Women and Digital Financial Inclusion in Indonesia as Emerging Market

Digital financial inclusion is digital access to and use of formal financial services. This paper aims to examine the significance of gender dimension in digital financial inclusion in Indonesia as an Emerging Market. By using surveys, we expect to relate women and digital financial inclusion. The ordinal logistic regression model was used as a method to model one of the key variables, gender. The result concluded that women as the gender we concerned gives a significant impact to behavioral intention that represents the digital financial inclusion. Keywords: women digital financial inclusion, financial services, gender dimension JEL Classifications: G4, I20 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/irmm.1021

Big Data, Small Credit: The Digital Revolution and Its Impact on Emerging Market Consumers

This research report sheds light on a new cadre of technology companies who are disrupting the credit scoring business in emerging markets. Using non-financial data -- such as social media activity and mobile phone usage patterns -- complex algorithms and big data analytics are forever changing the economics of how we identify, score, and underwrite credit to consumers who have been invisible to lenders until now

Financial Literacy, Financial Inclusion, and Digital Literacy: A Survival Kit During the COVID-19 Economic Turbulence

The economic turmoil caused by COVID-19 pandemic has driven regulators and financial services to move towards financial technology to offer better, more efficient financial transactions that also comply with the government’s health policies. These escalations are interrelated between the innovation itself and the users, categorized into three main aspects: financial literacy, financial inclusion, and digital literacy. Although these three indexes have been showing a confident rise per fourth quarter of 2021, this condition should not be treated as an absolute win against the pandemic turbulence and must be cautiously reviewed to prevent further downfall in personal finance. Therefore, this research applied the systematic review with a qualitative approach to compare evidence of financial literacy, financial inclusion, and digital literacy in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was found that financial inclusion is way higher than both financial and digital literacy index, with uneven distribution of financial inclusion across the country. However, the implementation of those variables has not been completely approached using sustainability viewpoint and therefore it is a joint responsibility for all stakeholders including individuals, financial services, and policymakers to elevate those towards inclusivity and sustainability to better promote eco-living and environmental long-term strategies.Keywords: digital literacy, financial inclusion, financial literacy, personal financ

The marketization of poverty

Increasingly, transnational corporations (TNCs) see themselves, and are seen by multilateral development organizations and national governments, as part of the solution to global poverty alleviation. Guided by C. K. Prahalad's theories about the "bottom of the pyramid" (BoP), TNCs are developing products and services for the billions of people living on a few dollars a day that are supposed to enable these poor people to enterprise themselves out of poverty. In the process, poverty and the poor are made amenable to market interventions by being constituted as a potential new market for TNCs. Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) e-Inclusion program was the first corporate-wide BoP initiative in the high-tech industry that aimed to create corporate and social benefits. An analysis of its companyinternal evolution from an intrapreneurial initiative to a fully incorporated business operation is complemented by a study of e-Inclusion's activities in Costa Rica, which aimed to improve the lives of rural Costa Ricans by providing access to HP technology and by creating new sources of income for electronic entrepreneurs. However, transforming the poor into protoconsumers of TNC products and services cannot address the structural drivers of their circumstances and will lead to neither the eradication of poverty nor a corporate fortune at the BoP. © 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved

FinTech, blockchain and Islamic finance : an extensive literature review

Purpose: The paper aims to review the academic research work done in the area of Islamic financial technology. The Islamic FinTech area has been classified into three broad categories of the Islamic FinTech, Islamic Financial technology opportunities and challenges, Cryptocurrency/Blockchain sharia compliance and law/regulation. Finally, the study identifies and highlights the opportunities and challenges that Islamic Financial institutions can learn from the conventional FinTech organization across the world. Approach/Methodology/Design: The study collected 133 research studies (50 from Social Science Research Network (SSRN), 30 from Research gate, 33 from Google Scholar and 20 from other sources) in the area of Islamic Financial Technology. The study presents the systematic review of the above studies. Findings: The study classifies the Islamic FinTech into three broad categories namely, Islamic FinTech opportunities and challenges, Cryptocurrency/Blockchain sharia compliance and law/regulation. The study identifies that the sharia compliance related to the cryptocurrency/Blockchain is the biggest challenge which Islamic FinTech organizations are facing. During our review we also find that Islamic FinTech organizations are to be considered as partners by the Islamic Financial Institutions (IFI’s) than the competitors. If Islamic Financial institutions want to increase efficiency, transparency and customer satisfaction they have to adopt FinTech and become partners with the FinTech companies. Practical Implications: The study will contribute positively to the understanding of Islamic Fintech for the academia, industry, regulators, investors and other FinTech users. Originality/Value: The study believes to contribute positively to understanding of Fintech based technology like cryptocurrency/Blockchain from sharia perspective.peer-reviewe

The Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2017

Around the globe, leaders of governments and other stakeholder institutions enter 2017 facing a set of difficult and increasingly urgent questions:With fiscal space limited, interest rates near zero, and demographic trends unfavorable in many countries, does the world economy face a protracted period of relatively low growth? Will macroeconomics and demography determine the world economy's destiny for the foreseeable future?Can rising in-country inequality be satisfactorily redressed within the prevailing liberal international economic order? Can those who argue that modern capitalist economies face inherent limitations in this regard – that their internal "income distribution system" is broken and likely beyond repair – be proven wrong?As technological disruption accelerates in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, how can societies organize themselves better to respond to the potential employment and other distributional effects? Are expanded transfer payments the only or primary solution, or can market mechanisms be developed to widen social participation in new forms of economic value-creation?These questions beg the more fundamental one of whether a secular correction is required in the existing economic growth model in order to counteract secular stagnation and dispersion (chronic low growth and rising inequality). Does the mental map of how policymakers conceptualize and enable national economic performance need to be redrawn? Is there a structural way, beyond the temporary monetary and fiscal measures of recent years, to cut the Gordian knot of slow growth and rising inequality, to turn the current vicious cycle of stagnation and dispersion into a virtuous one in which greater social inclusion and stronger and more sustainable growth reinforce each other?This is precisely what government, business, and other leaders from every region have been calling for. Over the past several years, a worldwide consensus has emerged on the need for a more inclusive growth and development model; however, this consensus is mainly directional. Inclusive growth remains more a discussion topic than an action agenda. This Report seeks to help countries and the wider international community practice inclusive growth and development by offering a new policy framework and corresponding set of policy and performance indicators for this purpose

Development Asia

Beneath the gloss of Asia’s newfound prosperity lies an unsettling reality. Rising inequality has denied the benefits of Asia’s economic growth to many millions of its citizens. The problem is worsening as the region’s rich get richer much faster than the poor, who miss out on the income, education, and health care they need to lead fulfilling lives. In this issue’s Special Report, Development Asia examines Asia’s widening inequality from many different perspectives. We look at the role of globalization in producing inequality, and consider the disputed relationship between inequality and economic growth. Asia isn’t the only region suffering from a wealth gap, but unlike others it has failed so far to narrow the divide. Most of its large economies have shown rising income inequality since the 1990s, and rural poverty is outpacing urban poverty across much of the continent. If left unchecked, the consequences of this trend could be dire. Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Government of India Finance Minister, provides unique insights into India’s experience with inequality in a fascinating question-and-answer session. In a forthright opinion piece, former World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin delivers his prescription for tackling inequality in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). We discuss how some countries have managed to sidestep the inequality trap, and reveal how others like Cambodia have made progress in curbing the symptoms of inequality— in this case child mortality. Rounding out our cover package is a central question: What can be done about inequality? While some characterize inequality as a phase on the path to prosperity, an emerging consensus suggests otherwise and highlights the importance of inclusive, jobs-rich growth. In our Features section, we venture into Asia’s sprawling slums for a closeup look at how hope—and economies— can take root amid the squalor. Many slums are now vital hubs in the broader economy of their cities, a positive step but one that complicates plans for slum redevelopment. Closing this issue is Black & White, a new section that provides a space for some of Asia’s leading photographers to display their work on a specific development project or theme. In this issue, Filipino photographer Veejay Villafranca spent time with the garbage-pickers of Manila’s Smokey Mountain waste dump. Veejay’s powerful image, on page 56, and the story of a project trying to improve the lives of the pickers, suggests it was time well spent

World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends for Women 2017

This report examines the global and regional labour market trends and gaps, including in labour force participation rates, unemployment rates, employment status as well as sectoral and occupational segregation. It also presents a global in-depth analysis of the key drivers of female labour force participation by investigating the personal preferences of women and the societal gender norms and socio-economic constraints that women face.A key finding of this report is that closing these labour market gaps would yield significant economic benefits in terms of GDP growth while at the same time improving individual welfare in multiple dimensions. However, the report finds that there are significant socio-economic and gender norm constraints influencing a woman's decision to participate. Accordingly, the report introduces a comprehensive framework to address the drivers of these gender gaps and outlines a series of policy recommendations to improve the labour market outcomes of women

Financial Inclusion and Bank Profitability: Evidence from Indonesia

Research aims: This study attempts to investigate the effect of financial inclusion on bank profitability in the Indonesian context.Design/Methodology/Approach: The sample of this study consisted of 93 commercial banks in Indonesia between 2015 and 2020. The researchers used panel data regression with a fixed effects approach to investigate the nexus between financial inclusion and bank profitability.Research findings: It was found that financial inclusion positively affected bank profitability in three different dimensions of financial inclusion: access, availability, and usage.Theoretical contribution/Originality: Most of the previous papers have investigated the impact of financial inclusion on the national levels, such as how financial inclusion affects economic growth. Meanwhile, this paper examines the impact of financial inclusion on bank-level profitability, an issue relatively unexplored in the literature, particularly in Indonesia. The use of three dimensions of financial inclusion in the context of a developing economy is also the novelty of this article.Practitioner/Policy implication: The result of this study can also assist policymakers, such as the central bank of Indonesia, in designing better strategies and regulations to achieve higher financial inclusion and boost the economy's development.Research limitation/Implication: The result of this paper might only be applied to Indonesia’s specific setting or developing countries