From Microfinance to Business Planning: Escaping Poverty Traps
Author : Roberto Moro Visconti
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 12,49 MB
Release : 2014
Category :
ISBN :
From Microfinance to Business Planning: Escaping Poverty Traps
Author : Roberto Moro Visconti
Publisher : ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press
Page : 645 pages
File Size : 15,79 MB
Release : 2014-06-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 3838265629
Book Description
This ground-breaking book shows how innovative microfinance solutions can help billions to avoid ‚poverty traps‘ and escape atavistic misery. While the success of microfinance has globally exceeded even the wildest expectations, there are still many obstacles – above all the lack of proper business planning on the side of the borrowers. Here Moro Visconti‘s important book comes to aid, offering bottom-up development strategies for micro-credit-driven startups and beyond. His forceful analysis of poverty traps and the practical guidelines given (including business plan templates as Excel sheets) are designed to help practitioners and analysts alike in understanding and reaching the true potential of microfinance.
Can Microfinance Unlock a Poverty Trap for Some Entrepreneurs?
Author : Abhijit V. Banerjee
Publisher :
Page : 61 pages
File Size : 30,54 MB
Release : 2019
Category : Entrepreneurship
ISBN :
Book Description
Can microcredit help unlock a poverty trap for some people by putting their businesses on a different trajectory? Could the small microcredit treatment effects often found for the average household mask important heterogeneity? In Hyderabad, India, we find that "gung ho entrepreneurs" (GEs), households who were already running a business before microfinance entered, show persistent benefits that increase over time. Six years later, the treated GEs own businesses that have 35% more assets and generate double the revenues as those in control neighborhoods. We find almost no effects on non-GE households. A model of technology choice in which talented entrepreneurs can access either a diminishing-returns technology, or a more productive technology with a fixed cost, generates dynamics matching the data. These results show that heterogeneity in entrepreneurial ability is important and persistent. For talented but low-wealth entrepreneurs, short-term access to credit can indeed facilitate escape from a poverty trap.
Poverty Traps and Microfinance
Author : Roberto Moro Visconti
Publisher : Ibidem Press
Page : 518 pages
File Size : 30,63 MB
Release : 2011
Category :
ISBN : 9783838202525
Book Description
Microfinance is a successful financial innovation to help the poor to sort out credit exclusion, which is one of the poverty traps that prevent billions of underserved, especially women, from escaping atavistic misery. Interconnected poverty traps range from misuse of natural resources (from blood diamonds to the oil curse) to conflict traps, demographic booming, being landlocked with bad neighbors or exposed to unfreedom. Other traps concern cultural backwardness, unsafe drinking and sanitation, food shortage up to starvation, illnesses or climatic shocks, causing mass migrations and unfair globalization. Microfinance, a grass-roots movement to provide credit to the neediest, can greatly help to dismantle at least some of these poverty traps, and thousands of mostly small institutions are competing in a market where demand from the poorest for financial services is potentially unlimited - while supply is not.While the success of microfinance, often ignited by foreign aid funding, has gone beyond any expectation, enormous problems are still on the ground. The road towards what is now considered microfinance's optimal goal - maximization of outreach to the poorest, combined with financial self-sustainability - is still full of obstacles. Prof. Moro Visconti's book, covering a vacuum in the existing literature, considers state-of-the-art microfinance within a broader framework of sustainable and long-term socio-economic development. With an innovative and reader friendly approach, Moro Visconti introduces the reader to the multidimensional causes of poverty and possible remedies. A cultural approach to the poverty traps, mixing its anthropological causes with possible bottom-up remedies, including microfinance, emerges as a stunning innovation. The book aims at a broad readership from practitioners to students and academics, as well as readers simply interested in solutions to the world-wide poverty problems.
The Economics of Poverty Traps
Author : Christopher B. Barrett
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 27,74 MB
Release : 2018-12-07
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 022657430X
Book Description
What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.
Can Microfinance Unlock a Poverty Trap for Some Entrepreneurs?
Author : Abhijit V. Banerjee
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 39,58 MB
Release : 2019
Category :
ISBN :
Book Description
Can microcredit help unlock a poverty trap for some people by putting their businesses on a different trajectory? Could the small microcredit treatment effects often found for the average household mask important heterogeneity? In Hyderabad, India, we find that "gung ho entrepreneurs" (GEs), households who were already running a business before microfinance entered, show persistent benefits that increase over time. Six years later, the treated GEs own businesses that have 35% more assets and generate double the revenues as those in control neighborhoods. We find almost no effects on non-GE households. A model of technology choice in which talented entrepreneurs can access either a diminishing-returns technology, or a more productive technology with a fixed cost, generates dynamics matching the data. These results show that heterogeneity in entrepreneurial ability is important and persistent. For talented but low-wealth entrepreneurs, short-term access to credit can indeed facilitate escape from a poverty trap.
