Download or read book The Handbook Of Microfinance written by Beatriz Armendariz and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2011-04-28 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Microfinance showcases an expansive collection of works from leading academics and field practitioners. In an attempt to understand the enormous gap between the limited number of clients that are currently benefiting from microfinance services, and the huge number of potential clients that are not, the selected contributions in this comprehensive handbook have one common thread: the prevailing mismatch between demand by clients of microfinance institutions and potential clients selecting themselves out for their demand for a wider array of financial products which is not being met.The scope of the book is wide, and explores successes and failures, main challenges and debates, methodologies for impact evaluation via random trials, leading trends in Asia versus Latin America, main efforts in Africa, the importance of value chains in Central America, ethical and gender issues, savings, microinsurance, governance, commercialization trends and the potential advantages and disadvantages of it. This exhaustive Handbook also features main lessons from informal finance and 19th-century credit cooperatives addressing the above-mentioned mismatch.

Download or read book Transforming Microfinance Institutions written by Joanna Ledgerwood and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006-08-30 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In response to a clear need by low-income people to gain access to the full range of financial services including savings, a growing number of microfinance NGOs are seeking guidelines to transform from credit-focused microfinance organizations to regulated deposit-taking financial intermediaries. In response to this trend, this book presents a practical 'how-to' manual for MFIs to develop the capacity to become licensed and regulated to mobilize deposits from the public. 'Transforming Microfinance Institutions' provides guidelines for regulators to license and regulate microfinance providers, and for transforming MFIs to meet the demands of two major new stakeholders regulators and shareholders. As such, it focuses on developing the capacity of NGO MFIs to mobilize and intermediate voluntary savings. Drawing from worldwide experience, it outlines how to manage the transformation process and address major strategic and operational issues inherent in transformation including competitive positioning, business planning, accessing capital and shareholders, and how to 'transform' the MFI's human resources, financial management, MIS, internal controls, and branch operations. Case studies then provide examples of developing a new regulatory tier for microfinance, and how a Ugandan NGO transformed to become a licensed financial intermediary. This book will be invaluable to regulators and microfinance NGOs contemplating institutional transformation and will be of tremendous use to donors and technical support agencies supporting MFIs in their transformation.

Download or read book Financing Micro Small and Medium Enterprises written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study evaluates the effectiveness of IFC's strategic priority of private sector development in frontier countries (high-risk and/or low-income) by supporting micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) during fiscal years (FY)1994-2006. IFC has channeled its support to MSME's by: i) indirect financing through financial intermediaries, and ii) by indirect institution-building support via specialized regional small and medium enterprise (SME) development facilities. This evaluation analyzes IFC's development results and provides recommendations on how IFC's performance can be improved in this area going forward.

Download or read book Microfinance and Public Policy written by B. Balkenhol and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-11-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Microfinance institutions (MFIs) provide a public good; if MFIs create and deepen markets where none existed before, there may be a case for public support. This book is based on a study of 45 MFIs, and applies factor analysis and cluster analysis to show that MFIs form clusters in terms of social and financial performance.

Download or read book Management Information Systems for Microfinance written by Arvind Ashta and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Microfinance is a double bottom line sector which is growing fast, making money and doing well in a variety of socially interesting ways. The growth of its institutions requires good strategies, good control systems and informed decision-making, all of which require an appropriate Management Information System (MIS). While a good MIS is needed in any sector, the management of a double bottom line requires systems which yield information on economic, financial and social metrics. The essays in this book explore the metrics required for success in this field. Communicating on these metrics may provide competitive advantage in fund-raising. Reaching out to the bottom of the pyramid requires low-cost catalytic innovations, disrupting the existing way of doing things. These necessitate not only social innovations, but also technological innovations to reduce costs drastically. The book presents various alternative ways of distributing software for microfinance, including case studies on open-source and cloud-based software, indicating how software providers are seeking to create competitive advantage. It offers a detailed analysis of the problems that are often faced and innovative techniques for implementing MIS in microfinance. This volume represents essential reading for anyone interested in learning about not only microfinance and MIS, but also social innovations and competitive advantage strategies. The contributors to the book are executives, consultants and academics who have considerable research experience in working and researching in these areas. Their work has been reviewed and developed by comments from both academics and practitioners to yield a book which is useful to students, academics and practitioners alike.

