In spite of investments and policy reforms, Sub-Saharan African countries lag in supplying financial services for agriculture and rural areas. New products, delivery channels, and partnerships, along with greater attention to savings, provide fresh optimism that this situation will be corrected....

This paper presents a literature review of issues related to recent subsidies and investments in the financial sector that have been designed to address the immediate effects of the crises and to develop the financial institutions necessary to modernize agriculture. Section two of the paper...

The initial success of microfinance programs in the 1970s led pioneers to think that many essential problems of the poor might be resolved by access to credit alone -- the ability to acquire assets, to start businesses, to finance emergency needs and to insure against illness and disaster. Part...

This paper explains market segmentation that occurs in the Philippine informal credit markets through the matching of borrowers and lenders by their occupational specializations to internalize transaction costs and facilitate economic activity. The regression results support a predictable...

Books Reviewed include: Food safety and international competitiveness-the case of beef by John Spriggs and Grant Isaac; The Economics of Nature: Managing Biological Assets by G. Cornelius van Kooten and Ervin H. Bulte; The Microfinance Revolution: Sustainable Finance for the Poor by Marguerite S....