Tradeable permits,missing markets,and technology

This paper examines the effects of missing markets, heterogeneous pollutants, and the pollution technology of firms on the efficacy of transferable pollution permits. Under the assumption of perfect competition in all markets, we show that if firms can substitute among pollutants, then setting the optimal number of permits for only one pollutant will not, in general, lead to an efficient outcome. The degree of the inefficiency will depend on the information set available to the regulator and the substitutability among pollutants by firms. When establishing transferable pollution rights regulators should, therefore, consider the technology of firms. If firms discharge pollutants in the same fixed proportions, then the regulator need only set a market for one of the pollutants to ensure an efficient outcome. Where firms can substitute among pollutants, however, establishing a market for only one pollutant provides an incentive for firms to substitute to unregulated ones. This is an important policy issue as substitutability among pollutants within and across production processes may dampen the dynamic advantages of a tradeable permit policy.     

Multiplier effects in economies with missing risk markets

The paper analyses the impact of pecuniary externalities in a two-sector economy with an incomplete market structure. Agents in each sector choose their proportion of risky investment. Sector specific risks are assumed to be perfectly negatively correlated. It is shown that the economy is more volatile if risk markets do not exist. With a complete set of risk markets, shocks in one sector will be dampened on the aggregate level. In contrast, when risk markets are absent, pecuniary externalities arising from higher risky investment in one sector can create feedback effects in the other sector. When agents are sufficiently risk averse (their coefficient of relative risk aversion being greater than one), an individually optimal response to the increased riskiness of the price distribution will result in an even riskier price distribution: an increase in risky activity in one sector will lead to an increase in risky activity in the other sector, and this gives multiplier effects.Part of this work has been done while I was visiting assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.I am grateful to Hans-Werner Sinn for helpful comments. The suggestions of the two referees have contributed to improve the paper considerably.     

Microfinance and child mortality

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) offer targeted opportunities for the poor to generate additional income with a range of financial services including credit, insurance, savings accounts and money transfers. Aside from reducing poverty, microfinance can potentially improve health because it is the poor who are usually more constrained from health investments due to limited budgets. Furthermore, microfinancing specifically targets women, who are more likely to spend additional income on children’s well-being. Finally, several MFIs have also begun to offer health-related services, such as health education, health-care financing, clinical care, training community health workers, health micro-insurance and linkages to public and private health providers. Using a new data set, this article conducts the first multi-country study of the effect of microfinance on child mortality, the health outcome, which is most sensitive to the effects of absolute deprivation. Our findings confirm that an increase in the proportion of MFI clients in a country is significantly associated with lower under-five and infant mortality rates. We conclude that if MFIs’ educational and health services have indeed caused improvements in health outcomes at the community level, then it may be important for governments to complement these activities with similar campaigns, particularly in remote areas where MFI penetration is low.     

Microfinance and gender empowerment

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of household production, bargaining and credit to analyse how access to microcredit affects intra-household decision-making and welfare, and identify conditions under which female household members are most likely to benefit. We show that, consistent with ethnographic accounts of the impact of microcredit programmes on poor households, access to loans can lead to a variety of outcomes for intra-household decision-making and welfare depending on initial conditions and that, in some instances, women borrowers may experience a decline in welfare. We identify two instances in which a woman is most likely to benefit: when there is scope for investing the loan profitably in a joint activity, and when a large share of the household budget is devoted to household public goods.     

Microfinance spillovers: A model of competition in informal credit markets with an application to Indian villages

Despite widespread interest in the development of microfinance, spillover effects on the non-using population and redistributive issues remain largely unexplored. I study a competition game between microfinance institutions (MFIs) offering joint-liability loans and moneylenders offering individual loans in presence of adverse selection. I show that one unintended consequence of the entry of a microfinance sector in local credit markets can be to trigger an increase in the equilibrium informal interest rate, because MFIs tend to attract a disproportionately-safe share of the borrower pool away from incumbent moneylenders. The existence of such composition externality depends crucially on the size of the microfinance sector and the risk composition of the borrower pool. The model predicts a non-linearly increasing relationship between informal interest rates and MFIs' capacity in relatively safe credit markets, and no relationship in risky villages. I show evidence supporting these predictions, using a first-hand panel database that records all credit transactions over 8 years for a sample of about 1000 households living in Indian villages with extensive space and time variation in the size of their microfinance sector.     

