Assessing Small and Medium Forest Enterprises' Access to Microfinance: Case Studies from The Gambia

Small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs) are commonplace in many developing economies. SMFEs often face several challenges, with access to finance frequently being cited as a key hurdle. This study aimed to evaluate the access that SMFEs in The Gambia have to microfinance, and to determine strategies for improving the delivery of these services. Data show that most SMFEs have decent access to deposit accounts, but limited access to credit. While cooperative credit unions and other non-financial institutions have been providing microloans to SMFEs, access to such financial services could be improved. Six strategies to do so are proposed.     

The Effect of a Workfare Programme on Psychological Wellbeing in India

Little is known about the effect of poverty alleviation programmes on mental health. In this paper we use variation in district implementation dates and location of residence to examine the short-run effect of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India on psychological wellbeing. We find that in the first year of the programme, women in recipient districts were less likely to experience depression symptoms. The effects of the programme on men’s mental health, on the other hand, are generally not statistically significant and are not robust to different specifications. We provide suggestive evidence that one mechanism through which the programme could have affected women, at least in the short-run, was providing them with greater economic security and independence.     

The Benefits and Costs of Microfinance: Evidence from Bangladesh

Using the latest developments from the evaluation literature, namely the technique of matching, this paper shows a positive, but lower than previously thought, effect of microfinance on expenditure per capita, supply of labour, and level of school enrolment for boys and girls. For instance, participants spend 3 per cent more on average than non-participants in control villages. This paper also takes into account repayment delays to calculate the cost of credit provision. It shows how a better investigation at the individual level of the benefits brought and the cost borne could help microfinance institutions to better select their customers.

JEL Classification : C14, D10, G21, I38, O12, O16     

Income Convergence, Capability Divergence, and the Middle Income Trap: An Analysis of the Case of Chile

The adoption of a free market model in the early 1970s reinforced Chile??s specialization in natural resources, particularly in mining. At the same time, it set the stage for successful diversification within natural resources creating pockets of excellence. This resulted from a combination of foreign direct investment (FDI) spillovers, technology and knowledge transfer, adequate firm capabilities, and strategic government intervention. During the 1990s, the country witnessed solid growth and income convergence with the developed world, followed thereafter by a deteriorating performance. This reflected a growth-reducing structural change visible in the limited capacity of the natural resource industries to generate broad-based upgrading. Recent government initiatives have placed the focus on vertical industrial policy fostering innovation and knowledge. These efforts are limited by low levels of research and development (R&D) expenditure, a lack of an innovation culture in the private sector and overall low social capabilities. The stagnation of Chile at middle income levels remains a distinct possibility unless concerted efforts are undertaken to promote broad-based upgrading.     

Contextual Effects on Individual Voting Behavior: The Case of Taiwan

This study investigates the voting behavior of the Taiwanese electorate in two different levels of election by taking into account two aggregate-level effects, namely the political and economic contextual effects. Using both individual-level and aggregate-level data to study the 2008 legislative election and the 2012 presidential election in Taiwan, this paper not only confirms that the valence politics explanation outperforms other individual-level voting models in the legislative election and in other elections in Taiwan, but also demonstrates how the two contextual effects influence individual voting behavior. Specifically, the political contextual effect had influence on the individual electoral choice in both the 2008 legislative election and the 2012 presidential election, whereas economic contexts only affect voters’ decision when choosing a president. The multilevel analysis reveals that different individual-level voting models could provide partial explanation for voting behavior; however, the findings also show that we may overlook how contextual effects may affect the electoral choice.     

The Effects of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative on the Millennium Development Goals for Health

The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) on the attainment of the health millennium development goals (MDGs) in Africa and identify other correlates of health MDGs. This way, the paper uses data from the World Bank and employs the difference in difference (DID) approach to estimate the impact of HIPC on health MDGs and to identify other determinants of health MDG attainment. The results show that the impact of HIPC on health MDGs is positive. Specifically, due to HIPC, the level of the following health MDG indicators decreased: mortality rate (infant); mortality rate (neonatal); incidence of tuberculosis; prevalence of HIV/AIDS, and mortality rate under five. However, the incidence of tuberculosis (all forms) registered an increase in Africa, even in treated groups. Our findings also indicate that MDGs for health will not be attained simultaneously because some variables that reduce mortality such as GDP per capita, natural resources and education cause HIV/AIDS.     

