Institutional finance for agricultural development

The authors review the literature to see at how rural financial institutions (RFIs) are organized, how they can improve their financial viability, and how real interest rates affect the demand for rural loans, the supply of rural deposits, and rural savings. Their purpose is to make the findings of the extensive literature on agricultural credit policy accessible to developing-country policymakers. The review addresses six major questions: Why promote formal RFIs? How should RFIs be organized? What are the transaction costs of RFIs and how should they be measured? What effects do real interest rates and other factors have on rural loans, deposits, and savings? What determines whether an RFI system is a net contributor to or a drain on public resources? And, what policy conclusions can be drawn from this analysis? To answer these questions, Desai and Mellor look at the literature on RFIs in high-, middle-, and low-income countries, both developed and developing. They include countries in four developing regions Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Near East and Mediterranean Basin, and Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Western Europe and North America.Rural credit Developing countries. ,Financial institutions. ,

Building Institutional Capacity for Development

{Excerpt} Every day, we are reminded of the changes needed for economic and social progress, but not that institutions are the channels through which such changes can happen. We would do well to consider what is meant by (and can be accomplished through) participation, how participation grows out of democratic processes, how these processes depend on the structure of institutions, and how institutions originate from (and are supported by) human resources. Only then will we understand better the processes of progress and picture more accurately the necessarily diverse levels of the organizational setups on which progress depends. The rights and responsibilities of people are central to progress. And participation is essential since privileged minorities seldom approve of reforms and concentration of political, economic, or social power in their hands has retarded development. Therefore, five questions must be asked. Who initiates? Who participates? Who decides? Who controls? And who benefits? If it is the people, then development activities will most likely succeed (bearing in mind that the chance to take part hinges in turn on access to information, freedom of association to hold discussions, and arrangement of regular meetings at which officials and representatives can listen and respond to communities and be held accountable for delivering particular outputs.

Pension reform, institutional investors’ growth and stock market development in the developing countries: does it function?

In this paper, we evaluate an empirical link between recent institutional assets’ growth, institutional behaviour and stock market performance in the developing countries. Using the GMM technique on the panel of eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) developing countries over the period of 1995-2006, our results indicate that institutional development exerts a robust and significant impact on the securities markets’ growth in the developing countries. In particular, we find that institutional investors contribute to the greater activity of the emerging capital markets and this effect is a result of higher demand for the local securities induced by these institutions. In addition, in countries where the institutional investors actively participate in the corporate governance, their presence possibly reduces the cost of capital for firms and also positively influences the stock market capitalization. Our findings suggest that the pension reform has contributed significantly to the institutional development and stock market growth in the CEE countries.capital market development, capital market reforms, financial structure, institutional investors, pension reform

Institutional Development and Colonial Heritage within Brazil

This paper analyzes the determinants of local institutions and distribution of political power within a constant 'macro-institutional' setting. We show that characteristics of Brazilian municipalities related to institutional quality and distribution of political power are partly inherited from the colonial histories experienced by different areas of the country. Municipalities with origins tracing back to the sugar-cane colonial cycle – characterized by a polarized and oligarchic socioeconomic structure – display today more inequality in the distribution of endowments (land). Municipalities with origins tracing back to the gold colonial cycle – characterized by a heavily inefficient presence of the Portuguese state – display today worse governance practices and less access to justice. The colonial rent-seeking episodes are also correlated with lower provision of public goods and lower income per capita.institutions, colonial heritage, rent-seeking, geography, Brazil

Social mobilization and institutional development approach and strategy

Institutional development, Water users associations, Training, Capacity building, Water resource management, Irrigated farming, Farm Management, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

An Institutional Framework for Heterogeneous Formal Development in UML

We present a framework for formal software development with UML. In contrast to previous approaches that equip UML with a formal semantics, we follow an institution based heterogeneous approach. This can express suitable formal semantics of the different UML diagram types directly, without the need to map everything to one specific formalism (let it be first-order logic or graph grammars). We show how different aspects of the formal development process can be coherently formalised, ranging from requirements over design and Hoare-style conditions on code to the implementation itself. The framework can be used to verify consistency of different UML diagrams both horizontally (e.g., consistency among various requirements) as well as vertically (e.g., correctness of design or implementation w.r.t. the requirements)

A Conceptual Framework for Studying Institutions in Watershed Development

Improving productivity and incomes in rainfed areas is a major challenge in India, and a key to achieving this is improving the use of land and water which are the principal constraints in these areas. A major initiative through which this is pursued in India is Watershed Development (WSD) programs which have been taken up under different schemes funded by the Government of India and the state governments. Since poverty is particularly acute in the rainfed areas, large expenditures to the tune of about US$ 500 million per year are being made on WSD programs. A hierarchy of complex institutional arrangements of the government and other bodies undertakes the planning and implementation of WSD to the district and village levels. Institutional weaknesses are a significant challenge and often lead to poor implementation and results. The paper develops a conceptual framework for the study of institutional setups in the implementation of watershed development programmes. It uses the theoretical fundamentals of new institutional economics, and concepts of organizational design and governance from management sciences. It related these to observations from six in-depth case studies of watershed development projects in state of Andhra Pradesh, India which has the largest number of such projects. The framework that emerges may be useful for examining the institutional setups and performance of watershed development activities in various areas, as well as the better design of the institutional setups for watershed and other development programmes in India and elsewhere.

Two Views on Institutional Development: The Grand Transition vs the Primacy of Institutions

The Grand Transition (GT) view claims that economic development is causal to institutional development, and that many institutional changes can be understood as transitions occurring at roughly the same level (zones) of development. The Primacy of Institutions (PoI) view claims that economic development is a consequence of an exogenous selection of institutions. Our survey of the empirical evidence and our own estimates reveal that it is easy to find convincing evidence supporting either of the two views. Property rights do affect development as suggested by the PoI. However, democracy is mainly an effect of development as suggested by the GT. We conclude that the empirical results are far too mixed to allow for a robust assessment that one of the two views is true and the other false. This finding implies that focusing on institutional development is unlikely to be successful as the key strategy for the economic development of poor countries.Grand transition, primacy of institutions, democracy, corruption, development