of error including definitional error transitory error seasonal adjustment error sampling clerical or reporting error etc this survey paper deals with the sources and where possible magnitudes of uncertainties in monetary series the next three sections discuss conceptual and definitional issues and the current procedures for assembling the money supply data sections 5 through 7 then consider respectively uncertainty due to sampling and reporting transitory variation and seasonal adjustment some implications including possible consequences for monetary policy and the effects on relationships to other series are assessed in sections 8 and 9 and the concluding section presents some suggestions for dealing with errors in the aggregates

the optimal level of monetary aggregation in this paper i have three objectives 1 to describe the aggregation theoretic procedure for selecting the optimal monetary aggregates 2 to survey the available empirical evidence for information on the optimal aggregates and 3 to describe the procedures that should be followed to complete a redefinition of the monetary aggregates although all of the federal reserve board s current official aggregates are rejected as targets some newer aggregates are found to be substantially preferable to the official aggregates the board s staff recently completed the official redefinition of its monetary aggregates in a manner largely unrelated to aggregation and index number theory my own research in recent years has sought to remedy that shortcoming except for monetary aggregates most of the data provided by governmental agencies are constructed in accordance with aggregation and index number theory since aggregation theory can be applied to monetary aggregation 1 i constructed new monetary aggregates that are consistent with the economic theory 2 recently the empiri

how much can asset transfers help the poorest evaluating the results of brac s ultra poor programme 2002 2008 abstract the impacts of an innovative programme in rural bangladesh which has assisted extremely poor households literally the poorest of the poor were assessed over a six year period 2002 2008 the provision of a substantial dose of assets has helped produce very positive results by and large vulnerability to downturns on account of negative events such as illnesses and house damage has resulted in asset losses for several assisted households additional measures that reduce vulnerability and risk will help complete the good work commenced by the asset transfer plan

towards a unified scheme for environmental and social protection learning from pes and cct experiences in developing countries environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the developing world are usually heralded as joint objectives however these two goals are often associated with different sectoral policy instruments while so called payments for environmental services pes are increasingly being promoted for environmental protection poverty alleviation is increasingly addressed by conditional cash transfers cct program these instruments although aimed to achieve distinct objectives have a number of similarities and challenges in their design and implementation phases this paper elaborates on these similarities and develops a unifying generic framework that is used to discuss the extent to which both approaches could be unified

the relationship between credit and productivity in chinese agriculture a microeconomic model of disequilibrium credit is an important element in agricultural production systems it allows producers to satisfy the cash needs induced by the production cycle which characterizes agriculture preparation planting cultivation and harvesting of the crops are typically done over a period of several months in which very little cash revenue is earned while expenditures on materials purchased inputs and consumption must be made in cash cash income is received a short time after the harvest in the absence of credit markets farmers would have to maintain cash reserves so as to facilitate production and consumption in the next cycle the availability of credit allows both greater consumption and greater purchased input use and thus increases welfare of the farmers

exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in south africa using qualitative and quantitative data abstract recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like south africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty to explore these ideas this paper employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods novel econometric analysis of asset dynamics over the 1993 98 period identifies a dynamic asset poverty threshold that signals that large numbers of south africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty qualitative analysis of this period and the period 1998 2001 more deeply examines patterns of mobility and confirms the continuation of this pattern of limited upward mobility and a low level poverty trap in addition the qualitative data permit a closer look at the specific role played by social relationships while finding ample evidence of active social capital and networks these are more helpful for non poor households for the poor social capital at best helps sta

the effects of religion on development efforts evidence from the microfinance industry and a research agenda author s version of an article in the journal world development also avaliable from the publisher at http dx doi org 10 1016 j worlddev 2012 05 030

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

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

how effective is a big push to the small evidence from a quasi experiment summary this paper investigates whether a big push to the extreme poor in terms of a one off large grant enables them to participate in the microfinance program the analysis uses data from a quasi experiment on brac s ultra poor program in bangladesh the results for the baseline and repeat survey data for the treatment and comparison groups show that such a big push does make a significant impact on graduation to the microfinance program the results are robust to correction for self selection bias social capital and awareness also play important role in their decision on ngo membership and borrowing

measuring microfinance assessing the conflict between practitioners and researchers with evidence from nepal summary what accounts for the discrepancy between microfinance impact claims of development practitioners and the far smaller impacts found in experimental studies we demonstrate in a simple theoretical framework why before and after observations of practitioners overstate microfinance impacts and why estimations in some recent randomized trials understate the average treatment effect on the treated att our empirical study uses a unique data set from eastern nepal to study the impact of microfinance in villages where microfinance did not previously exist we find that approximately three fourths of the apparent impact of microfinance observed by practitioners is an illusion driven by correlated unobservable factors

bank float mail float and the definition of money this paper argues that the true magnitude of voluntary holdings of money balances is actuallysmaller than the magnitude of conventional m1 preliminary calculations suggest that the discrepancy is quite substantial these findings force us to doubt the overall validity of traditional money demand studies that employ m1 data for empirical testing

debt in rural south india fragmentation social regulation and discrimination this micro level study combines multivariate and qualitative analyses to highlight the fragmented nature of debt in southern indian rural households it finds that debt is socially regulated in the sense that social interactions shape the cost use and access to debt caste social class and location affect how individuals borrow varying amounts from distinct money providers for varied purposes and at differing costs debt thus is not purely an economic but first and foremost a social transaction which inscribes debtors and creditors into local systems of hierarchies furthermore we find that debt is an illustration and catalyst of broader socio economic and political trends namely a lack of social protection persistent under employment and rising consumerism in terms of policy implications the study highlights the ambiguities and illusions inherent to financial inclusion policies aiming to eradicate informal debt

capital asset pricing model beta stability and the pricing puzzle of electricity transmission in brazil abstract this paper seeks to analyse and propose alternative procedures to estimate the cost of equity through the capital asset pricing model capm in the context of electricity transmission in brazil under the assumption that a stable beta is important for regulatory purposes since it provides institutional security for investors as well as fair tariffs for consumers we test different options to find the set of parameters that provides the most stable beta for the transmission sector this paper is prescriptive in nature and attempts to offer alternative options for the cost of equity estimation without changing the theoretical framework i e capm proposed by the brazilian regulator to pursue our aim we test beta stability by modifying three capm elements the risk asset the proxy for market returns and the length of the estimation window by applying robust structural break tests we show that the desirable beta stability may be reached with the use of a brazilian pure play global beta estimated with an 11 year estimation window

market access by smallholder farmers in malawi implications for technology adoption agricultural productivity and crop income abstract in malawi maize is the major crop and food staple given limited off farm employment opportunities much needed increases in household income for improving food security must come from gains in agricultural productivity through better technology and more profitable crops in the past hybrid maize and more recently tobacco were promoted by policy for increasing smallholder income an analysis of determinants of adoption of these two crops and related income effects is presented apart from factor endowment and exposure to agroecological risks differences in the household s access to financial and commodity markets significantly influence its cropping shares and farm income

consumption risk technology adoption and poverty traps evidence from ethiopia much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture with issues such as input availability knowledge and education risk preferences profitability and credit constraints receiving much attention this paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of the welfare consequences if shocks result in poor harvests building on an explicit model this is explored in panel data for ethiopia historical rainfall distributions are used to identify the counterfactual consumption risk controlling for unobserved household and time varying village characteristics it emerges that not just ex ante credit constraints but also the possibly low consumption outcomes when harvests fail discourage the application of fertilizer the lack of insurance causes inefficiency in production choices