competition and microfinance abstract competition between microfinance institutions mfis in developing countries has increased dramatically in the last decade we model the behavior of non profit lenders and show that their non standard client maximizing objectives cause them to cross subsidize within their pool of borrowers thus when competition eliminates rents on profitable borrowers it is likely to yield a new equilibrium in which poor borrowers are worse off as competition exacerbates asymmetric information problems over borrower indebtedness the most impatient borrowers begin to obtain multiple loans creating a negative externality that leads to less favorable equilibrium loan contracts for all borrowers

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

social polarisation and socioeconomic segregation in a welfare state the case of oslo this paper looks at the competing theses of polarising convergence and policy related divergence in the study of socioeconomic segregation using data from oslo norway it is shown that the level of segregation has remained fairly stable or has even declined in spite of increasing income inequality this spatial stabilisation is causally related to a more flexible design in city planning and policy it is however not a development in accordance with the welfare state approach proposed by chris hamnett and some other scholars rather we observe a perverse effect where social democracy has been helped by opposition policies in consequence the paper suggests the use of models of action and the identification of closed and open processes of change

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 microcredit programs on self employment profits do noncredit program aspects matter microcredit programs provide a two tiered approach to poverty alleviation credit for the purchase of capital inputs in order to promote self employment and noncredit services and incentives these noncredit aspects may be an important component of the success of microcredit programs however because they are costly to deliver and their contribution to the success of the programs is difficult to measure they may not be properly valued this paper uses primary data on household participants and nonparticipants in grameen bank and two similar microcredit programs to measure the total and noncredit effects of microcredit program participation on productivity the total effect is measured by estimating a profit equation and the noncredit effect by estimating the profit equation conditional on productive capital productive capital and program participation are treated as endogenous variables in the analysis i find large positive effects of participation and the noncredit aspects of participation on self em

where does microfinance flourish microfinance institution performance in macroeconomic context abstract we study whether and how the success of microfinance institutions mfi s depends on the country level context in particular macroeconomic and macro institutional features understanding these linkages can make mfi evaluation more accurate and further can help to locate microfinance in the broader picture of economic development we collect data on 373 mfis and merge it with country level economic and institutional data evidence arises for complementarity between mfi performance and the broader economy for example mfis are more likely to cover costs when growth is stronger and mfis in financially deeper economies have lower default and operating costs and charge lower interest rates there is also evidence suggestive of substitutability or rivalry for example more manufacturing and higher workforce participation are associated with slower growth in mfi outreach overall the country context appears to be an important determinant of mfi performance mfi performance should be handicapped for the environment in which it was achieved

scale economies and input price elasticities in microfinance institutions abstract we evaluate the efficiency of microfinance institutions mfis using a structural approach which also captures these institutions outreach and sustainability objectives we estimate economies of scale and input price elasticities for lending only and deposit mobilizing mfis using a large sample of high quality panel data the results confirm conjectures that improvements in efficiency can come from the growth or consolidations of mfis as we find substantial increasing returns to scale for all but profitability focused deposit mobilizing mfis our results support the existence of a trade off between outreach and sustainability all inputs are inelastic substitutes but we find differences in own price elasticities in lending only and deposit mobilizing mfis

dynamic adjustment to land taxation policy neutrality and welfare implications abstract in this paper we use a dynamic three sector model to examine the neutrality and welfare effects of land income taxes we find that 1 taxes that are neutral in long run equilibrium need not be neutral in the short run 2 short run neutrality depends upon the tax treatment of development costs and losses and 3 many of the neutrality results hold under both static and rational expectations assumptions we also find that even without externality assumptions nonneutrality in the short run does not necessarily entail a welfare cost and may be welfare enhancing when agents have less than perfect foresight

microfinance and poverty evidence using panel data from bangladesh micro finance supports mainly informal activities that often have low market demand it may be thus hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of micro finance in an economy with low economic growth is modest or nonexistent the observed borrower level poverty impact is then a result of income redistribution or short run income generation the author addresses these questions using household level panel data from bangladesh the findings confirm that micro finance benefits the poorest and has sustained impact in reducing poverty among program participants it also has positive spillover impact reducing poverty at the village level but the effect is more pronounced in reducing extreme rather than moderate poverty

assessing the impact of microcredit a zambian case study expectations are high but evidence of the impact of microcredit remains in short supply this article estimates the impact of an urban credit programme in zambia on business performance and on a range of indicators of wellbeing borrowers who obtained a second loan experienced significantly higher average growth in business profits and household income inflexible group enforcement of loan obligations resulted in some borrowers especially amongst those who had taken only one loan being made worse off our methodological investigations suggest that the supply of rigorous impact studies can be increased by basing them on data collection that serves a wider range of purposes including market research

economies of scale and the optimality of rotational dynamics in forestry forest harvesting is traditionally analyzed in terms of the faustmann rotation model this paper considers the identification of optimal forest harvest regimes using jump controls this approach enables the structural assumptions of clear cut technology and identical cycles in perpetuity which are imposed in a faustmann model to be relaxed jump control models permit investigation of the biological and economic conditions which favour continuous growth management regimes as opposed to clear cut harvest regimes a numerical solution approach to the jump control model is presented the link between the harvest cost function and the optimal biomass path is analyzed economies of scale are shown to generate rotational harvest as optimal policies

