Published research on credit counseling and mortgage termination is surprisingly scarce, despite substantial growth in this industry. While the purpose of counseling is to assist low-income borrowers to improve their handling of debt and thereby reduce default, counseling may also improve the...

Published research on credit counseling and mortgage termination is surprisingly scarce, despite substantial growth in this industry. While the purpose of counseling is to assist low-income borrowers to improve their handling of debt and thereby reduce default, counseling may also improve the...

Research on financial constraints of very small firms is scarce because it is difficult to observe and measure their transactions. Previous studies on small enterprises in post-communist countries have focused either on the effect of financing constraints on business growth (Budina et al., 2000,...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/27/04.

This paper posits that deforestation and poverty levels are related through an inverted-U shape --the environmental Kuznets-- curve and that access to credit shifts this curve downwards, thus positively impacting natural resource uses. This hypothesis is tested using a household panel data set...

Over the past decade, the repressive legal and regulatory environment in transition economies has received considerable attention in the literature. In Russia, this framework has resulted in an environment in which rules and regulations govern almost all aspects of economic activity. The...

A competing risks model is implemented to establish the influence of cash flow-based counseling on mortgage loan repayment by rural and urban low-income households. Data from 405 counseled and non-counseled clients are used to test hypotheses about the effectiveness of counseling, duration of...

This paper presents and interprets descriptive statistics generated from data obtained in a survey of clients of five microfinance organizations believed to be among the best in Bolivia. These lenders represent different combinations of organizational design, lending technology, and market area...

This paper focuses on the difficulties inherent in the prudent management of growth of microfinance organizations and on potential limits to the increased efficiency, profitability, and sustainability expected from growth and large size. The paper addresses both positive and negative...