This paper discusses the status of financial inclusion, education, and literacy in Azerbaijan as well as measures to foster the development of SMEs, which currently have inadequate access to financial resources. The primary policy challenge faced by the government of Azerbaijan is defining its...

Limited borrower information may create targeting distortions in credit markets. Community-based lending programs may reduce these distortions by exploiting information transmitted in local networks, but connections may create asymmetries in power. This paper analyzes how local leaders balance...

CASHPOR Micro-Credit (CMC) is providing micro-credit on a large scale exclusively to poor in the poverty-incapacitated areas of eastern region of Uttar-Pradesh. CASHPOR was started in 1996 and as on 31st march, 2009 it has provided credit worth INR 1.82 billion to 319,000 poor women.This case...

Over the past thirty years, a number of social entrepreneurs have managed to create fairly large social enterprises. Properly run and scaled, they can generate sufficient cash flow to support debt financing at manageable levels of risk and, depending on their business model and legal form, also...

Firm growth is overwhelmingly presented as positive. Policy-makers strongly support it, educators recommend it, and academics commonly use it as a measure of success. While it is demonstrated that high-growth firms contribute disproportionately to job creation and economic growth and that firm...

This paper discusses the status of financial inclusion, education, and literacy in Azerbaijan as well as measures to foster the development of SMEs, which currently have inadequate access to financial resources. The primary policy challenge faced by the government of Azerbaijan is defining its...

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

The banking sector in the United Kingdom (UK) was deeply affected by the crisis. Bank credit has collapsed reflecting both weak demand and tighter supply. New prudential requirements have improved the resilience of the banking sector and a number of measures were taken to support credit supply....

To sustain growth in an aging economy, it is important to ease the financing of small firms by bank loans. Using bank internal data of small business loans in Germany, we examine the determinants of loan rates in the period 1995-2010. Beyond characteristics of the firm, the loan contract, and...