Download or read book Emerging Voices written by Huping Ling and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-30 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While a growing number of popular and scholarly works focus on Asian Americans, most are devoted to the experiences of larger groups such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Indian Americans. As the field grows, there is a pressing need to understand the smaller and more recent immigrant communities. Emerging Voices fills this gap with its unique and compelling discussion of underrepresented groups, including Burmese, Indonesian, Mong, Hmong, Nepalese, Romani, Tibetan, and Thai Americans. Unlike the earlier and larger groups of Asian immigrants to America, many of whom made the choice to emigrate to seek better economic opportunities, many of the groups discussed in this volume fled war or political persecution in their homeland. Forced to make drastic transitions in America with little physical or psychological preparation, questions of “why am I here,” “who am I,” and “why am I discriminated against,” remain at the heart of their post-emigration experiences. Bringing together eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines, this collection considers a wide range of themes, including assimilation and adaptation, immigration patterns, community, education, ethnicity, economics, family, gender, marriage, religion, sexuality, and work.

Download or read book Semantic Analysis and Understanding of Human Behavior in Video Streaming written by Alberto Amato and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Semantic Analysis and Understanding of Human Behaviour in Video Streaming investigates the semantic analysis of the human behaviour captured by video streaming, and introduces both theoretical and technological points of view. Video analysis based on the semantic content is in fact still an open issue for the computer vision research community, especially when real-time analysis of complex scenes is concerned. This book explores an innovative, original approach to human behaviour analysis and understanding by using the syntactical symbolic analysis of images and video streaming described by means of strings of symbols. A symbol is associated to each area of the analyzed scene. When a moving object enters an area, the corresponding symbol is appended to the string describing the motion. This approach allows for characterizing the motion of a moving object with a word composed by symbols. By studying and classifying these words we can categorize and understand the various behaviours. The main advantage of this approach lies in the simplicity of the scene and motion descriptions so that the behaviour analysis will have limited computational complexity due to the intrinsic nature both of the representations and the related operations used to manipulate them. Besides, the structure of the representations is well suited for possible parallel processing, thus allowing for speeding up the analysis when appropriate hardware architectures are used. A new methodology for design systems for hierarchical high semantic level analysis of video streaming in narrow domains is also proposed. Guidelines to design your own system are provided in this book. Designed for practitioners, computer scientists and engineers working within the fields of human computer interaction, surveillance, image processing and computer vision, this book can also be used as secondary text book for advanced-level students in computer science and engineering.

Download or read book Making Microfinance Work written by Craig Farren Churchill and published by International Labour Organization. This book was released on 2006 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This training manual provides an overview of the key management principles necessary to optimize the services of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and brings together useful lessons from numerous MFIs worldwide to help managers strengthen the performance of their unit, branch or institution.Either used alone, or as part of a management training course, Making Microfinance Work offers various tools and advice. The markets and marketing of MFIs are examined and looks at the different ways in which managers can communicate the value of their products and services. It introduces effective methods for enhancing efficiency and productivity which minimize the trade-offs MFIs invariably face as they try to provide services over the long term.The topic of managing risks is also covered. This manual offers strategies to prevent risk from occurring and, if it does occur, explains how to rectify the situation. Practical techniques for allocating costs and determining prices are also highlighted, as well as the importance of plans, budgets and reports. Illustrations and case studies are used to assist managers in applying the concepts outlined in the text. An extensive list of additional reading and useful Internet resources is also provided

Download or read book The Economics of Microfinance second edition written by Beatriz Armendariz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-04-23 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible analysis of the global expansion of financial markets in poor communities, incorporating the latest thinking and evidence. The microfinance revolution has allowed more than 150 million poor people around the world to receive small loans without collateral, build up assets, and buy insurance. The idea that providing access to reliable and affordable financial services can have powerful economic and social effects has captured the imagination of policymakers, activists, bankers, and researchers around the world; the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize went to microfinance pioneer Muhammed Yunis and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. This book offers an accessible and engaging analysis of the global expansion of financial markets in poor communities. It introduces readers to the key ideas driving microfinance, integrating theory with empirical data and addressing a range of issues, including savings and insurance, the role of women, impact measurement, and management incentives. This second edition has been updated throughout to reflect the latest data. A new chapter on commercialization describes the rapid growth in investment in microfinance institutions and the tensions inherent in the efforts to meet both social and financial objectives. The chapters on credit contracts, savings and insurance, and gender have been expanded substantially; a new section in the chapter on impact measurement describes the growing importance of randomized controlled trials; and the chapter on managing microfinance offers a new perspective on governance issues in transforming institutions. Appendixes and problem sets cover technical material.

