Download or read book From Microfinance to Business Planning Escaping Poverty Traps written by Roberto Moro Visconti and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2014-06-01 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ground-breaking book shows how innovative microfinance solutions can help billions to avoid ‚poverty traps‘ and escape atavistic misery. While the success of microfinance has globally exceeded even the wildest expectations, there are still many obstacles – above all the lack of proper business planning on the side of the borrowers. Here Moro Visconti‘s important book comes to aid, offering bottom-up development strategies for micro-credit-driven startups and beyond. His forceful analysis of poverty traps and the practical guidelines given (including business plan templates as Excel sheets) are designed to help practitioners and analysts alike in understanding and reaching the true potential of microfinance.
Download or read book Poverty Traps and Microfinance written by Roberto Moro Visconti and published by Ibidem Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Microfinance is a successful financial innovation to help the poor to sort out credit exclusion, which is one of the poverty traps that prevent billions of underserved, especially women, from escaping atavistic misery. Interconnected poverty traps range from misuse of natural resources (from blood diamonds to the oil curse) to conflict traps, demographic booming, being landlocked with bad neighbors or exposed to unfreedom. Other traps concern cultural backwardness, unsafe drinking and sanitation, food shortage up to starvation, illnesses or climatic shocks, causing mass migrations and unfair globalization. Microfinance, a grass-roots movement to provide credit to the neediest, can greatly help to dismantle at least some of these poverty traps, and thousands of mostly small institutions are competing in a market where demand from the poorest for financial services is potentially unlimited - while supply is not.While the success of microfinance, often ignited by foreign aid funding, has gone beyond any expectation, enormous problems are still on the ground. The road towards what is now considered microfinance's optimal goal - maximization of outreach to the poorest, combined with financial self-sustainability - is still full of obstacles. Prof. Moro Visconti's book, covering a vacuum in the existing literature, considers state-of-the-art microfinance within a broader framework of sustainable and long-term socio-economic development. With an innovative and reader friendly approach, Moro Visconti introduces the reader to the multidimensional causes of poverty and possible remedies. A cultural approach to the poverty traps, mixing its anthropological causes with possible bottom-up remedies, including microfinance, emerges as a stunning innovation. The book aims at a broad readership from practitioners to students and academics, as well as readers simply interested in solutions to the world-wide poverty problems.
Download or read book The Economics of Poverty Traps written by Christopher B. Barrett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.
Download or read book Financial Exclusion and the Poverty Trap written by Paul Mosley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The persistence of poverty hurts us all, and attacking poverty is a major policy objective everywhere. In Britain, the main political parties have an anti-poverty mandate and in particular an agreed commitment to eliminate child poverty by 2020, but there is controversy over how this should be done. This book addresses one of the main causes of poverty, financial exclusion – the inability to access finance from the high-street banks. People on low or irregular incomes typically have to resort to loan sharks, ‘doorstep lenders’ and other informal credit sources, a predicament which makes escape from the poverty trap doubly difficult. Over the last fifteen years, a strategy of breaking down the poverty trap has been implemented, known in the UK as community development financial institutions (CDFIs), typically non-profit lending institutions focussed on the financially excluded, and seeking to learn from the achievements of microfinance around the world. Focussing on the period 2007-09, during which the UK went into a global recession, this book investigates how CDFIs work and how well they have helped low-income people and businesses to weather that recession. Based on a study of eight CDFIs in four UK cities, we ask: what ideas for overcoming financial exclusion have worked well, and which have worked badly? What can we learn from the experience of these CDFIs which can help reduce poverty in this country and globally? We assess the impact of CDFIs using a range of indicators (including income, assets, education, health) and ask what changes in policy by both CDFIs and government agencies (for example, benefits agencies) might be able to increase impact. Some of the key lessons are: CDFIs need to work with appropriate partners to build up savings capacity in their clients; the community environment is vital in determining who escapes from the poverty trap; and CDFIs can never function properly unless they learn how to control their overdue debts. This book will be vital reading for those concerned with social policy, microfinance and anti-poverty policies in industrialised countries and around the world.
