a subsector approach to small enterprise promotion and research abstract this paper introduces a diagnostic research methodology designed to help target small enterprise development efforts in less developed countries it argues that research should focus on commodity specific subsectors which include the competing channels and supporting input and output linkages of small firms using this approach analysts can improve their understanding of small enterprise dynamics interventions that may promote them at low cost and policies that constrain small firm growth

information transmission cournot and bertrand equilibria we examine how incentives for two duopolists to honestly share information change depending upon the nature of competition cournot or bertrand and the nature of the information structure while in earlier papers uncertainty is about an unknown common demand intercept in the present paper uncertainty is about unknown private costs the different information structure reverses the incentives to share information while with unknown common demand sharing is a dominant strategy with bertrand competition and concealing is a dominant strategy with cournot competition with unknown private costs sharing is a dominant strategy with cournot competition and concealing is a dominant strategy with bertrand competition

cournot oligopoly with information sharing this paper studies the incentives for information sharing among firms in a cournot oligopoly facing a linear uncertain demand and an affine conditional expectation information structure no information sharing is found to be the unique equilibrium in two cases in which the signals with equal precision are assumed indivisible and infinitely divisible however the nonpooling equilibrium converges to the situation where the pooling strategies are adopted as the amount of information increases hence the efficiency is achieved in the competitive equilibrium as the number of the firm become large

interest organizations and distributive politics small business subsidies in mexico summary politicians often use distributive programs to build and maintain electoral linkages with interest organizations this project analyzes the factors that lead mexican state governments to allocate distributive benefits to small business organizations sbos rather than directly to entrepreneurs or to other groups theoretically i address how electoral threats to the ruling party shape the incentives of politicians to deliver benefits to core and non core interest organizations using an original dataset of decentralized small business subsidies i deploy a novel subnational design comparing states governed by parties with different relationships to sbos facing different levels of electoral threat i find that electoral competition shapes politicians incentives for incorporating organizations in distributive spending governors from the pro small business pan increase allocations to sbos when they are electorally strong while governors from the centrist pri allocate more to these organizations when they face an electoral threat case studies provide additional evidence that ruling politicians allocate benefits to sbos when linkages with these groups contribute to their most pressing electoral objectives

an approach to poverty alleviation for large international development agencies abstract this essay explores the nature of the poverty alleviation problem from the perspective of international development funding agencies these agencies have been poorly structured to promote the interests of the poor agencies such as the world bank and the us agency for international development usaid can achieve better results by creating independent units devoted exclusively to poverty alleviation these units should immerse their staff more completely in local societies with lower pay scales and longer tours of duty a revised form of cost benefit analysis around which these units should orient their work is presented previous analyses of poverty alleviation opportunities and failures have neglected funding agency influences

the distribution of wealth measurement and models abstract analysts debating the consequences of a policy change for the wealth distribution may come to different conclusions because of different views about how the distribution should be defined and measured or about the processes determining the distribution the aim of this survey is to provide an analytical framework within which such conflicts may be assessed the first part of the paper discusses conceptual issues in the definition of wealth and compares methods of deriving estimates of wealth distribution the second and larger part of the paper surveys lifecycle and intergenerational models of the distribution of wealth including a discussion of the role played by inheritance the presentation is largely theoretical indeed one of the paper s conclusions is that empirical modelling of the wealth distribution is under developed at least for the purposes of addressing many topical policy issues

does redistribution reduce inequality the steady state effect on inequality of linear redistributive schemes based on the taxation of earnings inheritances or some combination of the two is examined dynasties that exhibit asexual reproduction and altruism are modeled earnings ability which may be correlated across generations is exogenous and drawn from a stationary distribution taxing inheritances increases inequality by reducing the intergenerational averaging of luck in an example paying out the tax revenue in uniform transfers typically does not reverse this result taxing lifetime wealth or income adds a lump sum tax on earnings making redistribution more successful however this success is sensitive to the relative size of mean earnings and inheritances

information sharing in oligopoly the truth telling problem while under some circumstances information sharing in oligopoly may be beneficial the literature ignores the possibility of strategic information sharing by assuming verifiability of data i endogenize the incentives for truthful information sharing and prove that if firms have the ability to send misleading information they will always do to overcome this problem i introduce a costly mechanism through which the firm will in its own best interest reveal the true value of its private information even though outside verification is impossible i show that in some cases benefits from information sharing exceed the signalling costs while in other cases the reverse is true the fact that i model a two sided signalling enables me to mitigate the signalling cost problem rather than burning money oligopolistic rivals may exchange transfer payments thereby significantly reducing signalling costs

