Journal ArticleDOI
On Ethical Violations in Microfinance Backed Small Businesses: Family and Household Welfare
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In this article, the authors find that high dependency ratios in the family are correlated with such ethical violations, and also find that ethical violations have a significant economic cost, consistent with prior scholarship in family-business domain.Abstract:
The microfinance business model focuses largely on lending to the woman in the household, rather than the man. The belief is that women are more trustworthy borrowers than men, and that lending to women may have increased social impact. Yet in several cases, women do not have control over the loan backed business despite being the borrower of record. Such takeover of the business by the man constitutes an ethical violation. We find that high dependency ratios in the family are correlates of such ethical violations. Further, we also find that ethical violations have a significant economic cost, consistent with prior scholarship in the family-business domain. While access to microfinance increases household welfare, this beneficial impact reduces by over 50% in the presence of an ethical violation. Our results suggest that microfinance lenders need to move beyond the traditional role of just being a lender to providing advice on issues like family planning, and money management, and enforcement, thus moving closer to the solidarity economy paradigm of integrating savings and credit into broader canvases of social relationships and social structures.read more
Citations
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Micro-credit initiatives for equitable and sustainable development : who pays?; a case study of the Grameen Bank Program in rural Bangladesh
TL;DR: In this paper, anthropological research on the micro-credit program of the Grameen Bank shows that bank workers are expected to increase disbursement of loans among their members and press for high recovery rates to earn profit necessary for economic viability of the institution.
Integrating agency and resource dependence theory : firm profitability, industry regulation, and board task performance
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated whether organizational profitability and environmental factors (industry regulation) affect board task performance and found that past firm performance is negatively associated with board monitoring and advice tasks.
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The empirics of microfinance: what do we know?
Niels Hermes,Robert Lensink +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a large-scale systematic analysis of the trade-off between financial performance and outreach of micro-finance institutions is presented, where three empirical contributions provide new insights with respect to why and how joint liability group lending works.
Before microfinance: The social value of microsavings in Vincentian poverty reduction
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical review of the literature and case studies from the Philippines, the author suggests a value-based Vincentian approach to integrate micro-finance into community empowerment and argues that the achievement of economic self-reliance through microfinance is contingent upon the development of capacity building, social capital, and empowerment at the individual, collective, and systemic levels.
Posted Content
Considering the Concept of Entrepreneurial Resources in Ethnic Business: Motivation as a Biographical Resource?
TL;DR: In this article, the concept of motivation as an important resource for entrepreneurship is developed using theories of Anthony Giddens and Talcott Parsons and examining the biographical narratives of self-employed migrants.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Profit Orientation of Microfinance Institutions and Effective Interest Rates
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the relationship between interest rates and adopting the for-profit legal form, appointing private sector representation and traditional banking experience to advisory boards, and participating in more extensive for profit networks.
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Impact of Microfinance on Schooling: Evidence from Poor Rural Households in Bolivia
TL;DR: In this paper, the influence of micro-finance programs on a rural household's demand for schooling is identified: income growth, risk management, child-labor demand, gender empowerment, and parent information.
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The role of physical distribution services as determinants of product returns in Internet retailing
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use a large data set of customer purchases and returns to identify how process attributes in physical distribution service (PDS) influence product returns and find that the likelihood of orders being returned depends on the consistency between retailer promises of timeliness in the delivery of orders and the actual delivery performance of the orders.
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Bayesian Herders: Updating of Rainfall Beliefs in Response to External Forecasts
TL;DR: In this article, the authors test whether pastoralists in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya update their expectations in response to forecast information and find that the minority of herders who received these climate forecasts updated their expectations for below normal rainfall, but not for above normal rainfall.
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Women and Money: Lessons from Senegal
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the complexity and diversity of women's informal financial practices using data from surveys conducted in Senegal and found that these practices are at the centre of a constant dialectic between short-term and long-term horizons between the requirements of daily survival and the demands of community solidarity and between personal aspirations and collective constraints.