This paper looks at the financing of local economic development and what history says are the best models. It compares the success of more interventionist local financial models to more recent but unsuccessful neoliberal-inspired local financial models, such as microfinance

Cambodia’s microcredit sector – the world’s largest (in per capita terms) and most profitable – has created a raft of negative economic and social phenomena that are increasingly undermining the functioning of the economy and cohesiveness of society. Three especially damaging...

Given the accelerating global popularity of the social enterprise concept as a response to the growing failings of neoliberal capitalism, there are increasing calls for deeper analysis of some of the leading social enterprises. One of the highest profile examples of a social enterprise is the...

This paper examines the spectacular rise of 'fintech' (financial technology), an innovation that constitutes an historic discontinuity in the structure, operations and conduct of financial systems everywhere. We provide a much-needed corrective to the rapidly proliferating myths and falsehoods...

Starting with the work of Hernando de Soto in the 1980s, the role of land tenure soon took centre-stage in a neoliberal-oriented theory of change based on the possession and use of private individual land titles by the poor. One of the major mechanisms proposed by de Soto involved a three step...

Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, increasing attention has been paid to the problems of economic development and reconstruction in South-East Europe. In a context of limited resources, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have a key role to play in creating jobs and building a...

The paper starts by considering the neo-liberal approach to small enterprise development and why it was to underpin small enterprise policy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from the very first years of the transition. Author briefly considers what other policy models or alternatives were...