En fournissant des services financiers aux pauvres et aux exclus du système bancaire traditionnel, la microfinance remplit une mission sociale et de développement tout en étant ancrée dans le secteur marchand. Cette ambivalence lui confère un statut atypique parmi les instruments de l'aide au développement. Elle bénéficie ainsi de soutiens fiscaux, financiers et réglementaires, tout en gardant une autonomie relative à l'égard des États et des bailleurs de fonds. Pour éclairer ce mode singulier de gouvernance, ont été examinées les interactions entre des acteurs publics et privés, à buts lucratifs et non lucratifs. Celles-ci portent notamment sur la définition de standards, codes de conduite, bonnes pratiques, chartes, labels, procédures d'audit, mesures de performance et autres critères visant à encadrer l'activité de ce secteur. L'objectif consistait à démontrer qu'au-delà de leurs spécificités techniques, les normes qui prescrivent ou évaluent l'action des IMF constituent le support de conceptions distinctes de ce qu'est et de ce que doit être la microfinance. Au travers de l'étude des référentiels qui sont venus encadrer la dimension financière, puis sociale, de ce champ mondialisé, cette thèse explicite ainsi les structures d'autorité qui l'organisent.

L’offerta di servizi di microcredito da parte di istituzioni di microfinanza contribuisce ad aumentare l’accesso al credito di una clientela rurale ed accrescere l’efficienza dei mercati locali del credito? Questo studio prova a rispondere alla precedente domanda attraverso lo sviluppo di un modello teorico e l’analisi empirica sulla base di dati raccolti in un villaggio dell’Etiopia. In un mercato finanziario duale (formale/informale), il modello teorico indica che, nonostante non tutti i membri dell’ accordo informale ottengano un microcredito dall’intermediario formale, ogni membro dell’istituzione informale ne beneficia. Infatti, i membri che si trovano in condizione di deficit finanziario beneficiano direttamente di maggiori risorse derivanti dal prestito mentre gli altri membri godono di vincoli di partecipazione meno stringenti. Inoltre, quando il tasso di interesse sui prestiti formali si riduce, aumenta sia l’utilità dei prenditori di fondi che quella di tutti gli altri membri dell’istituzione informale. Gli intermediari formali sottraggono mercato alle istituzioni informali in una misura che dipende dall’ammontare del microcredito e dal tasso di interesse. I dati raccolti nel villaggio rurale etiope confermano solo parzialmente le considerazioni teoriche. In primo luogo, a causa di un diverso ammontare e di una diversa scadenza dei prestiti formali rispetto a quelli informali, nel villaggio i due mercati sembrano complementari. In secondo luogo, l’approccio del prestito di gruppo sembra replicare gli stessi processi di monitoraggio e selezione delle istituzioni informali e pertanto le famiglie a basso reddito rimangono vincolate nell’accesso al credito. In conclusione, se le istituzioni di microfinanza volessero operare con successo nelle aree rurali, dovrebbero, per prima cosa, studiare i processi di selezione dei membri all’interno delle istituzioni informali e, per seconda cosa, offrire una più ampia gamma di prodotti finanziari oltre al credito, come ad esempio prodotti di risparmio e prodotti assicurativi. / Does the provision of formal microcredit increase access to credit of rural clients and efficiency of credit markets? This study tackles this question through the development of a theoretical model and an empirical analysis in an Ethiopian village. In a dual (formal/informal) financial market, the theoretical model suggests that when some members of the informal arrangement get a formal loan, all members benefit from it. The agents who have a current deficit have greater financial resources whereas the agents who have an expected future deficit enjoy looser participation constraints. Furthermore, when the interest rate charged on formal loans decreases, the utility of not only borrowing members but all members in the arrangement increases. Besides, the formal market crowds out the informal market to some extent as long as the formal loan size increases or the interest rate decreases. Evidence from the rural village in southern Ethiopia only weakly confirms the theoretical results because of two reasons. First, due to different size and maturity of loans, the formal microcredit services and the informal risk sharing arrangements appear to be complements in the local market. Second, the group lending approach seems to replicate the same selection and monitoring processes of the informal arrangements and the low-income households remain constrained in their access to credit. Therefore, MFIs that want to operate successfully in rural areas should, first, make an assessment of self-selection processes in the informal arrangements and, second, provide a wider range of financial products besides credit, such as savings and insurance products.

