Economic and Business Development
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The Poor and their Money
The Microfinance revolution is usually considered to have been led by the NGOs, donor agencies, and more recently banks who offer poor people financial services. But what can we learn from the ways that poor people already manage their money? What are the essential elements that they prize so much t...
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Microfinance Self-Help Groups in India
Self-Help Groups (SHGs), a means of reaching rural women with savings and credit services, have taken off dramatically in India, where an estimated 25 million women are members. Their benefits are social as well as economic: SHGs encourage women to become active in village affairs, or take action ag...
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Fuelling Economic Growth
The private sector is playing an increasingly important role in the funding of scientific research. As public sector research declines in the countries of the north and the south, research and development carried out by the private sector becomes more important for innovations that have economic pot...
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Expanding the Frontier in Rural Finance
Despite significant innovations in rural microfinance over the years, millions of people around the world still do not have access to financial services. Can linkages and strategic alliances between formal and informal financial institutions and private firms help resolve this problem? Drawing on 12...
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Development, Divinity and Dharma
Malcolm Harper, DSK Rao, Ashis Kumar Sahu
Faith-based institutions are getting involved in economic development programmes, including microfinance, and many foreign donors are looking to religious organizations for new ways to reach the poorest people. This book considers the work of a number of these, of different faiths, and asks what is...
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Competition and Development
Competition and Development: The Power of Competitive Markets
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Producer Organisations
Small-scale producers face huge challenges in todays world. They have to adopt a market-oriented approach if they want to compete in and benefit from local and global markets. This book opens with an explanation of why collective action in the form of producer organisations is a key strategy for i...
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Village Savings and Loan Associations
While many banks and microfinance institutions provide valuable services to the poor in the developing world, they are most successful in economically dynamic urban or peri-urban areas. 30 years since the start of the microfinance revolution, poor people who live in many rural areas and urban slu...
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Building Capacity through Financial Management
Much has been written about capacity building but little on how to use financial management to build capacity. Donors are increasingly requiring their non-profit beneficiaries to have sound financial systems before they will provide funds. This guide provides an overview of financial management and...
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What's Wrong with Microfinance?
Thomas Dichter, Malcolm Harper
Microfinance has been a long-lived development fashion and in 2005 it enjoyed the accolade of a UN International Year. Many of the world's biggest multinational banks are now eagerly committing quite substantial sums to it, for business as well as public relations purposes. However, there are some i...