microfinance and poverty in bolivia both in its institutional range and in its penetration of financial markets the microfinance sector in bolivia rivals any in the world and has played a major part in extracting the macro economy from meltdown since the mid 1980s we seek specifically to assess its impact on poverty and do this through small sample surveys on four microfinance institutions two urban and two rural using a range of poverty concepts income generated both through the borrower s enterprise and through the labour market asset holdings and diversity and various measures of vulnerability all the institutions studied had on balance positive impacts on income and asset levels with income impacts correlating negatively with income on account of poor households choosing to invest in low risk low return assets microfinance may however augment vulnerability average debt service ratios of microfinance clients are disturbingly high and if the coping mechanisms used by borrowers fail borrowers may be forced out of the

escaping car dependence in the outer suburbs of paris the outer suburbs of paris are home to a large number of low income households driven from the centre by the workings of the property market this shift could give rise to a new form of socio spatial segregation insofar as the elevated costs of mobility in such highly car dependent areas restrict and change these households mobility patterns these effects were observed in data on three groups of working people from the 2001 global transport survey however the socio spatial impact of this outward movement is significantly reduced by the residential mobility of low income households which move from the most car dependent areas to denser areas with better public transport provision the presence of social housing in these areas only partially explains these migrations these results obtained from 1999 census micro data cast doubt upon the emergence of a new form of segregation in the outer suburbs described by dodson and sipe

social polarisation in global cities theory and evidence this paper examines the debate over social polarisation in global cities it focuses on the claims made by sassen that the processes of economic change in such cities are leading to a growing polar

the effect of transport costs on housing related financial stress in australia housing related financial stress or housing stress is usually measured on the basis of income and direct housing costs such as mortgage repayments and rents one cost that is not included in calculations of housing stress but which may be important is the difference made by transport costs this paper shows how a measure of housing stress that incorporates transport costs can give a different picture of housing stress from a measure that ignores transport costs the result shows that in capital cities bringing transport costs into a housing stress measure particularly affects households with children it is also found that the impact of transport costs is even greater outside capital cities and that access to public transport may play a role in determining the spatial pattern of housing stress and hence the impact of transport cost on housing stress

performance and governance in microfinance institutions accepted version of article published in the journal journal of banking finance published version available on science direct http dx doi org 10 1016 j jbankfin 2008 11 009

social polarisation economic restructuring and welfare state regimes the central argument of this paper is that it is misconceived to view social polarisation of occupational structure and incomes in global cities as either inevitable or as a direct product of econo

taxation and rotation age under stochastic forest stand value abstract the paper uses both the single rotation and ongoing rotation framework to study the impact of yield tax lump sum tax and tax on interest rate earnings on the privately optimal rotation period when forest stand value is stochastic and forest owners are risk averse or risk neutral under risk aversion the optimal harvesting threshold is lower and therefore the expected rotation period shorter than under risk neutrality both in the single and ongoing rotation cases whether the forest owner is risk averse or risk neutral a higher yield tax a higher lump sum tax or a higher tax on interest rate earnings raise the optimal harvesting threshold numerical results indicate that the optimal harvesting threshold increases less rapidly under risk aversion than under risk neutrality with an increase in either a yield tax or the volatility of forest stand value

oil vulnerability in the australian city assessing socioeconomic risks from higher urban fuel prices global oil prices have risen markedly over the past 18 months generating considerable speculation regarding their economic and social impacts cities that are highly dependent on petroleum for urban transport are likely to be most adversely affected by rising oil prices yet there has been little recent scholarly engagement with the socioeconomic implications of increasing oil prices this paper develops a basic framework and methodology for assessing the socioeconomic oil vulnerability of australian cities the paper demonstrates that there is wide spatial variability in the vulnerability of australia s urban populations to rising fuel costs which may compound existing socio spatial divisions and speculates on some underlying causal factors the paper calls for better data and new methods to understand the issue

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

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

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

an economic analysis of forest taxation s impact on optimal rotation age because of the tax cutting mood of the general public current interest in forest taxation by legislators is high many states including washington oregon california montana north carolina georgia arkansas and texas have either recently revised or are considering changing their forest taxation laws the response from academicians however is mixed many articles by forest taxation specialists klemperer 1974 1976 1977a 1977b olson and haney 1980 pasour and holley 1976 sutherland and tedder 1979 tedder and sutherland 1979 and the published proceedings of a forest taxation symposium haney and gunter 1978 have appeared in recent years yet general tax economists have largely ignored the problem of forest property taxation as evidenced by aaron s recent study of property taxes in which forest taxation is not even mentioned 1975 at present a rigorous analysis of the impact of forest taxation on the optimal management of timber has yet to appear in the literature because of the profound influence of forest taxation on many state and local economies and on forest productivity it is important that the impact of the various taxation schemes be well understood during the process of revising the forest taxation laws this paper examines the economic impact of various forest taxation schemes on the optimal rotation age under the assumptions of both tax capitalization and tax shifting general tax economists should find taxation of forest property of interest for two reasons first commercial forest land in private ownership comprises more than 15 of the nation s total land area williams 1974 second the results of forest taxation studies apply readily to taxation of renewable resources in general currently the major types of taxes that can be imposed on a forest property may be divided into annual property taxes and harvest taxes the former include the unmodified property tax and the site value tax every year the unmodified property tax takes a percentage of the value of the land plus the value of the trees and the site value tax takes a percentage of the value of the land only still a third type of property tax called the timber tax takes a percentage of the value of the trees only every year although this tax is rarely used it is included in this study because of its theoretical importance harvest taxes include yield taxes and severance taxes at the time of harvest the yield tax takes a percentage of the stumpage value of timber and the severance tax imposes a charge per unit of timber volume harvested past studies of forest taxation have

