How to lend like mad and make a profit: A micro‐credit paradigm versus the start‐up fund in South Africa

In current debates about micro‐credit, joint‐liability schemes are often viewed as the only viable way to non‐collateralised lending, and are thus seen as almost synonymous with micro‐credit. This article reports about an alternative, non‐participatory approach to micro‐credit. Prompted by the apparent inability of group credit schemes to reign in lending costs, the article sets out the institutional requirements for cheap, ‘mass‐produced’ credit. It argues that such credit can be viable if mechanisms are in place enforcing the self‐selection of potential borrowers and self‐motivation of existing borrowers. The analysis of a ‘mass‐minimalist’ micro‐credit institution from South Africa supports the argument.     

Factors impeding credit use in small‐farm households in Bolivia

Sample survey data show few Bolivian small‐farm households using credit, but most would like to borrow from formal market institutions. A theoretical framework is developed to formulate testable hypotheses to identify factors that inhibit credit use. Major impediments to borrowing are scale of operations, as measured by amount of useable land, and borrower's transactions costs that arise from loan paperwork, use of Indian language, remoteness from market, little education and low degree of market integration. When farmers with these characteristics borrow they tend to use informal market sources because of the lower transactions costs compared to those of formal market lenders. The policy implication is if formal market lenders are to reach more farmers they must lower transactions costs.     

Farm‐to‐market transaction costs and specialisation in small‐scale agriculture: Explorations with a non‐separable household model

Using an integrated household model with endogenous transaction costs, this article illustrates how, even in the absence of risk, the tension between gains from specialisation and corresponding increases in transaction costs may lead to enterprise diversification on small farms. A numerical example illustrates that this tension may contribute to the prevalence of inter‐cropped cash‐crops on small farms, in apparent disregard for foregone yield and income from greater specialisation involving pure‐stands. By implication, measures that augment households’ abilities to override trading costs may be critical complements to efforts seeking to raise productivity and incomes in small‐scale agriculture via increased specialisation.     

An inquiry into quasi‐credit contracts: The role of reciprocal credit and interlinked deals in small‐scale fishing communities

The use of currency depreciation as a means of strengthening the balance of payments has long been a contentious issue amongst developing countries, especially in their negotiations with the IMF. This article reviews the various ways in which depreciation might exert its impact. A study of the empirical evidence suggests that it may be both an effective and cost effective instrument in many developing countries, even though exceptions do exist. Compared with alternative balance of payments policies, use of the exchange rate emerges as possessing many advantages. It is concluded that greater emphasis should be placed on the exchange rate in the context of IMF programmes than has perhaps been the case in recent years.     

Productivity performance and priorities for the reform of China's state‐owned enterprises

This study reports on the results of a survey of 300 state‐owned, collective and foreign‐funded industrial enterprises conducted in three of China's coastal provinces; Guangdong, Fujian and Shanghai‐shi in 1993.’ Its major focus and policy relevance is to identify which of China's recent enterprise, market and ownership reforms have been most effective in improving the productivity performance of China's state owned enterprises. The study concludes that productivity growth (measured by total factor productivity) has been significantly higher for non‐state‐owned than for state‐owned enterprises and for firms located in the special economic zones of Shenzhen and Xiamen and the open city of Guangzhou than for firms in the more centrally planned Shanghai. Export‐orientated enterprises also had higher total factor productivity growth than non‐export‐orientated ones. At a lower level of significance, enterprises that controlled their own decision‐making produced a lower proportion of output for the plan, procured a higher proportion of their investment finance from loans (rather than budgetary allocations) and achieved higher total factor productivity growth. Finally, labour‐intensive industries in general had higher total factor productivity growth than did capital‐intensive ones. A number of policy conclusions may be drawn from these results.     

