strategic and regulatory approaches to increasing women in leadership multilevel targets and mandatory quotas as levers for cultural change while substantial evidence is emerging inter nationally of positive increases in the participation of women on company boards there is less evidence of any significant change in the proportion of women in senior executive ranks this paper describes evidence of positive changes in the number of women on boards in australia unfortunately these changes are not mirrored in the senior executive ranks where the proportion of women remains consistently low we explore some of the reasons for these disproportionate changes and examine the likely effect of the recent amendments to the australian stock exchange s corporate governance code designed to improve gender diversity both on boards and throughout organisations based on the early corporate response to these regulatory changes it is interesting to consider whether australia s approach in promoting voluntary self regulation at the corporate level may be as effective in the long run as the emerging trend in europe to apply legislated quotas for female corporate board representation interview evidence is presented suggesting that the primary reasons for the lack of women in leadership are not simply lack of opportunity at the apex of the corporation but issues at mid management level that are unlikely to be resolved by mandatory board quotas in some circumstances carefully monitored voluntary targets may be more effective at promoting cultural and strategic change at the heart of the corporation in summary mandatory quotas set through hard law usually with sanctions for noncompliance may achieve early and significant results in terms of female board representation however voluntary targets for women s participation on boards and in executive ranks proposed in soft regulation such as corporate governance codes and set as part of corporate strategy may promote more effective cultural and practical change in support of greater representation of women in leadership

women leaders and social performance evidence from financial cooperatives in senegal how do women leaders such as board members and top managers influence the social performance of organizations this paper addresses the question by exploiting a unique database from a senegalese network of 36 financial cooperatives we scrutinize the loan granting decisions made jointly by the locally elected board and the top manager assigned by the central union of the network our findings are threefold first female dominated boards favor social orientation second female managers tend to align their strategy with local boards preferences third the central union tends to assign male managers to female dominated boards probably to curb the boards social orientation

women as policy makers evidence from a randomized policy experiment in india this paper uses political reservations for women in india to study the impact of women s leadership on policy decisions since the mid 1990 s one third of village council head positions in india have been randomly reserved for a woman in these councils only women could be elected to the position of head village councils are responsible for the provision of many local public goods in rural areas using a dataset we collected on 265 village councils in west bengal and rajasthan we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved village councils we show that the reservation of a council seat affects the types of public goods provided specifically leaders invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of their own genders

vive la difference social banks and reciprocity in the credit market social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non economic i e social ethical and environmental criteria to investigate the behavior of social banks on the credit market this paper proposes both theory and empirics our theoretical model rationalizes the idea that reciprocity can generate better repayment performances based on a unique hand collected dataset released by a french social bank our empirical results are twofold first we show that the bank charges below market interest rates for social projects second regardless of their creditworthiness motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit terms by significantly lowering their probability of default we interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market

the empirics of microfinance what do we know microfinance has received a lot of attention recently both from policy makers as well as in academic circles two of the main topics that have been hotly debated are explaining joint liability group lending and its implications for reducing information asymmetries and the trade off between the financial sustainability and outreach of microfinance programmes this feature contains three novel empirical contributions providing new insights with respect to why and how joint liability group lending works it also contains the first large scale systematic analysis of the trade off between financial performance and outreach of microfinance institutions

microfinance and poverty a macro perspective we test the hypothesis that microfinance reduces poverty at the macro level using cross country and panel data which are constructed by the microfinance information exchange data on microfinance institutions mfis and the world bank data taking account of the endogeneity associated with mfis loans we show that a country with higher mfis gross loan portfolio per capita tends to have lower levels of poverty indices contrary to recent micro evidence our results suggest that microfinance significantly reduces poverty at macro level and thus reinforce the case for channeling funds from development finance institutions and governments of developing countries into mfis

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

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

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

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

unsubsidized microfinance institutions this paper starts from the observation that 23 of the world s microfinance institutions mfis manage without subsidies we examine how unsubsidized institutions cope with their social mission overall the lack of subsidies worsens social performances however our results show that strategies to achieve financial self sufficiency differ substantially across regions african and asian mfis compensate for non subsidization by charging higher interest rates in eastern europe and central asia unsubsidized mfis find it more suitable to target less poor clients unsubsidized latin american mfis tend to reduce their share of female borrowers

adverse incorporation and microfinance among cross border traders in senegal summary this paper highlights the relevance of adverse incorporation as a neglected theoretical approach to debates on microfinance through a case study of cross border traders in senegal although women s organizations do not exclude even the poorest women traders in remote areas were unable to access credit due to particularly harsh standards of joint liability and adverse relations with donors lenders and elite women meanwhile the peer monitoring function of group microcredit schemes is challenged by the fact that traders are strikingly uncritical of defaulting borrowers findings highlight the detrimental consequences of donors misconceptions regarding women s organizations and economic activities

rural women s access to credit market imperfections and intrahousehold dynamics summary credit rationing studies carried out at the household level and based on responses from male heads of households present an incomplete and biased assessment of who is likely to be constrained why they are constrained and what is the extent of the constraints they ignore possibly conflictive intrahousehold dynamics and assume that imperfections in rural financial markets are gender neutral this paper addresses both issues theoretically and empirically the semi cooperative household model developed for this analysis formalizes the conditions under which spouses and particularly women s individual access to credit can be affected by their own position in the financial market as well as by intrahousehold dynamics these notions are then explored empirically using husbands and wives individual perceptions of their access to credit in rural paraguay the most significant empirical findings of the paper are that i compared to men women are more likely to be credit constrained ii women s rationing status responds to a different set of factors than men s and iii husbands may choose not to intermediate capital to their wives even when they are able to do so results from this exercise provide empirically sound support for the assumptions underlying women targeted credit programs