home or overseas an analysis of sourcing strategies under competition motivated by the recent backshoring trend this paper studies a sourcing game where competing firms may choose between efficient sourcing e g sourcing from overseas and responsive sourcing e g sourcing from a home country efficient sourcing usually provides a cost advantage whereas responsive sourcing allows a firm to obtain more accurate demand information when making procurement decisions by characterizing the equilibrium outcome we find some interesting results driven by the strategic interaction between the firms first a firm may still use efficient sourcing in equilibrium even when the cost advantage associated with efficient sourcing does not exist this is because the firm can dampen competition by reducing the correlation between its own demand information and the competitor s second a cost hike in efficient sourcing e g the rising labor cost in asia may benefit all the firms in the industry the reason is that the cost hike may alleviate competition by inducing a new equilibrium sourcing structure this paper also sheds some light on the recent backshoring trend first our analysis indicates that more firms will shift from efficient sourcing to responsive sourcing in equilibrium i e backshore if the market size shrinks the demand becomes more volatile or the sourcing costs rise simultaneously second a firm s backshoring behavior reduces the competition on the cost dimension but it also has an ambiguous informational impact on the other firms in the market in particular some firms may benefit from increased correlation of their demand information under cournot competition with substitutable products overall the backshoring behavior can be beneficial to all the firms sticking to their original sourcing strategies under certain conditions this paper was accepted by martin lariviere operations management

strategic information management under leakage in a supply chain the importance of material flow management for a profit maximizing firm has been well articulated in the supply chain literature we demonstrate in our analytical model that a firm must also actively manage information flows within the supply chain which translates to controlling what it knows as well as what its competitors and suppliers know in our model of horizontal competition between an informed and an uninformed firm with a common upstream supplier material and information flows intersect through leakage of demand order information to unintended recipients as a result the informed firm s drive to control information flows within the supply chain can trigger operational losses through material flow distortion these losses can be so severe that the firm may prefer not to acquire information even when it is costless to do so our results underscore the importance of strategic information management actively managing the supply chain s information flows and making trade offs with material flows where appropriate to maximize profits

institutional development the world bank and india s new agricultural extension programme the new world bank sponsored and funded training and visit system of agricultural extension represents a major attempt by the bank to promote institutional development the very considerable investment has in fact resulted in little change or improvement in the quality of extension the reasons lie in failure to analyse the cause of the weakness of the previous extension systems inherent defects of the training and visit system and the way in which it has been introduced into india these failures in turn can be explained by the interests and the politics underlying the programme

poverty in south asia abstract south asia faces a difficult challenge in alleviating absolute poverty besides a sustained labour intensive employment oriented strategy of economic growth a direct assault on poverty is needed in addition to redistribution of land the political feasibility of which is very limited poverty alleviating measures in south asia are classified into three types a system of subsidized food distribution creation of assets mainly through credit targeted towards the poor for self employment and public employment schemes on public works projects among the conditions governing their success are widely based public support accurate identification of the poor and strong local government capable of implementing technically sound and economically efficient projects

exchange of cost information in oligopoly when do oligopolists gain by sharing their private information about their costs with one another what are the social welfare effects of such information exchange i study these questions by comparing the oligopolists expected profits under a cost sharing agreement with their expected profits in the bayesian equilibrium that would arise without cost sharing i also analyse the firms decisions to form a trade association to share their cost data under conditions of linear demand and cournot behaviour industrywide information exchange is the unique point in the core of the trade association membership game the exchange of cost data increases expected profits and welfare but reduces expected consumer surplus cost sharing increases efficiency by raising the market shares of lower cost firms and reducing the variability of aggregate output consumer surplus is diminished however because the variance of output is reduced and consumer surplus is a convex function of output

contracting and information sharing under supply chain competition we investigate contracting and information sharing in two competing supply chains each consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer the two supply chains are identical except they may have di

research note cost uncertainty is bliss the effect of competition on the acquisition of cost information for pricing new products we examine the optimal acquisition of information about a common uncertain cost factor by two competing firms seeking to price a new product we show that existing findings regarding the acquisition of demand information or the acquisition of either cost or demand information related to quantity decisions do not extend to this case for cost information with price competition the information acquisition strategies are strategic substitutes even though the price decisions that are based on the information are strategic complements competition decreases the expected value of cost information moreover when competition is intense and the cost of information low identical firms do not acquire the same amount of cost information even when information is free cost uncertainty acts like a fog that lessens the destructive effect of price competition when products are close substitutes and thus increases expected profits buyers on the other hand are better off when competing firms are informed about cost even though the expected value of cost information strictly decreases with competition the optimal price for industry specific cost information set by an information vendor increases with competition when the firms products are sufficiently substitutable

