The microfinance industry is itself becoming a global phenomenon. The proliferation of microfinance programmes - and in particular of a single loan product - has been accelerated by a global publicity campaign, the MicroCredit Summit. Women were to be targeted, but it is clear that women do not...

Financial liberalization Policies in the 1990s were intended to raise formal sector interest rates, enhance competition and expand access for users. This article investigates patterns of provision and use in a local financial market in Karatina, Kenya, at the end of the 1990s after a period of...

In this paper we survey the common explanations of barter in transition economies and expose them to detailed survey data on 165 barter deals in Ukraine in 1997. The evidence does not support the notion that soft budget constraints, lack of restructuring, or that the virtual economy are the...

We revisit and critically reevaluate the widely accepted modernization hypothesis which claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy. Existing studies find support for this hypothesis because they fail to control for the presence of omitted variables....

Enables teams of engineering, science, and management students to work with the top management of international high-tech start-ups and gain hands-on experience in starting and running a new enterprise outside the United States. Lectures expose students to the issues and policies that affect the...