The low take-up of cost-effective and highly subsidised preventive health technologies in low-income countries remains a puzzle. One under-studied reason is that the design of subsidy schemes is such that households remain financially constrained. This paper analyses whether, and how,...

The present paper seeks to dissect the significance of micro-credit in empowering women. It starts with a brief discussion on the role of micro-credit in poverty alleviation in general, widely acclaimed in contrast to the top-down policies. The concept of empowerment is defined from different...

This present study examines the impact of micro-credit programmes of six government organisations (GO), non-government organisations (NGO) and micro-finance institutes (MFI) on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh using a purposive sample of 406 credit receivers. Alongside respondent’s perceived...

The article discusses the close collaboration between governments and the financial industry. The author argues that governments and banks have formed an alliance against the real sector. He considers recent banking regulations as basically useless, if not dangerous, and proposes to split up...

Political risk represents an important hidden transaction cost that reduces international trade. This paper investigates the claim that German public export credit guarantees (Hermes guarantees) mitigate this friction to trade flows and hence promote exports. We employ an empirical trade gravity...