Download or read book Can Microfinance Unlock a Poverty Trap for Some Ventrepreneurs written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Can Microfinance Unlock a Poverty Trap for Some Entrepreneurs written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can microcredit help unlock a poverty trap for some people by putting their businesses on a different trajectory? Could the small microcredit treatment effects often found for the average household mask important heterogeneity? In Hyderabad, India, we find that "gung ho entrepreneurs" (GEs), households who were already running a business before microfinance entered, show persistent benefits that increase over time. Six years later, the treated GEs own businesses that have 35% more assets and generate double the revenues as those in control neighborhoods. We find almost no effects on non-GE households. A model of technology choice in which talented entrepreneurs can access either a diminishing-returns technology, or a more productive technology with a fixed cost, generates dynamics matching the data. These results show that heterogeneity in entrepreneurial ability is important and persistent. For talented but low-wealth entrepreneurs, short-term access to credit can indeed facilitate escape from a poverty trap.
Download or read book Poor Economics written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics upend the most common assumptions about how economics works in this gripping and disruptive portrait of how poor people actually live. Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two award-winning MIT professors, answer these questions based on years of field research from around the world. Called "marvelous, rewarding" by the Wall Street Journal, the book offers a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty and an intimate view of life on 99 cents a day. Poor Economics shows that creating a world without poverty begins with understanding the daily decisions facing the poor.
Download or read book Can Microfinance Unlock a Poverty Trap for Some Entrepreneurs written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can microcredit help unlock a poverty trap for some people by putting their businesses on a different trajectory? Could the small microcredit treatment effects often found for the average household mask important heterogeneity? In Hyderabad, India, we find that "gung ho entrepreneurs" (GEs), households who were already running a business before microfinance entered, show persistent benefits that increase over time. Six years later, the treated GEs own businesses that have 35% more assets and generate double the revenues as those in control neighborhoods. We find almost no effects on non-GE households. A model of technology choice in which talented entrepreneurs can access either a diminishing-returns technology, or a more productive technology with a fixed cost, generates dynamics matching the data. These results show that heterogeneity in entrepreneurial ability is important and persistent. For talented but low-wealth entrepreneurs, short-term access to credit can indeed facilitate escape from a poverty trap.
Download or read book The Economics of Poverty Traps written by Christopher B. Barrett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-01-11 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.
Download or read book Why Doesn t Microfinance Work written by Milford Bateman and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its emergence in the 1970s, microfinance has risen to become one of the most high-profile policies to address poverty in developing and transition countries. It is beloved of rock stars, movie stars, royalty, high-profile politicians and ‘troubleshooting’ economists. In this provocative and controversial analysis, Milford Bateman reveals that microfinance doesn’t actually work. In fact, the case for it has been largely built on hype, on egregious half-truths and – latterly – on the Wall Street-style greed of those promoting and working in microfinance. Using a multitude of case studies, from India to Cambodia, Bolivia to Uganda, Serbia to Mexico, Bateman demonstrates that microfi nance actually constitutes a major barrier to sustainable economic and social development, and thus also to sustainable poverty reduction. As developing and transition countries attempt to repair the devastation wrought by the global financial crisis, Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work? argues forcefully that the role of microfinance in development policy urgently needs to be reconsidered.