microenterprise credit programs deja vu abstract microenterprises in low income countries are the target of an increasing number of credit programs these efforts resemble earlier problematic attempts to assist operators of small farms with credit similarities discussed include target group definition assumptions policies and project justifications authors go on to list a dozen lessons from the experience with small farmer credit that might apply to microenterprise credit efforts authors then conclude that debt is not an effective tool for helping most poor people to enchance their economic conditions be they operators of small farms or microenterprises

the triple c approach to local industrial policy abstract in both developed and developing countries there is mounting evidence that clustering and networking help small and medium sized manufacturers to raise their competitiveness the role of public policy in this process is less clear the european experience suggests that local and regional government can play an important role equally if not more interesting experiences can be found in developing countries their analysis constitutes the core of this paper the lessons can be summarized as the triple c which stands for customer oriented collective and cumulative

sex differences in access to a small enterprise development fund in peru abstract in an attempt to ensure that the direct benefits of an urban small enterprise project were reaching women the industrial bank of peru undertook a study of the constraints to women s access to a major credit program it had initiated in the squatter settlements pueblos jo venes of lima the study found that the low proportion of women among the program s borrowers was not due to more women being rejected when they applied for loans but to the fact that few women applied high collateral requirements and complicated application procedures deterred women from applying those women who did apply received smaller loans than men and were concentrated in garment manufacture services and commerce taking these factors into account the authors make recommendations for ways to enhance women s participation in the credit scheme and similar small enterprise programs in the developing countries

strategizing niceness in co opetition the case of knowledge exchange in supply chain innovation projects abstract in this paper we take a novel approach to address the dilemma of innovation sharing versus protection among supply chain partners the paper conducts an exploratory study that introduces factors affecting a firm s optimum supply chain innovation strategy we go beyond the conventional prisoners dilemma with its limiting assumptions of players preferences and symmetry to explore a larger pool of 2 2 games that may effectively model the problem after classifying firm types according to collaboration motive and relative power we use simulation to explore the effects of firm type opponent type and payoff structure on repeated innovation interactions or equivalently long term relations and optimality of niceness surprisingly we find that opponent type is essentially irrelevant in long term innovation interactions and focal firm type is only conditionally relevant the paper contributes further by introducing reciprocation of strategy type nice versus mean showing that reciprocation is recommended while identifying and explaining the exceptions to this conclusion

collective efficiency growth path for small scale industry this study is concerned with the growth of small local industry in developing countries and explores one particular route for understanding and fostering such growth it focuses on the clustering of firms and the competitive advantage which they derive from local external economies and joint action captured in the concept of collective efficiency following a conceptual discussion the article explores the economic and institutional conditions which enhance or hinder collective efficiency this includes a case study which suggests that responding to opportunity and crisis requires shifting from mere reliance on external economies to joint action and from ascribed to earned trust

information value under demand uncertainty and endogenous market leadership in an oligopoly model with firms choosing to produce in one of two periods we identify the circumstance under which a firm s having early information regarding stochastic demand results in market leadership high demand volatility leads to stackelberg competition with the information advantaged firm leading in the n firm case an equilibrium with multiple leaders and multiple followers emerges endogenously in a duopoly information acquisition game we identify conditions that determine whether neither one or both firms will pay to acquire early information and note that one firm s obtaining early information may generate a positive externality benefitting its competitor both symmetric and asymmetric outcomes are possible and stackelberg market leadership may occur in equilibrium but only when firms have different costs of information our finding that an information advantage may convey leadership which then affects the value of information to the players applies to other settings exhibiting first mover advantage such as certain public good provision games jel c72 d82 l13

