Browsing by Subject "Microfinance"
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Item Borrower protests and the failures of microfinance in Nicaragua(2011-12) Hollingsworth, Lora Lee; Garrard Burnett, Virginia, 1957-; Sletto, Bjorn I.For over two decades, development practitioners, scholars, and institutions have celebrated microfinance—broadly defined as the provision of small-scale financial services to the world’s poor—as an effective tool for poverty alleviation and local economic development. Critics of microfinance, however, suggest that there is little clear evidence to support the claims that microfinance lifts the poor out of poverty and fosters local economic development. In this thesis, I explore some of the challenges to microfinance in northern Nicaragua by exploring a case study of a group of borrowers who have confronted microfinance and exposed some serious problems. Since 2008, thousands of microcredit clients in Nicaragua have expressed their extreme frustration with microfinance and its detrimental effects in their lives. In this case, Nicaraguans caught up in the microfinance scheme risk losing their homes and livelihoods and falling into greater poverty. These borrowers, organized as El Movimiento de Pequeños Productores, Comerciantes y Microempresarios del Norte (the Movement of Producers, Merchants and Small Business Owners of the North), demand new terms on their microcredit debts and new client protections. I explore the reaction and the demands of these borrowers and their direct and indirect critiques of the microcredit sector, its practices and its alleged goals. I argue that the resistance of the MPCN reveals the political and economic rationale and neoliberal ideology behind microcredit as a poverty alleviation intervention, and their contestation challenges its underlying logic. These critiques and demands provide us with a foundation for rethinking the prevailing market-oriented approaches to development.Item Essays on poverty, microfinance and labor economics(Texas Tech University, 2006-08) De Silva, Sandaradura Indunil Udayanga; Rahnama, Masha; Steinmeier, Thomas L.; McComb, Robert P.This dissertation presents three essays examining some of the issues concerning poverty, microfinance and returns to education. The first essay examines the micro-level determinants and correlates of poverty, and presents a poverty profile for Sri Lanka. This is the first study that examines the probable determinants and correlates of Sri Lankan poverty in a multivariate framework employing both logit and quantile regressions. The empirical findings are broadly encouraging. The estimation results show that the education of the household head, being salary employed and being engaged in business to have a significant positive effect on the standard of living. The probability of being poor increases with the household size, household head being female, living in a rural area, and being a casual wage earner. The second essay applied recent advances in propensity score matching to assess the impact of microfinance on household per-capita income and savings. Microfinance for the poor has become a focus of attention in the development community over the last several years. To date, there has been no comprehensive investigation of their impact on household income and savings. The results for the mean impact indicate that program participation significantly increases household per capita savings for the bottom four quintiles, though the magnitude varies by matching method. Even though there are sizable gains in household per capita savings for program participants, this is not evident for household per capita income. Results suggest that there is no impact on household per capita income across all quintiles. The third essay investigates the returns to education in Sri Lankan labor market using the latest Consumer Finance and Socio-economic Survey. This essay employs the quantile regression technique for each conditional quantile wage group rather than mean regression analysis used in most labor market analysis. Quantile regression results suggest that returns to education are positive and significant across all quantiles. However, a comparison of wage returns to education between ethnic groups reveals that returns are higher for Sinhalese workers than for Tamil Workers.Item Financing smallholder agribusiness in Zambia: an economic analysis of the ZATAC model(2009-05-15) Mwanamambo, Brian NamushiThis study investigates the case of a Zambian institution providing credit for smallholder agribusiness commercialization and compares this lender?s model with the major microfinance institutions, to identify specific mechanisms employed by the lender and how these have been adapted to suit seasonal agricultural production credit requirements. Econometric models are developed to examine the influence of key economic factors such as nominal and real interest rates, loan fees, and loan term on the supply of credit by the lender. Other important factors considered relevant in the lender?s market include availability of contract markets for financed production and the type of borrower (cooperative or investor-owned agribusinesses). The study uses loan-level and firm-level loan data aggregated from an electronic loan database of individual loan files kept by the lender. Cross sectional data over three years (2005 ? 2007) are used in the study. The study finds that loan fees, loan term and availability of contract markets to borrowers are the key determinants of credit supply. In addition, the study finds that interest rates do not significantly influence the lender?s credit supply decisions, a finding that is consistent with literature on credit rationing in markets with asymmetric information. The study finds no evidence of economies of scale benefit to the lender being passed along to borrowers through lower loan fees. The study contributes to the literature and development needs of agricultural lenders and smallholder agribusinesses in Zambia through the analysis of different factors that influence the lender?s credit supply decisions.