The impact of equal offortunity compliance laws in government contrgcting: the shelby county,tennessee experience

Abstract

Very few researchers have addressed the long‐term financing arrangements of municipal governments in developing countries. No research has evaluated empirically either the elements that affect municipal borrowing in developing countries or what those elements reveal about the municipal credit system. Analyzing Brazilian municipal loan and financial data with a series of simultaneous equations, this paper addresses the following questions: What factors determine municipal government investment levels, borrowing levels, and borrowing prices? What do empirical data reveal about the character of the Brazilian municipal credit system? The results show that investment, borrowing, and borrowing prices are interconnected. Furthermore, while some signs of a market‐based system exist, there is evidence that investment and borrowing decisions are made within an administered market.     

Do Risky Microfinance Borrowers Really Invest in Risky Projects? Experimental Evidence from Bolivia

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an experiment testing a fundamental assumption in Stiglitz and Weiss’ (1981) model of credit rationing: that defaulting borrowers are associated with investment in risky projects. Through an artefactual field experiment with 200 Bolivian microfinance borrowers, we observe that subjects from real-world delinquent borrowing groups do not prefer risky projects to safer ones significantly more than subjects from repaying groups. Instead, our results support more recent behavioural theories of credit market failure. Implications are that defaulting microfinance borrowers may be those who take too little investment risk rather than those who take too much.     

Social Capital and Access to Credit: Evidence from Uganda

We use a nationally representative survey in Uganda to study the links between social capital and financial access. Our results indicate a positive association between individual social capital and access to institutional credit, but no significant relationship between generalised trust and credit access. The effect of individual social capital is more pronounced for poorer people, in rural areas, and in areas where generalised trust is low. Individual social capital seems to promote access especially to semiformal and informal financial institutions.     

Where is the ‘Plus’ in ‘Credit-Plus’? The Case of Chiapas,Mexico

Abstract

It has become common to try and increase the effectiveness of microfinance programmes by adding supplementary services to the financial product. However, the added value accruing from this ‘credit-plus’ approach has been little analysed. We hypothesise that the extent of added value from credit-plus depends on the ability of the credit supplier to cultivate trust, or social capital, amongst clients. Applying difference-in-difference estimation, we exploit a natural experiment of two ‘credit-plus’ programmes in Mexico. The findings suggest that credit-plus is not universally effective, but that it is at its most effective, especially with low-income groups, where ‘bonding’ (within-group) social capital exists.     

Number of Siblings,Credit Constraints,and Entrepreneurship in China

With an under-developed financial market, borrowing from relatives becomes an important funding source in starting one’s own business in China. This paper examines the positive effect of number of siblings on entrepreneurship, using the policy shock of China’s One-Child Policy as the source of identification. We further show that a person tends to borrow more and save less if he/she has more siblings. We also find that siblings serve as a substitute to formal financial institutions, and that parents do not replace siblings as credit providers after the decline of number of siblings. This additional evidence supports our argument on the credit constraints channel.     

Social Networks and Factor Markets: Panel Data Evidence from Ethiopia

We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. We use detailed longitudinal household survey data and employ fixed effects estimation approaches to identify the effect of iddir membership on factor market transactions among farmers. We find that joining an iddir network improves households’ access to land, labour and credit transactions. Our findings also hint that iddir networks may crowd-out borrowing from local moneylenders (locally referred as ‘Arata Abedari’), a relatively expensive credit source. These results suggest that non-market institutions can play crucial roles in facilitating market transactions.     

Agricultural Workers,Credit Rationing and Family Networks in Rural Mexico

Abstract

We use mixed methods and first-hand household data in Mexico to investigate credit practices by households engaged in agricultural wage employment. Quantitative analysis shows evidence of rationing in the formal sector but also suggests the existence of mitigating mechanisms. Qualitative analysis provides additional insights. First, income patterns associated with agricultural wage generate income smoothing needs that are sometimes better met by the informal sector. Second, family networks can perform key functions as gateways to the formal sector, through specific informal arrangements that inject flexibility into formal rules and procedures.     

Why are Informal Loans Still a Big Deal? Evidence from North-east Thailand

Abstract

This article examines the use and benefit of informal loans for different income groups of rural households in north-east Thailand. Using a difference-in-differences estimation approach, which is later complemented by propensity score matching, the article shows that different household groups profit from informal loans in different ways. Poor households increase their asset endowment, and in particular farming assets, whereas rich households’ (food) consumption rises, especially if households borrow due to a shock. By showing that informal loans serve different households for different purposes, this article provides an explanation why they still play an important role.     