In the Same Boat,but not Equals: The Heterogeneous Effects of Parental Income on Child Labour

This paper examines the impact of parental income on child labour. The empirical literature has found conflicting results regarding whether poverty leads parents to send their children to work. Most of this literature, however, treats child labourers as a single homogeneous group, ignoring differences among working children in work intensity, hazard exposure, and type of employer. This paper argues that accounting for the heterogeneity in child’s working conditions may explain the conflicting results in the literature. Specifically, the existence of this heterogeneity may reflect heterogeneity in parents’ perceptions about the returns to child’s work, and hence in parental reasons to send their children to work. To test this hypothesis, I estimate the effects of parental income on child labour for various working conditions, using data from the 2010 Egypt National Child Labour Survey. This dataset provides rich information on the working conditions of child labourers. The findings show that the effect of parental income on child labour is minimal among children who work in non-hazardous jobs, jobs that are not highly physical, or in family businesses. In contrast, higher parental income does decrease the likelihood of child labour in market work, jobs that are physical and hazardous jobs.     

The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence

Abstract

We replicate and reanalyse the most influential study of microcredit impacts (M. M. Pitt & S. R. Khandker’s, ‘The impact of group-based credit on poor households in Bangladesh: Does the gender of participants matter?’, published in the Journal of Political Economy, 106, 1998). That study was celebrated for showing that microcredit reduces poverty, a much hoped for possibility (though one not confirmed by recent randomised controlled trials). We show that the original results on poverty reduction disappear after dropping outliers, or when using a robust linear estimator. Using a new program for estimation of mixed process maximum likelihood models, we show how assumptions critical for the original analysis, such as error normality, are contradicted by the data. We conclude that questions about impact cannot be answered in these data.     

Welfare,Inequality and Financial Effects of a Multi-Pillar Pension Reform: The Case of Peru

This paper studies the potential effects of a multi-pillar pension system on pension inequality, actuarial liability and welfare in Peru, by means of simulations of future distributions of pensions with social security administrative records. The results show that actual pension inequality and actuarial liability can be substantially reduced with welfare preserving policies. The simulations illustrate that when welfare is considered, it is important to define the implied value judgments, which are not universally agreed upon. Therefore, this paper highlights the trade-offs of a pension policy reform and contributes to assess the second generation of pension reforms in Latin America.     

The Politics of Subversion in Development Practice: An Exploration of Microfinance in Nepal and Vietnam

This paper considers the ways in which beneficiaries of microfinance programmes in two Asian countries routinely transgress programme protocols and regulations, and fail to conform to the entrepreneurial subjectivities the programmes seek to promote. It aims to develop an interpretive framework for these practices. Specifically, we take up Abu-Lughod's injunction to ‘use resistance as a diagnostic of power’ in order to explore the political rationalities and governmental technologies of microfinance, as well as the cultural ideologies and material conditions in particular locales. We then consider the difficult question of political agency by drawing on prevailing theories of resistance to develop a typology that distinguishes among three overlapping kinds of transgressive practices. The objective ultimately is to explore how this interpretive framework might contribute to imagining more politically engaged and responsive models of development, as well as to critiquing the market-oriented foundation of existing models.     

The Thawing of a Frozen Conflict: The Internal Security Dilemma and the 2004 Prelude to the Russo-Georgian War

While the proximate causes of the 2008 Russo–Georgian war have yet to be satisfactorily investigated, an assessment of an earlier occasion of conflict in South Ossetia in 2004 can lay the groundwork for an analysis of the later war. Like the 2008 war, the 2004 conflict was comprehensible on the basis of the ambitious war plans of opposing sides, but it was ultimately rooted in a security dilemma. The conflict thus provides a precedent for considering how a mix of limited offensive intentions, insecurity, uncertainty, and cognitive shortcuts and misperceptions had the capacity to lead to inadvertent war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia.     