Microfinance institutions and public policy

Many governments and nongovernmental organizations have adopted policies to promote the growth of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The appropriate level and form of support for MFIs are discussed in this paper on the basis of a review of key MFI characteristics. Governments are also responsible for the regulation of MFIs; here, some principles concerning the extent and coverage of MFI regulation and supervision are developed.     

实现小额信贷商业化发展的思考

商业化的小额信贷自90年代以来在世界各地取得了巨大的发展和举世瞩目的成就，一直以来被认为是减少贫困和完善金融市场的最为有效的工具之一。然而在中国，小额信贷的商业化进程还只是处于起步阶段，中国几乎是惟一缺乏正规商业化小额信贷的发展中国家。采取措施扫除小额信贷商业化发展的障碍，促进商业化小额信贷的发展是中国小额信贷发展的必然趋势。为此，需提出相关对策。     

Microfinance Beyond Group Lending

Microlending is growing in Eastern Europe, Russia and China as a flexible means of widening access to financial services, both to help alleviate poverty and to encourage private-sector activity. We describe mechanisms that allow these programmes to successfully penetrate new segments of credit markets. These features include direct monitoring, regular repayment schedules, and the use of non-refinancing threats. These mechanisms allow the programmes to generate high repayment rates from low-income borrowers without requiring collateral and without using group lending contracts that feature joint liability.     

真实小额信贷与女性扶贫

国内理论和实践领域对小额信贷的确切含义、扶助对象、从业机构、政府态度等还存在相当大的分歧,急需澄清.本文对小额信贷进行辨析和界定,提出"真实小额信贷"应该按照国际通行模式坚持主要扶助贫困妇女的原则,并根据真实小额信贷的资金来源和特征,从妇联组织的性质、基本职能、组织网络、性别沟通优势和从业经验等五方面论证了妇联系统承担真实小额信贷业务的合理性和可能性.文章最后提出了政府支持妇联从事真实小额信贷工作的政策性建议.     

Microfinance at a Crossroads

In this essay, we summarize the main features of Yunus' economic thought and discuss whether it is possible to conclude, as seems straightforward according to Yunus (1997) , that microfinance is good for the poor and that it exemplifies a typical activity of social enterprise. To do this, we review some of the contents of the 2006 World Bank/Brookings Institution conference on microfinance as summarized by Barr et al. (2007) .     

Microfinance and competition for external funding

In this paper we examine a one-period model in which poverty minimizing microfinance lenders must raise external funding from a profit maximizing investor. Assuming that the lenders vary in their operating costs, we find that competition between lenders for external funds can lead to higher aggregate poverty reduction.     

Microfinance and Female Group Action in Bangladesh

This paper provides evidence that participation in microfinance programs may increase the likelihood of female group action against domestic violence and spousal abandonment. Although female empowerment has been an explicit target of many microfinance programs, the literature remains conflicted regarding the magnitude and direction of impact. Using multiple estimation methods with data from Bangladesh, I find that women from villages with microfinance programs are substantially more likely than women from non‐program villages to have taken group action by publicly protesting when they observed a woman being beaten, abandoned or divorced. Taking advantage of eligibility requirements for program participation, I further show that women from program villages who are eligible to participate are substantially more likely than non‐eligible women from the same village to have taken group action, which suggests that these effects are in fact related to the microfinance programs themselves.     

Microfinance and gender inequality: cross-country evidence

Microfinance enables poor women to engage in income-generating activities, which helps them become financially independent, strengthening their decision-making power within the household and society. Consequently, microfinance has the potential to reduce gender inequality (GI). Case-study evidence from across the developing world both supports and contradicts this hypothesis. We therefore revisit this issue using macroeconomic cross-country panel data for 64 developing economies over the period 2003–2014. We find that women’s participation in microfinance is associated with a reduction in GI. However, regional interactions reveal that cultural factors are likely to influence the GI–microfinance nexus.     