linking agricultural development to school feeding in sub saharan africa theoretical perspectives abstract this paper takes as a starting point the proposition that social protection interventions involving food can be used to promote transformational change in family farming systems in sub saharan africa the purpose is to highlight the complexity of pathways to agricultural transformation associated with the seemingly simple idea of home grown school feeding hgsf an idea that is increasingly held up as win win by reviewing the hgsf literature and the main theories underpinning it structured demand localism family farmer development we expose areas of inconsistency across the literature and programmes as well as possible tensions that may arise in attempting to pursue both market and social objectives in the same initiative the arguments presented herein aim to provide a basis for moving towards clarity on 1 a theory of change for hgsf programmes 2 the conditions under which hgsf programmes are more able to yield positive agricultural development outcomes and 3 an agenda for moving forward on research and impact evaluation this research agenda also speaks more broadly to important under researched areas within the general social protection and agricultural development discourse

duopoly information equilibrium cournot and bertrand abstract in a duopoly model where firms have private information about an uncertain linear demand it is shown that if the goods are substitutes not to share information is a dominant strategy for each firm in bertrand cournot competition if the goods are complements the result is reversed furthermore the following welfare results are obtained 1 i with substitutes in cournot competition the market outcome is never optimal with respect to information sharing but it may be optimal in bertrand competition if the products are good substitutes with complements the market outcome is always optimal 2 ii bertrand competition is more efficient than cournot competition 3 iii the private value of information to the firms is always positive but the social value of information is positive in cournot and negative in bertrand competition

asymmetric information acquisition and behavior in role choice models an endogenously generated signaling game the authors employ a static homogeneous good duopoly model wherein firms can choose to produce in one of two periods the model allows agents to acquire information and then traces the impact of the information pattern on subsequent production behavior asymmetric information acquisition leads to a unique production role choice pattern the informed uninformed firm chooses to assume the leader s follower s role moreover if information is costly the typical equilibrium involves only one firm acquiring information thus identical firms with identical opportunities choose to become asymmetrically informed and produce sequentially this is the unique refined equilibrium outcome copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

simulating the transmission of wealth inequality via bequests abstract this paper develops calibrates and simulates a dynamic 88 period olg model to study the intergenerational transmission of u s wealth inequality via bequests the model features marriage realistic fertility patterns random death assortative mating based on skills heterogeneous skill endowments heterogeneous rates of return skill inheritability progressive income taxation and resource annuitization via social security all bequests arise from imperfect annuitization nonetheless the model generates a realistic ratio of aggregate wealth to aggregate labor income a realistic bequest flow relative to the stock of wealth and a realistic wealth distribution at retirement skill differences assortative mating social security and the time preference are the primary determinants of wealth inequality bequests do propagate wealth inequality but only in the presence of social security which disproportionately disinherits the lifetime poor intergenerational wealth immobility also considered here is primarily determined by the inheritance of skills from one s parents and the magnification of the impact of this inheritance by marital sorting

trust in a rent seeking world health and government transformed in northeast brazil abstract this article draws lessons from a set of innovative programs carried out by a state government in brazil now widely acclaimed for excellence in public management key to the high performance was strong worker commitment to the job and what the state did to elicit a topic of little note in the development literature but of central importance in the literature of industrial performance and workplace transformation in the industrialized countries the state created an unusual sense of calling among the program s workers new prestige in the communities where they worked and an informed citizenry that both monitored the workers and trusted them

the role of intergenerational transfers in aggregate capital accumulation this paper uses historical u s data to directly estimate the contribution of intergenerational transfers to aggregate capital accumulation the evidence presented indicates that intergenerational transfers account for the vast majority of aggregate u s capital formation only a negligible fraction of actual capital accumulation can be traced to life cycle or hump savings a major difference between this study and previous investigations of this issue is the use of more accurate longitudinal age earnings and age consumption profiles these profiles are simply too flat to generate substantial life cycle savings this paper suggests the importance of and need for substantially greater research and data collection on intergenerational transfers life cycle models of savings that emphasize savings for retirement as the dominant form of capital accumulation should give way to models that illuminate the determinants of intergenerational transfers

participation social capital and intersectoral problem solving african and asian cases abstract cooperation in policy program implementation between state and nongovernmental actors can sometimes solve intractable development problems but such cooperation must span gaps in culture power resources and perspective this article provides a comparative analysis of 13 cases of intersectoral cooperation among public agencies nongovernmental organizations grassroots groups and international donors the analysis reveals two successful implementation patterns nongovernment organization ngo mediated cooperation and grassroots centered cooperation different forms of social capital are central to the two patterns indigenous ngos with credibility across sectors are critical to the former while grassroots organizations are vital to the latter participatory decision making and mutual influence are essential to grassroots centered cooperation but less so for ngo mediated collaboration