Download or read book A Billion Bootstraps Microcredit Barefoot Banking and The Business Solution for Ending Poverty written by Philip Smith and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2007-02-23 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold manifesto by two business leaders, A Billion Bootstraps shows why microcredit is the world's most powerful poverty-fighting movement-and an unbeatable investment for your charitable donations. A Billion Bootstraps unearths the roots of the microcredit revolution, revealing how the pioneering work of people such as Dr. Muhammad Yunus-winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize-is giving hope to billions. Philanthropist and self-made millionaire Phil Smith and microcredit expert and consultant Eric Thurman provide a riveting narrative that explores how these small loans, arranged by “barefoot bankers,” enable impoverished people to start small businesses, support their families, and improve local economies. By paying back their loans instead of simply accepting handouts, men and women around the world are continually giving others the same opportunity to change their futures. Smith and Thurman also examine why traditional charity programs, while providing short-term relief, often perpetuate the problems they are trying to alleviate, and how applying investment principles to philanthropy is the key to reversing poverty permanently. A Billion Bootstraps explains how ordinary people can accelerate the microcredit movement by investing charitable donations in specific programs and then leveraging those contributions so the net cost to lift one person out of poverty is remarkably low. You'll discover how to get more for your money by donating with the mind-set of an investor and calculating measurable returns-returns that will change lives and societies forever.
Download or read book Microfinance and Poverty Reduction written by Susan Johnson and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on how financial services for poor people, particularly those dealing with very small deposits and loans (microfinance), can best be provided.
Download or read book Ending Global Poverty written by Stephen C. Smith and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger, and over ten million children die each year from preventable causes. These may seem like overwhelming statistics, but as Stephen Smith shows in this call to arms, global poverty is something that we can and should solve within our lifetimes. Ending Global Poverty explores the various traps that keep people mired in poverty, traps like poor nutrition, illiteracy, lack of access to health care, and others and presents eight keys to escaping these traps. Smith gives readers the tools they need to help people overcome poverty and to determine what approaches are most effective in fighting it. For example, celebrities in commercials who encourage viewers to "adopt" a poor child really seem to care, but will sending money to these organizations do the most good? Smith explains how to make an informed decision. Grass-roots programs and organizations are helping people gain the capabilities they need to escape from poverty and this book highlights many of the most promising of these strategies in some of the poorest countries in the world, explaining what they do and what makes them effective.
Download or read book Do Poverty Traps Exist Assessing the Evidence written by Aart Kraay and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poverty Traps written by Samuel Bowles and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.
Download or read book Microfinance an Economic Analysis of Banking to the Poor written by Samuel Wahlen and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great strides are being made in technology, medicine, and other fields, but with these advances, many people are still being left behind in poverty. The poor struggle to feed their families, work long hours for little pay, and face obstacles in educating themselves and their children. They see no end to the nightmareand they feel trapped. World leaders have responded by offering a handout rather than a hand up, which does nothing to fix the problem. In this book, youll learn why: Foreign aid to developing countries weakens democratic institutions and empowers leaders to make bad policy decisions. Small businesses serve an important role in strengthening economies in developing countries. Small business owners opt out of legal environments and choose to operate in informal sectors. Microfinance institutions offer the poor greater flexibility and opportunity than larger financial institutions. When helping the poor, the goal does not need to be unanimous economic equality, but we must provide opportunities to escape the clutches of poverty. Find out how it can be done, step by step, with Microfinance.
Download or read book Micro Credit Poverty and Empowerment written by Neera Burra and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005-11-05 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Two persistent problems that affect a significant portion of Indian women are poverty and violation of their human rights. In recent years, micro-credit has come to be viewed as a vital tool to ameliorate both conditions. However, there are few studies in the Indian context which test the validity of the assumption that there is a linear link between micro-credit, poverty reduction and women's empowerment. This volume brings together revealing case studies of micro-credit interventions made by six non-governmental and quasi-governmental bodies in five states of peninsular India, several of which have been supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)." "The six case studies are diverse in terms of their socio-economic and geo-political contexts, the nature and ideological orientation of the intermediary organizations, the groups largeted by the projects (exclusively women or men and women); and the life-spans of the projects. Despite their differences, all the studies offer useful lessons on the institutional structures and processes that do or do not facilitate women's empowerment and poverty reduction, while exploring the potential and limitations of micro-credit to achieve these twin goals. This book will be useful for students and scholars of economics, women's studies, development studies and social work, while being of equal interest to policy-makers planners, activists and NGOs."--BOOK JACKET.