Over the last decades the topic of microfinance as a method to alleviate poverty has been debated to a large extent in the academic literature. In India, the method of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) is today widespread among Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and has been proven to empower women economically and socially. Alongside, NGOs have increasingly directed their efforts towards more long-term development strategies, in which knowledge has gained a larger attention as a component to sustainable development. Even though literature from different research streams has confirmed that there is a need for effective knowledge transfer between NGOs to reach and empower the female end beneficiaries in the NGO-sector, few theoretical attempts have been made to understand the organizational dynamics behind knowledge transfer in an NGO-context. That is why we wished to further understand knowledge transfer in an NGO-context. Our purpose is to explore what it is that makes knowledge become transferred throughout an NGO-chain in order to reach the end beneficiaries. To answer the research question of what variables affect knowledge transfer throughout the actors in an NGO-chain and what factors determine these variables, a case study was conducted on an NGO-chain working towards SHGs in Uttarakhand, Northern India. Interviews have been conducted with leaders and staff of one foreign and one local NGO and two focus groups have been held with participants of SHGs. The findings show that several of the variables that research within knowledge management previously have found, including trust, communication, organizational culture and absorptive capacity, do have an influence on the transfer of knowledge throughout the NGO-chain. Furthermore, the variables networks, relationships, and organizational strategy were also shown to impact the outcome of the knowledge transfer. Moreover there are several factors in the intra-organizational and inter-organizational dynamics of the NGO-chain that determine whether each variable has an inhibiting or enabling effect on knowledge transfer.

Abstract Sanitation coverage in the Republic of Panama is 5 to 10 percent below the Millennium Development Goals targets set for the country. Population growth, urbanization, unplanned development and waste mismanagement have resulted in improvised trash sites and waste discharges into river systems that are important components of the biologically diverse natural environment of Panama. The study sought to investigate and estimate the burden of waste from domestic and agricultural sources in three regions of the Chilibre corrigimiento (district). It was hypothesized that the water quality and land cover data would reflect that the most populated region in the study sample (Region 2) would have more water quality violations than the adjacent background and attenuation regions (Region 1 and Region 3) in the study sample. The results supported that Region 2 had the most water quality violations -- particularly at the CHIL 3 monitoring station. Based on the results the most appropriate best management practices (BMPs) were recommended for the household, community, watershed, and regional level waste management in the study region. Future research will look determine the effectiveness of microfinance programs in bolstering sanitation-based entrepreneurship in Chilibre and across Panama.

No description available.

This thesis examines the varied and contradictory ideas about rural women and their needs that are produced and circulate within development discourses and projects. It pays particular attention to the multiple actors involved in the production of such ideas and the relations of power that determine which ideas gain authority. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Kullu District of Himachal Pradesh, India, it looks at women's participation in three different development projects: a women's savings and credit group, a broad-based development NGO, and the women's village organizations (mahila mandals ). These case studies demonstrate how development organizations engage with local gender meanings, often working to reinforce or even exploit inequalities, rather than challenge them. As women are targeted by such projects, they creatively receive, shape, and negotiate the ideas and representations that they encounter about themselves. These encounters limit, and sometimes foster, women's potential for new political identities and agency.

Après une synthèse des principales avancées en microfinance, la thèse offre un aperçu sur les institutions de microfinance (Imf) dans les pays en développement entre 2000 et 2009. Une étude approfondie du marché de l'Afrique Subsaharienne est également proposée. Elle sert de prélude à l'analyse économétrique des déterminants des performances financière et sociale des Imf dans cette région ainsi qu'à l'examen des arbitrages entre les deux objectifs. Le modèle est également estimé avec les données de l'Amérique Latine et Caraïbes afin de tester, entre autres, sa robustesse spatiale. Les résultats montrent que malgré la forte croissance affichée, les Imf demeurent fragiles à cause des retards de paiement et de la faible rentabilité. En outre, il n'existe pas de modèle universel de la microfinance sans spécificités régionales. La commercialisation du secteur est remise en cause car même si elle ne s'accompagne pas nécessairement d'une déviation de la mission sociale, elle n'améliore pas la performance financière. Enfin, la richesse du secteur provient de sa segmentation alors que sa faiblesse est due à son manque d'organisation, avec une concurrence se traduisant par une recrudescence des risques au lieu d'une diversification des produits.

Financial inclusion is a measure of the ability of a population to make use of financial services. High rates of financial inclusion in a country are empirically correlated with high levels of economic development in that country; low rates of financial inclusion are correlated with low levels of development. Thus, policy makers are generally agreed that one method to increase economic development is to increase the level of financial inclusion. Not all attempts to increase financial inclusion are successful. Initiatives to improve financial inclusion can fail when policy makers or financial service providers have incorrect perceptions about financial inclusion. They may have incorrect perceptions about the purposes and beneficiaries of financial inclusion, or incorrect perceptions about how technology can encourage financial inclusion. This thesis investigates the perceptions of Pakistani bankers about financial inclusion in Pakistan. A survey of 125 Pakistani bankers was conducted. The results of the survey show that while bankers want to improve financial inclusion, they have perceptions that limit their effectiveness in reaching this goal. First, bankers’ perceptions of the actual financial inclusion levels in the country are higher than generally accepted empirical measures. Second, their perceptions about the reasons for financial exclusion are limited to socio-economic factors like low income and education of people. Finally, they have limited appreciation of the role that technology can play in elevating the level of financial inclusion. Bankers show more interest in customer-facing technology than in back-end technical infrastructure, thus limiting the scalability and interoperability of their systems. Our guidance to policy makers is to address these perceptual problems through education and through government-backed technical infrastructure programs, thus better enabling the banking industry to improve financial inclusion in Pakistan.

