A new Balkan tragedy? The case of microcredit in Bosnia

“The microcredit lobby got poverty wrong: it is not about supply, it is about demand”, argues Milford Bateman, Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Juraj Dobrila, Pula, Croatia. The results of Bateman’s research were presented at the second conference of the LSEE Research Network on Social Cohesion in SEE

Small Enterprise Policy in Transition Economies: Progress with the Wrong Model?

The paper starts by considering the neo-liberal approach to small enterprise development and why it was to underpin small enterprise policy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from the very first years of the transition. Author briefly considers what other policy models or alternatives were realistically on offer at that time. His final concern is with the actual results of the neo-liberal policy interventions in CEE in practice. The paper focuses particularly on the programmes supported by the international assistance community, since they were largely responsible for both the financing and the design of the bulk of the interventions which emerged after 1989

Microfinance, over-indebtedness and climate adaptation: new evidence from rural Cambodia

Microfinance loans are leading to an over-indebtedness emergency that undermines borrowers’ long-term coping and adaptive capacity in a changing climate

Is fin-tech the new panacea for poverty alleviation and local development? Contesting Suri and Jack’s M-Pesa findings published in Science

Financial technology, or simply ‘fin-tech’, is increasingly seen as one of the key tools to facilitate poverty reduction and local economic development. One article in particular by Tavneet Suri and William Jack published in the leading publication Science has played a hugely influential role in promoting the fin-tech model in the global South using the example of Kenya’s iconic M-Pesa money transfer platform. The authors’ central claim is that M-Pesa has been instrumental in facilitating a major episode of poverty reduction. Our analysis shows that their analysis and claims are extremely problematic

Poor People’s Politics in East Timor

YesPoor people attempting to claim a share of resources in post-conflict societies seek allies internationally and nationally in attempts to empower their campaigns. In so doing, they mobilize the languages of liberalism, nationalism and local cultural tradition selectively and opportunistically to both justify stances that transgress the strictures of local culture and to cement alliances with more powerful actors. In the case of poor widows in East Timor, the languages of nationalism, ritual, and justice were intermingled in a campaign aimed at both international actors and the national state in a bid to claim a position of status in the post-conflict order

La Era de las Microfinanzas: Destruyendo las economías desde abajo

Este artículo argumenta que el modelo de microfinanzas que llegó a América Latina en los años 1970 ha probado ser, al igual que en otros lados del mundo, una intervención de política pública casi totalmente destructiva. El argumento central es que el modelo de microfinanzas es responsable de consolidar e impulsar continuamente la adversa trayectoria anti-desarrollo de las economías latinoamericanas. Este modelo ha progresivamente ayudado a desindustrializar, infantilizar y informalizar las estructuras sociales y económicas. Hasta recientemente, el grado y naturaleza precisa de esta trayectoria “anti-desarrollo” ha sido ignorado por miedo de subvertir y deslegitimizar el modelo global de microfinanzas y, con ello, la filosofía política y económica dominante – el neoliberalismo – que esencialmente le dio vida. Políticas industriales e instituciones financieras locales efectivas -“pro-desarrollo”- se requieren urgentemente en América Latina para construir desde abajo economías realmente sostenibles y equitativas basadas en la solidaridad. Una versión en ingles puede verse en la Fundación Austríaca de Investigación para la Ayuda al Desarrollo (OFSE, Working Paper 39, Viena, mayo de 2013). Traducción del inglés al español de Wesley Marshall y Eugenia Correa