strategic inventories in vertical contracts classical reasons for carrying inventory include fixed nonlinear production or procurement costs lead times nonstationary or uncertain supply demand and capacity constraints the last decade has seen active research in supply chain coordination focusing on the role of incentive contracts to achieve first best levels of inventory an extensive literature in industrial organization that studies incentives for vertical controls largely ignores the effect of inventories does the ability to carry inventory influence the problem of vertical control conversely can inventories arise purely due to incentive effects this paper explicitly considers both incentives and inventories and their interplay in a dynamic model of an upstream firm supplier and a downstream firm buyer who can carry inventories in our model none of the classical reasons for carrying inventory exists however as we prove the buyer s optimal strategy in equilibrium is to carry inventories and the supplier is unable to prevent

on the distribution of wealth and intergenerational transfers we develop a simple behavioral model of intergenerational transfers with individuals being subject to uncertainty about their children s incomes individuals differ with respect to innate ability and to wealth transfers they receive at birth the distributions of total wealth of total income and of their components are uniquely determined from the equilibrium distribution of intergenerational transfers for which existence and uniqueness are proven for a particular utility function and provided that earned income follows a stable law we show that so do all endogenous distributions intergenerational transfers are relatively more equally distributed than earnings capital income and lifetime wealth

implications of breach remedy and renegotiation design for innovation and capacity amanufacturer writes supply contracts with n buyers then the buyers invest in innovation and the manufacturer builds capacity finally demand is realized and the firms renegotiate the supply contracts to achieve an efficient allocation of capacity among the buyers the court remedy for breach of contract specific performance versus expectation damages affects how the firms share the gain from renegotiation and hence how the firms make investments ex ante the firms may also engage in renegotiation design inserting simple clauses into the supply contract to shape the outcome of renegotiation for example when a buyer grants a financial hostage to the manufacturer or is charged a per diem penalty for delay in bargaining the manufacturer captures the gain from renegotiation tradable options which grant buyers the right to trade capacity without intervention from the manufacturer return the gain from renegotiation to the buyers this paper proves that under surprisingly general conditions the firms can coordinate their investments with the simplest of supply contracts fixed quantity contracts this may require renegotiation design and certainly requires that the firms understand the breach remedy and set their contract parameters accordingly

uncertain lifetime the annuity market and estate taxation abstract this paper extends traditional studies of estate taxation to allow for the possibility that taxpayers may avoid the burden of the estate tax by strategically timing bequests to their children in this model the lifespan of the individual is uncertain and bequests can be left either in the middle or at the end of the lifespan bequests are subject to the estate tax only when they are left upon death it is shown that the effects of the estate tax depend on the ability of the individual to make intra vivos gifts which in turn is affected by the existence of a competitive annuity market

signaling new product reliability with after sales service contracts prior studies on performance based contracting pbc for after sales services have highlighted its advantages over traditional resource based contracting rbc when products are established and their reliability is known to all parties we develop a game theoretic model to investigate how these insights are affected when the vendor is privately informed about the reliability of a newly developed product a novel feature of our model is the interaction between reliability signaling private information and the vendor s discretionary investment in spares inventory private action which arises naturally in the setting we consider we find that this interaction leads to contrasting equilibrium outcomes under the two contracts rbc induces the vendor to focus on inventory savings leading to underinvestment in spares whereas pbc induces the vendor to focus on reliability signaling achieved through overinvestment in inventory as a result neither contract is efficient we investigate two means to mitigate this inefficiency but either approach has caveats a making inventory verifiable removes the trade off between reliability signaling and inventory investment but results in diverging contract preferences between the vendor and the buyer b pooling inventories across multiple buyers saves inventory costs but it also hinders reliability signaling potentially exacerbating inefficiency this paper was accepted by yossi aviv operations management

experimental evidence of pooling outcomes under information asymmetry operational decisions under information asymmetry can signal a firm s prospects to less informed parties such as investors customers competitors and regulators consequently managers in these settings often face a trade off between making an optimal decision and sending a favorable signal we provide experimental evidence on the choices made by decision makers in such settings equilibrium assumptions that are commonly applied to analyze these situations yield the least cost separating outcome as the unique equilibrium in this equilibrium the more informed party undertakes a costly signal to resolve the information asymmetry that exists we provide evidence however that participants are much more likely to pursue a pooling outcome when such an outcome is available this result is important for research and practice because pooling and separating outcomes can yield dramatically different results and have divergent implications we find evidence that the choice to pool is influenced by changes in t