When Shadow Banking Can Be Productive: Financing Small and Medium Enterprises in China

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) represent the backbone of China’s economy, yet they face challenges in accessing bank credit. SMEs thus rely on a wide range of alternative sources, including informal finance, online peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, registered non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs), and underground financiers. This article distinguishes among different types of ‘shadow banking’ to clarify popular misconceptions about the nature of risks associated with informal financial intermediation in China. Given their familiarity with local business conditions and needs, regulated and well-managed NBFIs could provide an enduring foundation for commercialised financial intermediation serving SMEs.     

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.     

Financial Development and Poverty Reduction: Can There be a Benefit without a Cost?

This article investigates how financial development helps to reduce poverty directly through a distributional effect, beyond its indirect effect through economic growth. The results obtained with data for a sample of developing countries from 1966 through 2000 suggest that the poor benefit from the ability of the banking system to facilitate transactions and provide savings opportunities (through the McKinnon ‘conduit effect’) but to some extent fail to reap the benefit from greater availability of credit. Moreover, financial development is accompanied by financial instability, which is particularly detrimental to the poor. Nevertheless, the benefits of financial development for the poor outweigh the cost.     

Implementing Reforms in Bolivia: Too Much to Handle?

Abstract

This article looks at the implementation of budgeting and financial management reforms in Bolivia. These reforms were intended to facilitate the introduction of an integrated approach to budgeting and financial management, and a results-orientation in management. Evidence suggests that, at least in its first few years, there was little successful reform implementation. The main factors seen to impact reform implementation include the entrenched patronage of the political system, the weak nature of reform incentives, weaknesses in central financial management systems and processes, poor internal monitoring, authority limits in the Audit Office, a lack of Parliament scrutiny, questions about transparency and participation, and relational complexities arising from donor involvement.     

Digital mediations of everyday humanitarianism: the case of Kiva.org

Abstract

The proliferation of Web 2.0 platforms that aim to facilitate social action, often connected to international development or environmental sustainability, has contributed to the ongoing popularisation of development. In this article, I argue that it has resulted in the digitally-enabled constitution of everyday humanitarians, who are everyday people supportive of poverty alleviation. Kiva.org, a US-based online microlending platform that invites everyday humanitarians to make US$25 loans to Kiva entrepreneurs around the world, is a prime site to study these processes. I show how Kiva cultivates supporters through the mediated production of affective investments, which are financial, social and emotional commitments to distant others. This happens through the design of an affective architecture which in turn generates financial and spatial mediations. While these result in microloans and attendant sentiments of affinity, they also lead to financial clicktivism and connections that obscures the asymmetries and riskscapes resulting from Kiva’s microlending work.     

Migration,gender, and mobility: Ethiopian–Israeli women's narratives of career trajectories

ABSTRACT

Most studies on the Ethiopian community in Israel discuss the difficulties in its social, cultural, occupational, and educational integration. Too little attention has been paid to the young professionals in the community who are experiencing upward mobility and to the women in particular. As opposed to stereotypes of Ethiopian–Israelis as poor, uneducated, and marginalized, this article explores socio-economic advancement of Ethiopian–Israeli women in Israel. We look at their integration in the labour market and their professional mobility in the areas of arts, business, religion, the army, and education by analysing the factors that play a role in their success. This study allows us to explore Ethiopian women's worlds by looking at their background and the steps they have taken to succeed in their careers.     

Transcultural body spaces: re-inventing and performing headwrap practice among young Congolese women in London

ABSTRACT

This article examines embodied representation of race, ethnicity, and gender, questioning ideas of cultural appropriation. Using the London-based Congolese transnational fashion brand Kiyana Wraps as a case study, the article addresses how young Congolese designers re-invent their cultural heritage to conceive the label stylisation and construct meanings of Blackness/Africanness. The article also explores the brand’s social spaces, where the headwrap ritual is used by different actors to perform hybrid identities. In addition, wearing the headwrap reveals symbolic metaphors of empowerment, through which intertwined ‘feminist’ and ‘feminine’ identities are evoked. The paper examines how Congolese women are creatively taking inspiration from the environment of London to produce innovative fashion trajectories as lived socio-cultural experiences. It argues how the headwrap ritual signifies an aesthetic and material process through which specific racial and ethnic boundaries are transcended, fabricating transcultural body spaces which encompass individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds.     