The Income Lever and the Allocation of Aid

Abstract

The article develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid. The authors call this concept the income lever. Making use of tax and distributive theory, the article shows how different redistributive criteria correspond to the different normative criteria of the income lever. It then constructs various income lever indexes based on these criteria and uses such indexes to rank countries according to their own capacity to reduce poverty.     

Long-Term Effects of Temporary Income Shocks on Food Consumption and Subjective Well-Being

A national level unconditional cash transfer programme, Bantuan Langsung Tunai (BLT), in Indonesia allows an empirical assessment on whether there are long-term benefits in terms of food consumption and overall well-being. The results show that a positive albeit temporary income shock increases the quantity of food consumed by the poorest households and the overall subjective well-being among the poorest recipients. It is also found that poor households are more likely to invest in farm and non-farm businesses, which in turn helps them sustain a higher level of food consumption and overall satisfaction months after the end of the programme.     

Job Strenuousness and Obesity: The Case of a Developing Country

Abstract

This paper analyses the Indonesian Family Life Survey to show that job strenuousness is negatively related to obesity, which is largely consistent with the literature. However, this paper does not interpret the relationship as causal. Instead, efforts are made to demonstrate that the relationship is attributable to sample selection: workers with low socioeconomic status are lightweight and selected for strenuous jobs. This paper warns against reflexive applications of the conclusions derived from the developed world to the developing world. Our results imply that sedentariness at work probably plays a small role in the prevalence of obesity in the region.     

Measuring the Impact of Microfinance on Women Empowerment: A Cross Country Analysis with Special Reference to India

The outreach of microfinance program is considered to be a means to enhance the economic opportunities among the women section of the population and thus have its far reaching implications to the empowerment of women. In this respect, a wide variation in the outreach of microfinance program to the women poor households is observed across countries of the world. In India, the states having higher level of microfinance outreach are also the states with a relatively high level of women empowerment. It is, thus, predicted that an all-inclusive microfinance system would strengthen the process of financial inclusion in India and thereby would promote women’s empowerment.     

The Politics of Local Income Tax in Sweden: Reform and Continuity

Local authorities have played an important role in the Swedish model of the Welfare State. This state is characterised by high levels of welfare provision paid for through general taxation, the rates of which are very high and the application of uniform standards across the entire country based on the principles of equity and fairness. The main form of income for local authorities is a Local Income Tax which is paid by 85% of the population. In the 1980s and 1990s, Sweden went through an economic crisis which resulted in significant changes to the tax system, although the Local Income Tax was retained. Subsequent changes have followed a pendulum process, with deregulation of local government finances in the 1990s being followed by greater regulation in the following years. Today, Sweden is conducting a major debate about the role and functions of different levels of government in the light of social, economic and political changes in the international scene.     

The Case of Nord-Ost: Dubrovka and the Search for Answers

The paper reviews the experience of the group Nord-Ost (The Regional Social Organisation for Assistance and Defence of the Victims of Terrorist Acts) as an example of an NGO that has taken a rights advocacy position which has led it into confrontation with the state. Nord-Ost demands the state's accountability for the consequences of its response to the 2002 Dubrovka terrorist attack. Thus, it confronts challenges common to other rights advocacy groups in Russia today.     

Terrorist Attacks on the Energy Sector: The Case of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State

The article focuses on the attitudes of two militant Islamist groups, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, toward the issue of terrorist attacks in the energy sector. The main aim of the article is both to analyze the importance of attacks on energy infrastructure for the strategies of these two organizations, and to describe specific examples and manifestations of terrorist activities from the side of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State with regard to the energy sector in the Middle East and North Africa. The article is based on the concept of terrorist attacks on the energy sector.