Producer Organisations

Chris Penrose-Buckley

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...

Building Capacity through Financial Management

John Cammack

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...

Village Savings and Loan Associations

Hugh Allen, Mark Staehle

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...

Conversations with Practitioners

Guy Winship

This is a collection of interviews with leading microfinance practitioners and specialists discussing the challenges facing microfinance institutions as they attempt to become more market-oriented, competitive and sustainable. It was written by a recognised leader in the field on the basis of extens...

Digital Poverty

Hernan Galperin, Judith Mariscal

This book represents the first publication of the Regional Dialogue on the Information Society (REDIS-DIRSI), a regional network of leading researchers concerned with the creation and dissemination of knowledge that supports effective participation in the Information Society by the poor and marginal...

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...

Implications of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)

Practical Action South Asia has been initiating research and advocating policy from a pro poor perspective on attempts to reform the electricity and water sectors, as well as in studying the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements with specific focus on General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS...

Policy Entrepreneurship for Poverty Reduction

Julius Court, Simon Maxwell

International development is characterized by a concern for praxis, the union of theory and practice. But bridging research and policy is harder than it looks. This book focuses on two key questions: What factors affect the influence research has on policy and practice in international development?...

Modelling the Impact of Trade Liberalisation

Lance Taylor

This hard-hitting research report presents a rigorous critique of the most widely used trade models based on computable general equilibrium (or CGE) models. The authors present concise analytical arguments explaining the fundamental weaknesses of typical CGE models. They show that these models tend...

The State They're In

Matthew Lockwood

Two years on from the Gleneagles G8: What has been achieved? What has changed? In July 2005 the first edition of Matthew Lockwood’s The State They’re In asked the key questions of the moment: What are the roots of poverty in Africa and what should now be done about it? How can a better understanding...