A community under siege: exclusionary education policies and indigenous Santals* in the Bangladeshi context

Abstract

This article presents and analyses the voices and responses of the research participants about the impact of exclusionary formal and informal education policies imposed on the Santal community in Palashpur, Bangladesh (Palashpur is a pseudonym for the site of my research; it is also a metaphor for contested space where the colonial power and politics of the nation state exert domination and subordination). These policies are implemented through a state-led, centralised, monolingual and exclusionary curriculum in local primary and secondary schools, schools run by the churches, and schools supported by nongovernmental organisations. The education policies in Bangladesh bear the legacy of the combined forces of cultural homogenisation and social exclusion rooted in the colonial learning structure and its objectives. Embedded in these policies are elements of the civilising mission, an ultra-religious assimilative but exclusionary nationalistic agenda, and Western values of modernity and development. In this rural context, these alien ideologies and practices in education are actively engaged in eliminating local institutions, the knowledge system of indigenous peoples, the texture of their lives, their joy of living, their spirituality and their sense of being. This article reveals how, imposed from above, education policy and practices have dispersed an indigenous community to negotiate a life that goes against the interests of the community itself and its members.     

Explaining Informal Policy-Making Patterns in the Eurozone Crisis: Decentralized Bargaining and the Theory of EU Institutions

ABSTRACT

During the Eurozone crisis, the so-called ‘Merkozy duumvirate’ emerged as an informal, but highly visible EU policy-making pattern. This article asks why such forms of decentralized bargaining emerge and what this implies for the theory of EU institutions. According to an approach based on negotiation theory, the article argues that Merkozy is a strategic tool used by Germany to realize its preferences on EU crisis management. Based on an incomplete contracts theory of EU institutions, instead, the article analyses Merkozy as an informal institution created by France and Germany to avoid being discriminated by supranational institutions. Both approaches are employed to assess Merkozy’s role in the decision-making process leading to the adoption of the Fiscal Compact.     

Informal Countermessaging: The Potential and Perils of Informal Online Countermessaging

Abstract

Online countermessaging—communication that seeks to disrupt the online content disseminated by extremist groups and individuals—is a core component of contemporary counterterrorism strategies. Countermessaging has been heavily criticized, not least on the grounds of effectiveness. Whereas current debates are focused on the role of government and large organizations in developing and disseminating countermessages, this article argues that such approaches overlook the informal production of countermessages. Recognizing the appetite for “natural world” content among those engaged in countermessaging, this article highlights some of the potential benefits of informal approaches to countermessaging. At the same time, the article also acknowledges the risks that may result from closer working between countermessaging organizations and informal actors.     

Social Media and (Counter) Terrorist Finance: A Fund-Raising and Disruption Tool

Abstract

The proliferation of social media has created a terrorist finance vulnerability due to the ease with which propaganda can be spread, promoting fund-raising for a certain cause. Social media companies recognize the importance of preventing violent extremist and terrorist content, but less attention is paid to their fund-raising role. As well as presenting a threat, the movement of terrorist fund-raising activities online creates a disruption opportunity. This article argues that social media companies need to display greater awareness of their vulnerability to supporting terrorist financing and greater collaboration with law enforcement and financial institutions to strengthen the integrity of the system against abuse.     

Constructing a social safety net in Africa: An institutionalist analysis of colonial rule and state social policies in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire

This article attempts to explain why, despite nearly identical cultural and economic landscapes and the potentially homogenizing pressures of globalization, social policies differ in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, two neighboring countries in West Africa. In Ghana, the government has generally attempted to strengthen the informal social welfare systems of the extended family and community through a more decentralized social policy, whereas the government in Côte d'Ivoire has tried to replace these informal social networks with the centralized arm of the bureaucracy. The article shows how different legacies of colonial rule produce these divergent social policies in a complex and iterative process over time. While domestic institutions do mediate the effects of globalization, the domestic factors highlighted in this article are not the formal political institutions cited in most studies. Rather, the analysis reveals the critical role of informal institutions, or normative frameworks, that existed under colonial rule and continue to endure in the post-colonial state. The article also contributes to current theories of institutions by showing how formal and informal institutions dynamically interact in the construction of the state and the African family.