This article considers the policy and regulatory environment for microfinance in Asia. It identifies eleven criteria for 'good practice' in policy and regulation, covering the policies of governments and donor agencies to support microfinance; the regulation of non-bank microfinance institutions;...

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has recently recognized the phenomenon of “financial exclusion” in its member economies, in consequence of a realization of the need to deal with the “losers” in the globalization process. With leadership from Mexico in 2002, APEC considered...

This fourth paper, in a series on the theme of the informal economy, considers the extent to which premodern trade in Melanesia constituted any preparation for engagement with the market. It reviews explanations of trade and exchange in 'aboriginal' societies, from Adam Smith in the eighteenth...

This paper considers the idea of informality in market exchange, as introduced into the economic development literature by Keith Hart in the 1970s. In addition to Hart (1971, 1973) it will discuss three writers who may be considered his intellectual forerunners. Each, to a greater or less...

The expression subsistence affluence is a catchphrase for certain perceptions of reality in Papua New Guinea, and after 50 years it still actively conditions opinions of the country (even though its population has trebled in the meantime). The paper examines antecedents of the concept in the...

This paper is concerned with the accommodation to the market economy of Tolai people, indigenous to the Gazelle Peninsula in Papua New Guinea and regarded as one of the most prosperous and enterprising groups in the country. 'The market' was introduced to Tolai by German (and later, Australian)...

his is the third in a series of papers concerned with the intellectual history of the 'informal economy' and its relevance to current concerns in Papua New Guinea (PNG; the eastern half of the island of New Guinea). Proceeding from the observation that monetized informal economic activity in PNG...