empirical assessment of energy price policies the case for cross price elasticities abstract evaluations of energy price policies are necessarily based on measures of the substitution of energy and non energy inputs facing a variety of substitution elasticities the central question arises which measure would be appropriate apparently for a long time this question has not been at issue allen s elasticities of substitution aes have been the most used measures in applied production analysis this paper s main contribution is an instructive survey of the origin of substitution measures and of the trinity of empirical substitution elasticities aes cross price elasticities and the morishima elasticities of substitution mes with particular emphasis on their interpretations and the perspectives that will be captured by these measures this survey clarifies why classical cross price elasticities are to be preferred for many practical purposes berndt and wood s rev econom stat 57 1975 259 frequently applied data set of us manufacturing is used to illustrate why assessments of energy price policies would be better based on cross price elasticities like the energy price elasticity of capital rather than on aes or mes

the governance of corporate sustainability empirical insights into the development leadership and implementation of responsible business strategy this article explores how corporate governance processes and structures are being used in large australian companies to develop lead and implement corporate responsibility strategies it presents an empirical analysis of the governance of sustainability in fifty large listed companies based on each company s disclosures in annual and sustainability reports we find that significant progress is being made by large listed australian companies towards integrating sustainability into core business operations there is evidence of leadership structures being put in place to ensure that board and senior management are involved in sustainability strategy development and are then incentivised to monitor and ensure implementation of that strategy through financial rewards there is evidence of a willingness to engage and communicate clearly the results of these strategies to interested stakeholders overall there appears to be a developing acceptance amongst large corporations that efforts towards improved corporate sustainability are not only expected but are of value to the business we suggest that this is evidence of a managerial shift away from an orthodox shareholder primacy understanding of the corporation towards a more enlightened shareholder value approach often encompassing a stakeholder orientated view of business strategy however strong underlying tensions remain due to the insistent market emphasis on shareholder value

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

are women better bankers to the poor evidence from rural microfinance institutions microfinance institutions mfis provide financial services to the poor and in many ways resemble both banks and non profit organizations many mfis target women because more women than men are poor especially in rural areas studies show that women manage money differently from men and have different leadership styles thus in credit unions and financial firms female and male managers achieve different results in microfinance gender diversity on the board of mfis is beneficial and loans authorized by female loan officers have lower default rates motivated by these findings we ask whether mfis with a female chief executive officer ceo are more efficient at serving the poor without jeopardizing financial sustainability we adapt the banking approach to managerial in efficiency to account for the outreach and sustainability goals of the mfis and evaluate whether mfis outreach efficiency differs by the gender of their respective ceos we estimate a stochastic frontier cost function using the battese coelli 1995 model and the true random effects estimators using panel data from over 250 mfis we find that mfis with female ceos have significantly higher outreach efficiency than mfis with male ceos similar results are found with a two step stochastic frontier approach overall the results suggest that promoting gender diversity at the top levels of mfi management is likely to have both social and financial benefits

organizational considerations in the evaluation of capital assets toward a resource based view of strategic investment by firms during the last three decades sophisticated techniques for analysis of market investment have been developed by financial economists at the same time however concepts and methods for analysis of resource allocation within firms have lagged behind market theory the analysis of investment within firms has been based primarily on applications of economic theory that exhibit serious weaknesses the special problems associated with analysis of investment in firms have become an important concern of strategic management recent resource based approaches to strategy have developed valuable insights into the limitations of economic analysis of the firm although the resource based work has not yet provided formal methods comparable to the capital asset pricing model it has made important progress in building foundations for an alternative analysis of economic organization this paper explores weaknesses in the financial economic analysis of the firm and examines alternative perspectives in the work on resource based strategy the paper focuses on problems associated with use of market models such as the capm for capital allocation within firms working from basic premises of transaction cost economics the paper identifies important flaws in financial economic techniques for defining hurdle rates for capital projects the paper discusses underlying logical problems associated with the application of market theory to complex organizations and examines ways that alternative approaches to resource allocation have begun to evolve within the field of strategic management

subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs evidence from brazil this paper estimates the impact of loan officer subjectivity on microcredit granting by exploiting an exceptionally detailed database from a brazilian microfinance institution the loan officers collect field data meet with applicants and make recommendations to the credit committee which has the final say on both loan approval and loan size ls the loan officer s subjectivity is captured through gender bias our estimations indeed show subjective gender gap in ls this gap is almost exclusively attributable to loan officers we interpret this finding as evidence that despite monitoring and wage incentivization microcredit officers let their subjective preferences interfere with loan granting we conclude by suggesting alternative means to curb subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs

a study of codes of ethics for mexican microfinance institutions most scholarly interest in codes of ethics or conduct has focused on traditional companies little is known about the codes of social enterprises or hybrid organizations such as microfinance institutions mfis our paper provides a comparative case study of the codes of a mexican microfinance network and seven mfis using the corporate integrity model we analyze the content of mfis codes compared to those of traditional organizations we then examine to what extent some specific features of mfis such as their mission target group and applied credit methodologies are factors that determine the content of their code we find that mfis codes like those of traditional companies include traditional stakeholder principles nevertheless they put greater emphasis on socially oriented principles or on terms such as people and common good mfis codes differ with respect to the items they include and exclude and the size of the covered sections we also find that these codes attempt to address prevailing concerns in microfinance but rarely tackle two critical debates namely levels of interest rates and of profitability we finally argue that it is difficult to move toward a global code owing to regional disparities and the variety of organizational models and missions