We are calling for comparisons of banking and banking systems from a spatial perspective. Therefore, this paper develops a classification identifying decentralized and centralized banking according to two characteristics: geographical market orientation (regional vs. supraregional) – to...

From the perspective of officials-and-directors (OADs), who are commonly appointed by the Chinese government to the banks it owns, this paper takes studies of government ownership and banks' behavior to the micro level of boards. We analyze the relationship between the special political...

The aim of this paper is to highlight a potentially very fruitful link between micro-entrepreneurs and the international capital markets. We discuss the role structured finance and credit derivatives could play in extending finance to micro-entrepreneurs on a much larger scale than today’s...

In this paper we discuss the potential for commercial microfinance in China. Particular emphasis is put on securitization of microloans and on structured microfinance in a China context. Three particular factors that we believe could support a strong growth in Chinese structured microfinance are...

A recent issue in the microfinance literature is whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) are financially sustainable without a subsidy as a prerequisite for competition policy or commercialization processes. Although some recent studies have proposed relevant theoretical frameworks, empirical...

A recent issue in the microfinance literature is whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) are financially sustainable without a subsidy as a prerequisite for competition policy or commercialization processes. Although some recent studies have proposed relevant theoretical frameworks, empirical...

From the perspective of poverty alleviation, socially relevant, or pro-poor, rural innovation is of particular interest in a country like India since it is in rural areas that most of the poor live. Pro-poor innovation in rural areas is more likely to occur through small-scale ventures and...

With this paper we seek to contribute to the literature on the relation between finance and growth. We argue that most studies in the field fail to measure the quality of financial intermediation but rather resort to using proxies on the size of financial systems. Moreover, cross-country...

Until the late 1990s, the rapid development of rural cooperative funds as semi-formal financial institutions in the countryside attracted little attention. In many provinces, these funds took over large swathes of rural finance, before the State Council in March 1999 issued a secret decree...

This paper studies optimal real estate organizational forms as a means of enhancing real estate values in the ongoing subprime crisis. We model the organizational response to stakeholder conflicts and regulatory changes to show how they evolve to an optimal form and undertake an optimal capital...