关于我国小额信贷问题的分析

在国际农村金融发展经验中,小额信贷成为面向贫困人群的针对性金融创新工具,在金融深化方面取得了巨大成功。我国在扶持发展农村金融体系的过程中逐步引进国际经验,在小额信贷的推广与发展上取得了长足的进步。从我国小额信贷的实践经验出发,分析目前我国小额信贷中存在的问题,并提出相应的政策建议。     

Microfinance and income inequality: New macrolevel evidence

This paper addresses the empirical question of whether microfinance has any impact on income inequality at the macrolevel. Very little research has been conducted on the relationship between the macrolevel scale of microfinance and income inequality over time in a country and across countries. Based on panel‐data techniques, with annual data from 85 countries from 2001 to 2012 and a broad theoretical framework on microfinance and inequality, we provide empirical evidence that suggests that increases in the macrolevel scale of microcredit in a country contribute to reducing income inequality within that country over time. Finally, since microfinance may be endogenous, we used instruments from the existing literature to control for this problem.     

Microfinance Control Fraud in Latin America

Over the past three decades, the global microfinance industry has witnessed phenomenal growth in terms of the numbers of borrowers and the total gross loan portfolio outstanding. An application of the criminologists' perspective and Black's theory of control fraud to the global microfinance industry reveals a high degree of overlap between the common characteristics of control frauds and the characteristics of the microfinance industry and suggests that the sector provides a criminogenic environment suitable to Ponzi-type dynamics, including an imperative of growth, misrepresentation of financial and operating performance, a reputation for integrity and innovativeness, concentration in unregulated markets and areas most conducive to accounting fraud, non-transparency and secrecy, dubious accounting methods, lobbying in favor of deregulation, attempts to suborn controls such as accountants, lawyers, regulators, and rating agencies, executive use of the company for personal gain, excessive risk taking at the expense of investors' capital, warnings raised but ignored, and, finally, inevitable collapse. Regulatory interventions are needed to prevent predatory lending and over-indebtedness of poor microfinance borrowers in Latin America and elsewhere. Such regulation, while necessary to protect the poor, is not well liked by the investment community as it places microfinance institutions under local scrutiny, reduces the profitability of the sector, and limits opportunities for control fraud.     

小额贷款公司的发展现状、存在的问题及对策研究

金融体制改革的不断深化使得很多小额贷款公司开始出现,数量众多的小额贷款公司更是向社会大众提供了较多的金融服务。通过对小额贷款公司发展状况进行分析能够发现,小额贷款公司虽然在发展上较为迅速,但发展中依然存在着很多共性问题,这些问题的客观存在也严重制约了小额贷款公司的持续、健康发展,甚至是严重影响到了整个行业的发展。本文将对小额贷款公司的发展现状及发展中存在的问题进行分析,并就其如何更好发展提出合理化建议。     

国外商业化小额贷款模式比较及启示

小额贷款业务在中国开展已有二十余年的历史,自开展以来为农村中低收入人群脱贫致富发挥了重要作用,已经成为农村金融市场的新兴力量。国外的发展实践呈现出由福利型小额贷款向商业化小额贷款转化的趋势。印尼的小额信贷部、孟加拉的乡村银行以及玻利维亚的阳光银行等都是国际上较为成功的商业化发展模式,通过比较分析为发展中国小额信贷提供了宝贵经验。     

中国农村小额信贷的实践尝试

中国农村小额信贷大体经历了三个发展阶段。文章描述了我国小额信贷的三大组织类型和多样化的形式以及小额信贷项目的运作方式、目标群体的定位、项目发展规模和金额产品、可持续状况等等。对三大类型的小额信贷各自的主要问题做了分析。在此基础上,提出对中国小额信贷的若干看法和可吸取的经验教训,并就项目机构的合法性、利率、模式的多样性、资金的来源、对项目的规范和监管等方面的问题提出有关的政策思考。     

Matching and bargaining models of markets: approximating small markets by large markets

Summary. We show that the equilibrium of a matching and bargaining model of a market in which there is a finite number of agents at each date need not be near the equilibrium of a market with a continuum of agents, although matching probabilities are the same in both markets. Holding the matching process fixed, as the finite market becomes large its equilibrium approaches the equilibrium of its continuum limit.Received: January 22, 1996; revised version: September 24, 1996This revised version was published online in February 2005 with corrections to the cover date.