Directed credit and investment in small‐scale industry in India: Evidence from firm‐level data 1965–78

Panel data on 788 modern sector Indian firms during 1965–78 are used to analyse the link between the size of a firm and its financial environment. Exogeneity tests reveal that large firms with improved investment prospects could obtain external finance at the margin, but that small firms could not. The policy of directing bank credit accordingly relaxed a binding constraint on small firms, raising investment. Assuming that all of the rise in the credit‐sales ratio in small firms was policy‐induced then so was about one third of the 170 per cent rise during 1965—78 in their investment—sales ratio.     

Measuring trade strategy in the presence of non‐tradeables: Theory and some evidence for the Caribbean

This article models trade policies in the presence of non‐tradeables, and investigates trade strategy interventions and outcomes where the price of non‐tradeables endogenously adjusts to trade interventions. Trade regime bias and neutrality issues are examined within a three‐sector, open economy model. The theoretical framework is operationalised using empirical evidence for Trinidad and Barbados. The robustness of partial equilibrium measures of protection for classifying trade strategies is challenged and evidence on alternative general equilibrium or ‘true’ measures of protection is reported. ‘True’ or revealed trade strategies are shown to differ from those apparently intended by policy‐makers.     

The role of urban‐to‐rural remittances in rural development

One of the effects of rural‐to‐urban migration is the return of money and resources by the migrants to their respective home areas. Recently, it has been argued by several authors that such remittances represent a significant means for removing supply constraints to improved productivity in agriculture. In this paper the authors examine critically the available evidence on the rural impact of remittances. Subjects covered in the paper include the extent of the urban‐to‐rural remittances, the determinants of such financial flows and the use made in the rural areas of the money received. The paper concludes there is little evidence that urban‐rural remittances have been a significant means to rural economic development.     

Macro development planning in tropical Africa: Technocratic and non‐technocratic causes of failure

Based on the targets given in the development plans and the national income data of twenty‐two tropical Africa countries in the late 1960s, this paper finds a wide consensus among the planners on the structural determinants of the macro variables selected as plan targets, so that difference in targets can be explained largely by the different values assumed by these determinants in the sample countries. The implementation record was poor, and may be traced in part to a domino effect inherent in the recursive structure of target selection. The analysis of the causes of implementation failure shows that most of the causes lie outside of the competence of the planners. Alternative methods to calculate plan targets are not likely to meet with superior fulfilment results.     

>Pedagogy and politics: Origins of the special conference of 1905 on primary education for non‐Russians in the east

Sean R. Roberts, Waiting for Uighurstan. 55 minute video documentary with Companion Study Guide, 1996. Study Guide: xi, 73 pp., 2 maps, works cited, Appendix I: Script to video, Appendix II: Annotated bibliography of suggested readings.

Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox, A Concise Historical Atlas of Eastern Europe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, viii, 120 pp., 50 maps, index.

Jörg Brechtefeld, Mitteleuropa and German Politics: 1848 to the Present. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, vii, 195 pp. + maps, index. $49.95.

Seamus Dunn and T. G. Fraser, eds, Europe and Ethnicity: The First World War and Contemporary Ethnic Conflict. London: Routledge, 1996, xii, 218 pp. + index.

Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti‐Semitic Imagination. Lincoln, NB. &; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, 353 pp. + notes, bibliography, index.

Robert B. Pynsent, ed., The Literature of Nationalism. Essays on East European Identity. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, 282 pp. + index.

Ladislav Holy, The Little Czech Nation and the Great Czech Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, x, 226 pp., index.

Jaroslav Krej?í and Pavel Machonin, Czechoslovakia 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change. St Antony's series. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, 244 pp. + notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0–312–12693‐X (hard). $49.95.

Jan Rychlík, Thomas D. Mazrik and Miroslav Bielik, eds, R. W. Seton‐Watson and His Relations with the Czechs and Slovaks; Documents, 1906–1951, 2 Vols. Ústav T. G. Masaryka and Matica Slovenská, 1995, footnotes, photographs, register of documents, name index, geographic index. Distributed by Interpress, London, England. $50.00.