the family inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of inequality unequal inheritance of material wealth is commonly considered a major cause of inequality in consumption however theoretical models of the intergenerational transmission of inequality by becker blinder and ishikawa imply that unequal inheritance may either increase or reduce consumption inequality differences in inherited wealth resulting from unequal parental incomes increase inequality in recipients consumption however unequal bequests caused by differences among families in the endowed ability of children or the costs of producing human capital are equalizing empirical results confirm these predictions the inheritance received by children is inversely related to both children s income and parental education thus bequests are compensatory in that ceteris paribus low income children inherit more than their advantaged contemporaries

managing credit for the rural poor lessons from the grameen bank abstract this paper based on a detailed study of the grameen bank in bangladesh suggests that the credit policies of the bank do not constitute a sufficient explanation for the bank s success and that its acclaimed policy of replacing individual collateral with group guarantee is in fact not practiced the paper presents an alternate explanation for the success of the grameen bank in addition it explains how the grameen bank has been able to overcome typical problems of implementing development programs by sustaining good performance from its large work force and keeping to a minimum the tendency of a few target beneficiaries to corner program benefits and flout organizational norms for their personal benefit

bequests taxation and the distribution of wealth in a general equilibrium model this paper examines the role of bequests and of taxation on bequests for the distribution of wealth we investigate a model with overlapping generations and heterogenous households where parents derive utility directly from their bequests we obtain all results analytically using the coefficient of variation as the measure of inequality bequests per se diminish the inequality of wealth since they raise private savings and hence average wealth holdings more than the variance of wealth from a policy perspective taxing bequests and redistributing government revenue lump sum among the young generation further decreases wealth inequality

growth constraints on small scale manufacturing in developing countries a critical review abstract the question raised in this review is whether small scale producers in developing countries can expand or whether they are up against constraints which stunt their growth most of the literature has been optimistic on this score while internal constraints e g lack of managerial ability or external constraints e g discrimination from government are identified expansion is seen as an open ended process in other contributions this view has been severely criticized some allege that the small producers are exploited through various mechanisms others suggest that their road to expansion is blocked as a result of factors such as the pre existence of very advanced technology the control of large firms over product markets or difficulties in access to raw materials in discussing the arguments put forward in the debate an attempt is made to assess their theoretical bases and examine the extent to which they are supported empirically while most studies express explicitly or implicitly a definite view on the growth potential of small producers such judgement is rarely based on a comprehensive examination of the context which determines this potential

too close for comfort the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations abstract in promoting a new policy agenda bilateral and multilateral donor agencies are keen to finance nongovernmental organisations ngos and grassroots organizations gros on the grounds of their economic efficiency and contribution to good governance this paper reviews the impact of this trend on ngo gro programming performance legitimacy and accountability if finds that much of the case for emphasizing the role of ngos gros rests on ideological grounds rather than empirical verification in addition though the evidence is inconclusive there are signs that greater dependence on official funding may compromise ngo gro performance in key areas distort accountability and weaken legitimacy

what ever happened to poverty alleviation abstract the failure of many programs directed toward alleviating poverty is better understood than the successes this paper identifies the traits that characterize several better performing programs funded by the ford foundation traits that are not commonly found in such programs all focused narrowly on a particular trade or activity in the beginning used credit as an entry point started by brokering loans rather than lending directly and had leadership linked to powerful institutions participants were already engaged in the economic activities supported by the programs marketing channels existed and powerful consumer groups were often in favor of production by beneficiary groups though these findings seem obvious few programs funded by donors display these characteristics suggesting that donors choose programs and organizations more carefully and not limit their funding to the nongovernmental sector

small firms and their helpers lessons on demand abstract small enterprise se programs are currently the rage because of their potential to create employment they are typically supply driven providing standardized training technical assistance credit but most cases of se based growth have involved demand driven support provided by large customers firms traders government agencies state enterprises this article argues that such inherently customized support constitutes a better way to deliver services to ses and is more likely to stimulate sustained se growth with respect to se favoring procurement by government in particular we show that this can be done without running up against the problems of similar attempts in the past and in a way that also reduces the costs of running government we draw for illustration from a successful case of se favoring procurement in the brazilian state of ceara

from ascribed to earned trust in exporting clusters abstract this paper is concerned with the role of trust in export manufacturing it asks how trust has developed in two industrial clusters which are located in developing countries and export most of their output to north america and europe the main conclusion is that trust was based initially on socio cultural ties between clustered firms and later on conscious investments in inter firm relationships