In developing countries, microfinance has been the darling of the development community, and in developed countries, microfinance fits well with Third Ways ideas. What are the challenges and opportunities for the attempt to replicate microfinance in the United States? This paper attempts to...

Microfinance—both credit and savings—has potential to improve the well- being of poor women in developing countries. This paper explores practical ways to achieve that potential. Based on lessons from informal saving mechanisms that women already use, the paper proposes two savings services...

In the next ten years, advocates of microfinance organizations (MFOs) will seek more than $20 billion to provide small loans to 100 million of the poorest families worldwide. In the United States, the newest federal budget proposes a 159-percent increase in the about $200 million spent per year...

We propose that asset accumulation occurs in three stages. In the first stage (reallocation), current resource inflows must exceed current outflows. To meet this objective, people reallocate resources from current consumption, current leisure, or future consumption or leisure. In the second...

Microenterprise programs attempt to help poor people start or strengthen small businesses. Funding and political support has grown rapidly. Is microenterprise a good use of scarce development funds? Unfortunately, most evaluations have been case studies in what not to do. Because benefits and...

Wide agreement about the goal of microfinance--to improve the welfare of the poor--has not led to wide agreement about how best to achieve that goal. To aid discussion, I propose a framework for outreach--the social benefits of microfinance--in terms of six aspects: worth, cost, depth, breadth,...

Attempts to gauge the depth of outreach of microfinance organizations usually start--and often end--with the measurement of loan size. But just what is loan size? Loan size has at least seven aspects, each of which matters not only for depth of outreach but also for profitability. The aspects...

This paper develops a proxy measure of the inequality of influence on the basis of survey evidence from 2002 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) conducted among 6,500 firms in 27 transition countries. We refer to the resulting inequality as crony bias in the political...

Based on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) of firms in transition countries, which unbundles corruption to measure different types of corrupt transactions and provide detailed information on the characteristics and performance of firms, we find that: i)...

En vue de concorder avec les objectifs imposés par la conjoncture économique actuelle, conciliant globalisation et régionalisation, les pays méditerranéens ont décidé de contourner leurs différends au profit d’une coopération Nord-Sud. A cet effet, un partenariat liant 27 pays des...