Peter F. Sugar, Nationality and Society in Habsburg and Ottoman Europe. Aldershot, Hampshire, U.K.: Variorum, 1997, ix + 253 + index.

Eric Roman, Hungary and the Victor Powers: 1945–1950. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, 172 pp.

Graham Smith, ed., The Baltic States: The National Self‐determination of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, xx, 214 pp. + maps, tables, index.

V. Stanley Vardys and Judith B. Sedaitis, Lithuania: The Rebel Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997, 222 pp. + maps, illustrations, index. $60.00 ($21.50 pbk).

Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, xii, 296 pp. + maps, photographs, tables, index.

David R. Marples, Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, xxi, 179 pp. + photographs, tables, bibliography, index.

Jeff Chinn and Robert Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Soviet Successor States. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xii, 308 pp. + tables, maps, index.

Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoeller, Catherine McArdie Kelleher and Lee Walker, eds, Ethnic Conflict in the Post‐Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xv, 365 pp.

Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996, xv, 220 pp. + photographs, appendix, index.

Peter H. Solomon, Jr, Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xvii, 494 pp. + photographs, tables, index.

Stephen White, Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xiii, 189 pp. + photographs, illustrations, notes, index.

Hafeez Malik, ed., Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and Future Prospects. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, xi, 325 pp. + index.     

Colonization to co‐operation? French technical assistance in Senegal

Too often manpower aid planners treat the input of expert personnel and their knowledge as if it would have a reasonably calculable output and positive effect on development, however vaguely defined. This article suggests the limitations of such an approach by examining the French programme in Senegal, which in 1971 included more than 1,200 technical assistants in education and the administration. It concentrates chiefly on technical assistants serving as advisors in the administration where their impact lies above all in the continuation of structures and attitudes derived from the colonial period and afterwards. It examines the ambiguity of the role of the technical assistant in the context of local organization, emphasizing the importance which his authority and experience assume while working within an inefficient administrative structure. Tracing the consequences of this, it is possible to discern the elements of an expatriate ‘administration within an administration’.

While such a phenomenon may not be so obvious elsewhere, it seems pertinent to take a critical look at technical assistance activity in the context of ever expanding unemployment and inefficient bureaucratic structures in Africa, and possibly elsewhere.     

Collective Remittances and Transnational Coproduction: the 3 × 1 Program for Migrants and Household Access to Public Goods in Mexico

Migrant hometown associations (HTAs) are mobilizing collective remittances to improve social welfare in their countries of origin. This paper assesses the effect of transnational coproduction of public goods in migrants’ places of origin by studying the 3?×?1 Program for Migrants. The 3?×?1 Program is a national social spending program in which the Mexican local, state, and federal government matches HTAs’ collective remittances to improve public services through cross-border public–private partnerships. The statistical analysis across municipalities that do and do not participate in the 3?×?1 Program shows that coproduction improves citizens’ access to public sanitation, drainage, and water, although not electricity. Moreover, a negative and statistically significant interaction term between 3?×?1 Program expenditures and family remittances reveals a substitution effect: in the presence of transnational coproduction, migrant households are less likely to improve public goods using family remittance resources, but in the absence of 3?×?1 Program participation they continue to improve their hometowns with family remittances. This research offers a theoretical mechanism and supporting empirical evidence of an important kind of intermediary institution improving social welfare in migrant places of origin.     

From Corporate Governance to Local Governance: Stakeholder‐Driven Community Score‐Cards for UK Local Agencies?

Abstract

This paper compares the methodology of the “comprehensive performance assessment”, recently proposed by the Audit Commission for all UK local authorities, with the “community score‐card” approach which has been used in the United States of America for a number of years. It suggests that the Audit Commission approach should be altered to take on board some of the more imaginative aspects of the community score‐card, particularly in relation to the inclusion of those quality of life measures, which local people regard as important, and measures of the quality of local governance.