BACKGROUND Cash-based transfer programmes are an emerging strategy in the prevention of wasting in children, especially targeted at vulnerable households during periods of food insecurity or during emergencies. However, the evidence surrounding the use of either cash or voucher transfer programmes in the humanitarian context and on nutritional outcomes is elusive. More evidence is needed not on...

Conditional cash transfers (CCT) have recently received considerable attention as a potentially innovative and effective approach to the prevention of HIV/AIDS. We evaluate a conditional cash transfer program in rural Malawi which offered financial incentives to men and women to maintain their HIV status for approximately one year. The amounts of the reward ranged from zero to approximately 3-4...

Most research on the political consequences of international migration conceptualizes financial remittances as being a substitute for state-provided assistance. This paper tests the actual validity of this assumption. Using data from the 2012-2016 Americas Barometer, the analysis confirms previous findings on the negative impact of financial remittances on electoral turnout intentions. However ...

A large randomized trial in Malawi shows that schoolgirls whose families received monthly cash transfers had a significantly lower HIV infection rate than the control group. The two-year experiment in Zomba, a district in southern Malawi, offered cash to households with schoolgirls aged 13-22 who had never been married. Some of the offers were conditional on regular school attendance, while oth...

An oo-line electronic cash system is presented that ooers appreciably greater security and better privacy than currently considered electronic cash systems with similar functionality. A tamper-resistant smart card, issued by the bank, controls a counter that represents the amount of electronic cash carried by the user. The use of a counter ensures that the computation and communication complexi...

Treasury departments of financial institutions often view the management of physical cash as an unavoidable but necessary part of their business – and usually not as core to their business activities. Yet, on the other hand, cash is perceived as sensitive and in most cases cannot be outsourced completely. At the same time, even after many years of ongoing payment innovations, cash is by far sti...

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reduce poverty and increase the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children’s education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in identifying the income poor, but have not fared as well...