Joint liability lending: a note

This note argues that the joint liability contracting equilibria worked out in Ghatak(2000) have a serious drawback in that, even though incentive compatible ex ante, they violate ex post rationality. For such contracts to be feasible, banks should be able to extract more under failure than under success. However, when we alllow for this, it may help explain some important empirical observations on joint liability lending.

Small and Micro Enterprises: A tool in the fight against poverty

The present paper makes an attempt to analyze the role and contribution that Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs) could play in eradicating poverty and attaining Millennium Development Goals. International approach to poverty eradication is largely based upon poverty eradication through economic empowerment, besides social programmes. It is well-accepted fact that poverty removal and employment generation largely depends upon economic empowerment. Eradication of poverty is a complex issue as the development of SME itself and requires multi-pronged strategy and actions involving both macro and micro policy initiatives. MSMEs have been identified as a high potential sector for employment generation and provision of livelihood to millions of people in several countries. This is echoed by specific programmes instituted by agencies such as International Labour Organisation (ILO) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UNCTAD etc. The paper attempts to analyze the experiences of some countries in addressing the issue of poverty and suggest measures that can be taken by India to enhance contribution of SMEs to povertySmall and Micro Enterprises(SMEs); Poverty; Enterprise Oriented Stratgey; Employment generation

News from the SIOP-United Nations team: Exploring work experiences of informal workers and promoting decent work for all

For the first time, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) has funded a humanitarian work psychology research project under the SIOP Foundation’s Grants and Awards program this year. The project is led by Mahima Saxena from the Illinois Institute of Technology and John Scott from APTMetrics, and is titled, “I-O Psychology and ILO: Exploring Work Experiences of Informal Workers and Promoting Decent Work for All.

Joint liability lending:a note

This note argues that the joint liability contracting equilibria worked out in Ghatak(2000) have a serious drawback in that, even though incentive compatible ex ante, they violate ex post rationality. For such contracts to be feasible, banks should be able to extract more under failure than under success. However, when we alllow for this, it may help explain some important empirical observations on joint liability lending

Shifting the Focus from Paradigms to Goals: A New Approach Towards Defining and Assessing Wellbeing

GDP as an indicator is relatively recent. It was introduced seventy years ago and like many other institutions it is an issue of the historical period in which it was created in the years between the Great Depression and World War II. The adoption of the GDP as an indicator is not a neutral choice, but rather the logical consequence of a well-defined theoretical paradigm in which GDP appears the essential tool apt to promote well-being and development. Since then, however, times have changed, new problems have emerged and new theories and approaches have been developed to address them. Starting from these considerations the paper examines the problems connected with adopting an indicator as an absolute measure of progress. Indicators, in fact, are not neutral: they are the result of a specific economic approach; hence they are biased in nature and contribute to define policies that are implemented. After reviewing the main theories and indicators introduced by literature in the last sixty years, we propose to adopt a different approach according to which progress is measured against stated goals and not in absolute terms. Subsequently, we present an example of this approach by introducing a new indicator (ICSES – Index of Competitiveness and Social and Environmental Sustainability) to measure the performance of EU countries vis-à-vis the goals explicitly stated by the European Union.ISES, GDP , Sustainability, Human Development, Wellbeing

Rural Income Dynamics in Post-Crisis Indonesia

Indonesia is, what the World Development Report 2008 calls, a transforming country characterized by increasing rural-urban income disparities and high poverty rates. Bearing these facts in mind, it is striking how little is known about causes and mechanism of the underlying determinants of poverty in rural Indonesia. In this study we aim to shed more light on the determinants of rural incomes and poverty in Indonesia. Drawing on a unique and highly detailed rural household panel data set for Central Sulawesi we investigate what are the drivers of rural income growth. Moreover, exploiting the panel structure of our data set we are able to control explicitly for individual- and time-specific effects and for endogeneity issues in our estimations. In addition, in order to identify whether our findings might hold lessons for all of Indonesia, we upscale our analysis to the national level by comparing our results with the national household data survey SUSENAS. Our results indicate that a sharp increase in rural incomes took place in the post-crisis period. Moreover, the ability to alleviate poverty and to enjoy income growth has been strongly associated with a households ability to diversify into the non-farm sector of the economy, to focus on higher value-added agricultural activities and its ability to invest into new production techniques. These results seem to hold for most of rural Indonesia and are robust to various model specifications. --Rural non-farm income,agricultural productivity growth,rural poverty