Group Dynamics have been largely neglected when the impacts of microfinance on poverty reduction are assessed. This paper presents an analytical framework in which the study of group dynamics is central and new channels of impact effects on the individuals participating in microfinance schemes,...

As a response to many partial and over-simplistic theoretical and empirical studies, this paper presents a more comprehensive analytical framework for assessing the success of microfinance in achieving its dual objective of financial sustainability and poverty reduction. By giving centre stage...

“We risk having a generation that hasn’t held a job. Personal dignity comes from working [...] Young people are in a crisis". Pope Francis - July the 22nd, 2013. Youth unemployment is a critical issue across the European Union with 5.5 million people unemployed among the 18-24 years age...

National framework conditions mediate the effect of technological capabilities of firms on their productivity. Although this has been recognized in the literature for a long time, a quantitative test that explicitly considers this hypothesis has been lacking. Using a World Bank datasets of about...

This paper investigates the link between innovation and export market participation using Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) data. The results show that export and innovation are positively linked. Depending on the industry and the type of innovation (process or product), innovation...

In this paper we develop a simple Schumpeterian growth model to rationalize the inverted-U relationship between competition and innovation uncovered by Scherer (1967). This model in turn delivers a number of testable prediction. A first testable prediction is that the relationship between...

Despite their potentially strong impact on poverty, agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly. Using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in Mozambique, we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks....

We evaluate the impact of a health information intervention implemented through mobile phones, using a clustered randomized control trial augmented by qualitative interviews. The intervention aimed to improve sexual health knowledge and shift individuals towards safer sexual behavior by...

This paper analyses and compares the determinants of innovation in the service industry and its impact on labour productivity at the firm level in three countries of Latin America Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay. The main findings show that, similar to what is observed in the manufacturing...

Schumpeterian growth theory has "operationalized" Schumpeter''s notion of creative destruction by developing models based on this concept. These models shed light on several aspects of the growth process which could not be properly addressed by alternative theories. In this survey, we focus on...