CERMi News
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Thursday, January 19, 2023
Publication 
Handbook of Microfinance, Financial Inclusion and Development
Elgar Handbooks in Development
Edited by Valentina Hartarska, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, and Department of Finance, Auburn University, US and Robert Cull, Development Research Group, The World Bank, US.
This timely Handbook collates a range of evidence from top scholars in the field to help readers understand who microfinance reaches, how it helps, and why clients come back. It offers updated views on important concepts that enable a broader framework for understanding poverty and the corresponding financial needs of poor households.
‘This is an outstanding collection of contributions from some of the most highly-respected researchers in the field of microfinance. It provides an excellent overview of the evidence on the success and limitations of microfinance and addresses important topics such as gender and finance, digital finance, and financial literacy. A must-read for anyone interested in microfinance.’
– Niels Hermes, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
‘An impressive collection of articles on many important aspects of microfinance; written by experts in the field and providing a unique and comprehensive overview of where microfinance stands in the 2020s.’
– Thorsten Beck, European University Institute, Italy
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Publication
The Informal Sector and the Environment
Edited By Ranjula Bali Swain & Uma Kambhampati
The informal economy – broadly defined as economic activity that is not subject to government regulation or taxation – sustains a large part of the world's workforce. It is a diverse, complex and growing area of activity. However, being largely unregulated, its impact on the environment has not been closely scrutinised or analysed.
This edited volume demonstrates that the informal sector is a major source of environmental pollution and a major reason behind the environmental degradation accompanying the expansion of economic activity in developing countries. Environmental regulation and economic incentive policies are difficult to implement in this sector because economic units are unregistered, geographically dispersed and difficult to identify. Moreover, given their limited capital base, they cannot afford to pay pollution fees or install pollution abating equipment. Informal manufacturing units often operate under unscientific and unhealthy conditions, further contributing to polluting the environment. The book emphasizes and examines these challenges, and their solutions, encountered in various sectors of the informal economy, including urban waste pickers, small-scale farmers, informal workers, home-based workers, street vendors, and more. If the informal sector is to "Leave no one behind" (as the Sustainable Development Goals promise) and contribute to "inclusive growth" (an objective of the green economy), then its impact on the economy as well as the environment has to be carefully considered.
This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on both the informal economy and sustainable development, and will be of great interest to readers in economics, geography, politics, environment studies and public policy more broadly.
Friday, October 21, 2022
Publication
Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE)
SIMON CORNEE, MARC JEGERS & ARIANE SZAFARZ
Feasible Institutions of Social Finance: A Taxonomy
This paper unpacks the continuum of social finance institutions (SFIs), ranging from foundations offering pure grants to social banks supplying soft loans. The in-between category includes quasi-foundations granting loans requiring partial repayment. In our model, SFIs maximize their social contribution arising from financing successful social projects, under a budget constraint dictated by their funders. We determine the feasibility of each SFI category. Quasi-foundations appear to be efficient and adapted to low market rates. However, reciprocity from SFI borrowers can elicit a so-called hold-up effect, whereby the SFI charges a high interest rate to its loyal clients.
What you'll find in this edition : Update on our members, seminars in 2021... Awards and prizes and editorial positions of our members...2021 publications by CERMi members as well as conferences......and more ! Thursday, September 1, 2022
that Patrick Murhula Cubaka (Catholic University of Bukavu, DRC) will be presenting on Monday, September 5th, 2022 at 2.30 pm at the Seminar Room 222 at Mons University (UMONS).
Thursday, June 9, 2022
Publication
American Economic Association
MARIE BRIERE, JAMES POTERBA & ARIANE SZAFARZ
Precautionary Liquidity and Retirement Saving
This paper argues that role modeling can explain the impact of boardroom gender diversity on corporate performance. It theorizes that female workers are boosted by female leadership, gain increased motivation, and achieve greater productivity, thereby making their female directors more effective. We test this bottom–up approach to the trickle-down hypothesis on data hand-collected among local cooperatives providing microcredit in Senegal. All the organizations surveyed are similar and small, which allows us to use a homogenous performance metric. All of them outsource their human resource management to the same third party, which mitigates the risk of endogeneity. The data cover over 100,000 triads composed of gender dominance on the board, gender of CEO, and gender of credit officer. A better financial performance is achieved when the triad is gender-uniform—be it male or female—confirming the importance of role modeling and suggesting that the performance of female board members depends on the gender composition of the workforce.
Thursday, May 12, 2022
Publication
Small Business Economics
ANAIS PERILLEUX & ARIANE SZAFARZ
Women in the boardroom: a bottom–up approach to the trickle-down effect
This paper argues that role modeling can explain the impact of boardroom gender diversity on corporate performance. It theorizes that female workers are boosted by female leadership, gain increased motivation, and achieve greater productivity, thereby making their female directors more effective. We test this bottom–up approach to the trickle-down hypothesis on data hand-collected among local cooperatives providing microcredit in Senegal. All the organizations surveyed are similar and small, which allows us to use a homogenous performance metric. All of them outsource their human resource management to the same third party, which mitigates the risk of endogeneity. The data cover over 100,000 triads composed of gender dominance on the board, gender of CEO, and gender of credit officer. A better financial performance is achieved when the triad is gender-uniform—be it male or female—confirming the importance of role modeling and suggesting that the performance of female board members depends on the gender composition of the workforce.
Friday, March 11, 2022
Working Paper
WP CEBRIG 22-002
SIMON CORNEE, ANASTASIA COZARENCO, ARIANE SZAFARZ
The Changing Role of Banks in the Financial System: Social versus Conventional Banks
Social banks have emerged as a new group of banks that call themselves as “alternative”, “ethical”, “sustainable”, and “value-based”. Their small market share increases at a rapid pace and is still expected to grow in the future. Social banks are institutions with both (at least some) activities of financial intermediation and one or several non-financial missions, typically based on environmental and social values. By unpacking the observable, real-life differences between social banks and conventional banks, this chapter paves the way to theorizing the multidimensional characteristics of social banks within the global banking industry. Business models, governance issues, lending technologies; and social outcomes appear to be key aspects to understand how innovative, value-based, social banks work and how they might one day substantively affect mainstream banking business.
Monday, March 7, 2022
Working Paper
WP CEBRIG 22-001
ANASTASIA COZARENCO, VALENTINA HARTARSKA, ARIANE SZAFARZ
Monday, February 07, 2022
Publication
Discover our 17th CERMi Newsletter !
What you'll find in this edition :
Latest events at CERMi
Awards and prizes
Recent publications by CERMi members