Download or read book Emerging Intelligent Computing Technology and Applications written by De-Shuang Huang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-08-28 with total page 1156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book - in conjunction with the volume LNAI 5755 - constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2009, held in Ulsan, South Korea in September 2009. The 214 revised full papers of these two volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 1082 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Supervised & Semi-supervised Learning, Machine Learning Theory and Methods, Biological and Quantum Computing, Intelligent Computing in Bioinformatics, Intelligent Computing in Computational Biology and Drug Design, Computational Genomics and Proteomics, Intelligent Computing in Signal Processing, Intelligent Computing in Pattern Recognition, Intelligent Computing in Image Processing, Intelligent Computing in Communication and Computer Networks, Intelligent Computing in Robotics, Intelligent Computing in Computer Vision, Intelligent Agent and Web Applications, Intelligent Sensor Networks, Intelligent Fault Diagnosis & Financial Engineering, Intelligent Control and Automation, Intelligent Data Fusion and Security, Intelligent Prediction & Time Series Analysis, Natural Language Processing and Expert Systems, Intelligent Image/Document Retrievals, Computational Analysis and Data Mining in Biological Systems, Knowledge-Based Systems and Intelligent Computing in Medical Imaging, Applications of Intelligent Computing in Information Assurance & Security, Computational Analysis and Applications in Biomedical System, Intelligent Computing Algorithms in Banking and Finance, and Network-Based Intelligent Technologies.

Download or read book Directional Estimation for Robotic Beating Heart Surgery written by Kurz, Gerhard and published by KIT Scientific Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In robotic beating heart surgery, a remote-controlled robot can be used to carry out the operation while automatically canceling out the heart motion. The surgeon controlling the robot is shown a stabilized view of the heart. First, we consider the use of directional statistics for estimation of the phase of the heartbeat. Second, we deal with reconstruction of a moving and deformable surface. Third, we address the question of obtaining a stabilized image of the heart.

Download or read book Microfinance Institutions written by R. Mersland and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on MFI performance is still in its infancy. MFIs are hybrid organizations with dual objectives. Performance studies in microfinance are therefore less straightforward compared to performance studies in traditional banking research. This book contains new MFI performance research by top scholars from across the globe.

Download or read book Proceedings of the 5th Bi Annual Conference on Microfinance Development in Ethiopia Benshangul Assosa written by Assefa Admassie and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Economics of Microfinance written by Beatriz Armendariz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An assessment of "the microfinance revolution" from an economics perspective that draws on lessons from academia and international practice to challenge conventional assumptions.

Download or read book A Research Agenda for Financial Inclusion and Microfinance written by Marek Hudon and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can financial services, such as credit, deposit accounts, financial transfers, and insurance be provided to people in need? This challenging and complex issue has been a topic of interest for the international aid community for decades. Drawing on renowned experts in microfinance and financial inclusion, this Research Agenda sheds much-needed light on this multifaceted challenge and points the way ahead for future research.

Download or read book Inorganic Polymeric and Composite Membranes written by S. Ted Oyama and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inorganic, Polymeric and Composite Membranes: Structure-Function and Other Correlations covers the latest technical advances in topics such as structure-function relationships for polymeric, inorganic, and composite membranes. Leading scientists provide in depth reviews and disseminate cutting-edge research results on correlations but also discuss new materials, characterization, modelling, computational simulation, process concepts, and spectroscopy. Unified by fundamental general correlations theme Many graphical examples Covers all major membrane types

Download or read book Sustainability of Indian Microfinance Institutions written by Nadiya Marakkath and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although 'doing good' is our innate nature, we often get lost in the complexities and view goodness as a distant dream. Making this dream of goodness a reality is often thwarted by thoughts surrounding sustainability. Thus, all good initiatives require a focus on sustainability and this has become one of greatest and most formidable challenges faced by any social enterprise. The book documents the understanding of the sustainability of one of the most celebrated forms of social enterprise of our times — Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) gained through a mixed-methods research investigation. It attempts to answer pertinent questions such as: What are the determinant and discriminating factors for the sustainability of MFIs in India? How are these factors being managed by the operationally efficient Indian MFIs that remained sustainable at reasonable interest rates before the onset of the crisis and ceilings imposition in Indian microfinance markets? What does the Indian microfinance crisis teach us about sustainability management and mismanagement? In a nutshell, the answers show that sustainability is a strategic issue that needs managerial attention and not a matter to be left to serendipity. At a time when the industry is recovering from the adverse effects of a crisis and when there are still contentions as to whether the rate fixed by the regulator is enough for the sustenance of the MFIs, the findings mentioned in the book revive the lost hope for the Indian microfinance industry. By deciphering the strategies used by efficient and sustainable MFIs and discussing the lessons that the crisis has imparted to the Indian microfinance markets, this book will enable Indian MFIs to march towards efficient and sustainable operations without losing focus on their clients.