A Billion Bootstraps: Microcredit, Barefoot Banking, and The Business Solution for Ending Poverty
Author : Philip Smith
Publisher : McGraw Hill Professional
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 38,21 MB
Release : 2007-02-23
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0071508945
Book Description
A bold manifesto by two business leaders, A Billion Bootstraps shows why microcredit is the world's most powerful poverty-fighting movement-and an unbeatable investment for your charitable donations. A Billion Bootstraps unearths the roots of the microcredit revolution, revealing how the pioneering work of people such as Dr. Muhammad Yunus-winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize-is giving hope to billions. Philanthropist and self-made millionaire Phil Smith and microcredit expert and consultant Eric Thurman provide a riveting narrative that explores how these small loans, arranged by “barefoot bankers,” enable impoverished people to start small businesses, support their families, and improve local economies. By paying back their loans instead of simply accepting handouts, men and women around the world are continually giving others the same opportunity to change their futures. Smith and Thurman also examine why traditional charity programs, while providing short-term relief, often perpetuate the problems they are trying to alleviate, and how applying investment principles to philanthropy is the key to reversing poverty permanently. A Billion Bootstraps explains how ordinary people can accelerate the microcredit movement by investing charitable donations in specific programs and then leveraging those contributions so the net cost to lift one person out of poverty is remarkably low. You'll discover how to get more for your money by donating with the mind-set of an investor and calculating measurable returns-returns that will change lives and societies forever.
Small Money Big Impact
Author : Peter A. Fanconi
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 36,37 MB
Release : 2017-05-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1119338204
Book Description
Make your money make a difference—and enjoy attractive returns Small Money, Big Impact explores and explains the globally growing importance of impact investing. Today, the investor's perspective has become as important as the actual social impact. Based on their experience with over 25 million micro borrowers, the authors delve into the mechanics, considerations, data and strategies that make microloans and impact investing an attractive asset class. From the World Bank to the individual investor, impact investing is attracting more and more attention. Impact investing is a global megatrend and is reshaping the way people invest as pension funds, insurance companies, foundations, family offices and private investors jump on board. This book explains for the first time how it works, why it works and what you should know if you're ready to help change the world. Impact investing has proven over the last 20 years as the first-line offense against crushing poverty. Over two billion people still lack access to basic financial services, which are essential for improving their livelihood. Investors have experienced not only social and environmental impact, but have received attractive, stable and uncorrelated returns for over 15 years. This guide provides the latest insights and methodologies that help you reap the rewards of investing in humanity. Explore the global impact investing phenomenon Learn how microloans work, and how they make a difference Discover why investors are increasingly leaning into impact investing Consider the factors that inform impact investing decisions Part social movement and part financial strategy, impact investing offers the unique opportunity for investors to power tremendous change with a small amount of money— expanding their portfolios as they expand their own global impact. Microfinance allows investors at any level to step in where banks refuse to tread, offering opportunity to those who need it most. Small Money, Big Impact provides the expert guidance you need to optimize the impact on your portfolio and the world.
Poverty Traps
Author : Samuel Bowles
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 19,71 MB
Release : 2016-05-31
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0691170932
Book Description
Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.
Banker To The Poor
Author : Muhammad Yunus
Publisher : PublicAffairs
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 27,21 MB
Release : 2007-03-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1586485466
Book Description
The inspirational story of how Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus invented microcredit, founded the Grameen Bank, and transformed the fortunes of millions of poor people around the world. Muhammad Yunus was a professor of economics in Bangladesh, who realized that the most impoverished members of his community were systematically neglected by the banking system -- no one would loan them any money. Yunus conceived of a new form of banking -- microcredit -- that would offer very small loans to the poorest people without collateral, and teach them how to manage and use their loans to create successful small businesses. He founded Grameen Bank based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a fortunate few, and it now provides $24 billion of micro-loans to more than nine million families. Ninety-seven percent of its clients are women, and repayment rates are over 90 percent. Outside of Bangladesh, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen have blossomed, and serve hundreds of millions of people around the world. The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is the moving story of someone who dreamed of changing the world -- and did.
