Traditional banks have proved to have severe limits in mitigating financial exclusion. The microfinance revolution is intended to address this problem by devising new approaches which ease credit access for poor and uncollateralized borrowers. In this introductory essay we present a special...

International commercial banks, institutional investors, and private investors have become increasingly interested in financing microfinance institutions (MFIs). This paper investigates whether adding microfinance funds to a portfolio of risky international assets yields diversification gains....

The positive relation between financial development and economic growth seems to have weakened in recent years and when analyzing only developed countries. We suggest here that banks' relative ability to intermediate funds cost-efficiently is a quality-based measure of financial development that...

In recent years, academic and policy research has placed increasing focus on the study of the attitudes of the Muslim poor towards Islamic and non-Islamic (micro-)finance to inform financial inclusion strategies. Survey questions are a common way to measure these attitudes and have been included...

This study examines the take-up, use, and impact of Islamic savings accounts for poor Muslim clients of an MFI in Pakistan, using a randomized controlled trial. We specifically focus on the impact of opening Islamic savings accounts on women’s empowerment. The main results strongly suggest...

This book presents an up-to-date overview of the theory as well as the empirics of the relationship between investment, financial imperfections and uncertainty. After reviewing the capital market imperfections literature and the empirical results, the authors discuss both traditional investment...

This paper presents an assessment of the results of Brady plans for debtor countries which have implemented such agreements (Costa Rica, Mexico, the Philippines, Uruguay and Venezuela). First, we show that the relatively successful Mexican case cannot be generalized, due to the great diversity...