In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate on...

Support schemes for unemployed aiming for self-employment have been recently reformed several times. In 2003, the "start-up-subsidy" was added to the existing "bridging-allowance". In 2006 both instruments were merged to the "Gründungszuschuss". Since the bridging allowance has been evaluated...

This article investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans -- in particular, instalment loans and overdrafts -- to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and nonfinancial household variables, we show that self-employed households particularly use personal...

Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) are publicly funded organisations that provide small loans to people in financially underserved areas of the UK. Policy makers have repeatedly sought to understand and measure the performance of CDFIs to ensure the efficient use of public funds,...

In less developed and transition economies, microlending has become an efficient instrument for providing small and micro-businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been...