In the last two decades of the 20th century, recurring fiscal and financial crises, unsatisfactory growth, and deep and persistent inequality endangered development prospects in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Since then, financial stability and growth have improved, but inequality and economic and social exclusion remain key areas of concern; they are, arguably, the main challenges to b...

REQUIRED) A decade ago, the microfinance industry prided itself on its trends toward financial and operational sustainability. Recently, investors, donors, lenders, regulators, and microfinance institutions have been more concerned with social and outreach performance. Transactions cost and distance theories inform a new ICT-enabled microfinance institution (MFI) outreach theory positing that i...

This study estimates ex ante poverty and vulnerability of households in Bangladesh using Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) data in 2005. Our results show that poverty is not same as vulnerability as a substantial share of those currently above the poverty line is highly vulnerable to poverty in the future. The study finds that those without education or agricultural households are ...

Pension systems are usually evaluated from the perspective of two basic criteria: pension adequacy and financial sustainability. The first criterion concerns the level of pension benefits and protection of the elderly from poverty. The second criterion applies to financial liquidity. This paper is primarily of methodological nature. We discuss the problem of measuring pension adequacy, focusing...

In Gambia, women groups are the core of developmental activities. The role of women in micro financing for poverty alleviation has long been recognized as vital approach to household welfare. Microfinance generally refers to the provision of financial services (e.g. savings, credit, insurance) to the poor especially women who normally do not have easy access to formal financial institutions. In...

Whilst the adoption and diffusion of mobile banking has revolutionised the banking sector in developing countries, paucity remains on exploring the role of mobile banking for government-to-person (G2P) transfers. Through an interpretive case study of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in Pakistan, the paper investigated how the adoption of mobile phones enabled and constrained poor wom...

The paper models the policy challenges facing globalizing developing countries. Models from the pure theory of international trade, the small open economy model, growth accounting, the SolowSwan model, the gravity model, models of portfolio diversification and currency crises models are reviewed to distil policy guidelines to promote the globalization of developing countries. The overriding obj...

• A well developed financial system is necessary for economic development and poverty alleviation (Beck, Demirguc-Kunt and Levine 2004 and Honohan 2004a). The empirical relationship between finance and growth is well established in theoretical literature, as surveyed by Levine (2005). Financial market imperfections are particularly binding on poor or small entrepreneurs lacking collateral, cred...

Smallholder farming in less-favored areas (LFAs) is simultaneously constrained by agro-ecological, economic, and institutional factors that keep households “trapped” in vicious circles of chronic poverty and resource degradation. Common strategies to address rural poverty by increasing returns to agricultural production are likely to fail, since the opportunities for investments in improved res...