village banking and maternal and child health evidence from ecuador and honduras abstract many microcredit institutions bundle credit with health education or other programs this paper reviews arguments on such tie ins and concludes that net benefits are possible but requires empirical testing quasi experimental data from project hope s health banks and credit only village banks are then examined the paper presents evidence that health practices do not improve automatically with greater wealth in honduras results show that health bank participation is robustly associated with reduced subsequent conditional child diarrhea probability but in no specification does credit only bank participation have this effect in ecuador results suggest a larger effect of credit only banks in both countries health bank participation significantly raises subsequent healthcare over credit only participation and at least reduces the tendency to switch from breast feeding to bottle feeding as income rises effects on expenditures are ambiguous there is no clear link between tie ins and bank performance

returns to capital in microenterprises evidence from a field experiment small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries the rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity however measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks which are likely to be correlated with capital stock the authors use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in their sample regardless of whether they apply for credit they accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in sri lanka and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous positive shock to capital stock after controlling for possible spillover effects the authors find the average real return to capital to be 5 7 percent a month substantially higher than the market interest rate they then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty

optimal taxation timber and externalities abstract the paper presents a model of the relationship between timber taxation and externalities optimal pigouvian taxation formulas are derived within this framework for common taxes a simulation model of douglas fir is used to estimate the size and direction of these effects the results show that taxation policy can have a marked impact on the production of externalities depending on tree species and land productivity

forest taxation and rotation age under private amenity valuation new results abstract this paper studies the impact of harvesting property and profit taxes on private rotation age in an ongoing rotations model where the private landowner is interested not only in the present value of harvest revenue but also in the private amenity services provided by the forest stand the main finding of the paper is that conventional wisdom about the rotation effects of forest taxes distilled from the faustmann model predominantly ceases to hold this is because forest taxes distort the relative profitability of timber and amenity production in a way that is sensitive to the precise nature of amenity valuation therefore the design of forest tax policy necessitates good knowledge of the landowner s objective function concerning the type of amenity services

social segregation housing tenure and social change in dutch cities in the late 1980s contemporary debates about social polarisation and divided cities emphasise common influences on social and economic change in cities the development of a global economy and of global influences on both market systems and on public policy regimes encourages an expectation that there is a convergence in processes and policies affecting cities and a convergence in outcomes in terms of increasingly similar patterns of polarisation and division this paper considers data from britain and the netherlands relating to changes in the housing sector and to social segregation and indicates that emerging patterns are very different socio tenurial polarisation and social segregation are not as marked in the netherlands as in britain and are not changing as fast the discussion arising from these data suggests that concern with globalisation and common influences on change should be balanced with a recognition of the importance of other factors in determining the pattern and pace of change in cities within this it is important to recognise not just differences in housing finance and policy but the degree of social and income inequality and the wider functioning of the welfare state

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

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

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

human and financial capital for microenterprise development evidence from a field and lab experiment microenterprises constitute an important source of employment and developing such enterprises is a key policy concern in most countries but what is the most efficient tool for microenterprise development we study this question in a developing country context tanzania where microenterprises are the source of employment for more than half of the labor force and we report from a field experiment that jointly investigated the importance of a human capital intervention business training and a financial capital intervention business grant using data from three survey rounds a lab experiment and administrative records of the microfinance institution we present evidence on business performance management practices happiness business knowledge and noncognitive abilities our study demonstrates strong effects of the combination of the two interventions on male entrepreneurs while the effects on female entrepreneurs are much more muted the results suggest that long term finance is an important constraint for microfinance entrepreneurs but that business training is essential to transform financial capital into productive investments our study also points to the need for more comprehensive measures to promote the businesses of female entrepreneurs data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2014 1933 this paper was accepted by john list behavioral economics

investment and harvest strategies of the finnish forest sector under different forest tax policies a differential game approach with computer based decision aid abstract this study deals with the simultaneous solution of the investment harvest and taxation problems of the finnish forest sector these strategic questions involve competitive and contradictory interests among forestry the forest industry and society we build a computer based decision aid to support a decision maker who wants to analyze the consequences of different forest tax policies it is essential to this computational approach that only minor mathematical manipulations are needed to produce equilibrium open loop nash harvest and investment strategies moreover as a differential game approach it allows us to study the tax incidence we solve our model under three alternative tax policies lump sum unit and yield taxes