The aim of this study is to determine the extent to which the UN/OSCAL (United Nations Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and the Least Development Countries) model of microfinance is being applied in the South African context, its scope for application and recommendations for implementation. The hypothesis is that, the better South African microfinance initiatives conform to the model, the more successful it will be in fulfilling the ultimate mission of microfinance which is to supply financial services to the poor by cutting the cost of outreach with beneficial effects on poverty..

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No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis_Published_AScott_Final.pdf: 1182445 bytes, checksum: ff9680ec17f7d8a4c995ecaf718d646f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-01-19 / Ever since microfinance gained popularity in the United States in the early 1990s, American microfinance institutions (MFI) have been trying to figure out how microfinance fits in the American financial system. Initially, the U.S. bought into microcredit’s theory of change as a financially self-supporting vehicle to help the poor exit poverty (Where Credit is Due, 2015), however structural challenges in the U.S. economic system make microfinance difficult for scale, like that seen in developing countries. In 2012, for example, the U.S. microfinance industry served over 361,000 people with a total loan volume of $366 million, while in Brazil - a country of comparable population, for example - served over 3 million people with a volume of $2.5 billion (FIELD, 2012; Microfinance Information Exchange, 2016). When it comes to microfinance specifically for housing in the U.S., the sector is virtually non-existent. This is largely a result of the U.S. debt-heavy model, which discourages progressive housing construction in favor of requiring the client to buy the entire house upfront. Consequently, most research has discarded microfinance as a viable option for housing purchase in the U.S., resulting in a lack of analysis on using it for a more targeted market in home improvements and repairs. The key assumption this paper makes is that the housing microfinance (HMF) repair market might be more financially sustainable in the U.S. due to both the smaller dollar value, relative to home purchase, and the high and reoccurring need for repair that is unlike microloans to businesses. This paper maps the barriers to scaling the microfinance industry in the U.S., as it pertains to home maintenance and improvement for low-income households. It uses the American city of Baltimore as the context for analysis, due to the city’s high need for housing repair and large percentage of residents with limited access to finance. Analysis relies on qualitative interviewing of both lenders and borrowers, concluding that microlending for housing repairs can only be financially sustained with private and public partnership. What Baltimore demonstrates is that HMF, unlike microloans for businesses, is impacted by subsidized interest rates due to government and philanthropic priorities in housing, which prioritize affordability over financial sustainability. Further research is needed on extending microcredit to small landlords for rental properties, since the need and impact on the poor is greater. / Desde que as microfinanças ganharam popularidade nos Estados Unidos no início da década de 1990, as instituições de microfinanças americanas (MFI) têm tentado descobrir como as microfinanças se encaixam no sistema financeiro americano. Inicialmente, os EUA aderiram à teoria da mudança do microcrédito como um veículo financeiramente autossustentado para ajudar os pobres a sair da pobreza (Where Credit is Due, 2015), porém, os desafios estruturais dificultam a expansão, como os países em desenvolvimento. Em 2012, por exemplo, a indústria de microfinanças dos EUA serviu a mais de 361 mil pessoas, com um volume total de empréstimos de US$ 366 milhões, e no Brasil – por exemplo, um país de população comparável – atendeu mais de 3 milhões de pessoas com um volume de US$ 2,5 bilhões (FIELD, 2012; Microfinance Information Exchange, 2016). Quando se trata de microfinanças especificamente para habitação nos EUA, o setor é praticamente inexistente. Isso é em grande parte resultado do modelo de dívida pesada dos EUA, que desencoraja a construção progressiva de moradias em favor de exigir que o cliente compre a casa inteira antecipadamente. Consequentemente, a maioria das pesquisas descartou o microfinanciamento como uma opção viável para compra de moradia nos EUA, resultando em uma falta de análise sobre como usá-lo para um mercado mais direcionado em melhorias e reparos em casa. O pressuposto-chave deste artigo é que o mercado de reparo de microfinanças habitacionais (HMF) pode ser mais financeiramente sustentável nos Estados Unidos devido ao menor valor em dólar, em relação à compra de imóveis, e à alta e recorrente necessidade de reparo que é diferente dos microcréditos para empresas. Este artigo mapeia as barreiras à expansão da indústria de microfinanças nos EUA, uma vez que se refere especificamente à manutenção e melhoria de domicílios para famílias de baixa renda. A cidade americana de Baltimore é usada como o contexto para a análise devido à grande necessidade de reparo de moradia que a cidade possui, além da grande porcentagem dos residentes com acesso limitado ao financiamento. A análise baseia-se em entrevistas qualitativas de credores e mutuários para traçar um contexto de mercado diferenciado, concluindo que o microcrédito para reparos de moradias só pode ser sustentado financeiramente com a parceria privada e pública. São necessárias pesquisas adicionais para estender o microcrédito aos pequenos proprietários de imóveis alugados, uma vez que a necessidade e o impacto sobre os pobres são maiores.