Political economy approaches to analysing the efficiency of rural financial markets have focused on the role of power and social relations. Neo-classical institutional economics, on the other hand, has used information and transaction costs to explain performance. Recognizing the limitations of...

An examination of the factors that determine Canadian union density reveals long-run decline in union membership growth. A stock-flow accounting analysis decomposes union membership growth into net growth due to "recognition" and net growth due to "economic and other" factors. These components...

This paper looks beyond the direct impact of microcredit provision on users to examine whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) have had wider impacts within the local financial markets in which they are operating. It considers the potential for both competition and demonstration effects on...

Union recognition procedures are about to be reformed in the U.K. Current legislative reform proposes automatic certification. Business prefers mandatory representation votes. Will the choice of union recognition procedure affect certification success? This paper provides empirical evidence on...

Cross-section time-series analysis of nine Canadian jurisdictions over nineteen years is used to identify the effect of mandatory votes/card check on certification success. The results indicate that mandatory votes reduce certification success rates by approximately 9 percentage points below...

This paper is based on work conducted by Imp-Act - a three-year action-research programme aiming to improve the quality of microfinance services and their impact on poverty. Learning from the experiences of 30 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in four continents, Imp-Act is developing and...