Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are often seen by aid practitioners as a manifestly effective means of improving the position of the poor. However, detailed research studies have been much more guarded about their impact. In particular, several studies have raised doubts about the effectiveness...

Despite the extensive spread of micro finance, studies on the actual impact of MFIs are often more ambivalent about its impact than is the aid community. Much has been written on the range of institutional arrangements pursued in different organizations and countries and in turn a vast number...

The economy of Taipei,China was able to escape the contagion of the Asian financial crisis and remains well insulated from the type of external shocks that forced other economies in the region into currency devaluations and deep recession in 1997. Since that time however, internal pressures have...

First, using data on the presence of foreign banks via branching as well as subsidiaries, the study shows that the presence of foreign banks in the four crisis-hit countries is actually much larger than has been previously reported once the presence of foreign branches is accounted for in the...

Poverty targeting programs can in principle be assessed as projects using the tools of either cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis. In practice where quantitative assessments have been made they are principally a form of cost-effectiveness calculations based on costs per unit of benefit...

The very rapid economic growth of the People's Republic of China (henceforth PRC), its dramatic success in world export markets and its heavy receipts of foreign direct investment (FDI) have generated much thought and debate in policy and business circles in different parts of the world. This...