Roger Maull, Phil Godsiff, Catherine Mulligan, Alan Brown · 5 authors
Abstract Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are rewriting conventional notions of business transacting, creating fresh opportunities for value creation and capture. Using qualitative interview data as a primary resource, the proposed fiveâpoint model synthesizes these possibilities, demonstrating how they may lead to âdisruptive innovation.â A further conceptual model is subsequently provided with a view to assisting future problem solving in the area.
Just like its recent predecessors, blockchain â also known as the distributed ledger technology â is considered to have the potential to cause major economic, political and social transformations in the Global South. The visible effects of this technology are already being noted there. We present early evidence linking the use of blockchain in overcoming some economic, social and political challenges facing the Global South. The article highlights the key applications and uses of blockchain in developing countries. It demonstrates how blockchain can help promote transparency, build trust and reputation, and enhance efficiency in transactions. The article looks at opportunities and key triggers for blockchain diffusion in these countries. It also delves into challenges and obstacles that developing economies are likely to encounter in the use of blockchain.
Projects in the energy sector in Africa suffer from a number of barriers. Especially the combination of political instability and an unclear regulatory framework hampers the private sector to realize the investment possibilities in the field of decentralized rural electrification. For debt based projects these barriers result in prohibitively high interest rates â roughly 15% while the return on investment does not exceed the low 10% area. This situation leads to strong reluctance from private investors to provide equity. A possibility to encourage private investors to step in could be a separation of the different risks, especially separating the typical high sovereign risk of a country from the commercial risk of the energy project. As a result, the separated risks can be clearly allocated to different investor groups looking for investment opportunities going along with distinct risks. A structured approach is proposed through which private international investors are exposed only to the general political risk while international development banks cover mainly the regulatory risk. Finally, the newly invented financial instrument convertible grant by the electriFI initiative of the EU provides an equity substitute to take over the commercial risk. With this additional financial support, decentralized electrification projects in Africa have the possibility to be implemented and the potential to be scaled up.
Entrepreneurship on small scale is the only solution to the problems of unemployment and proper utilization of both human and non-human resources and improving the living conditions of the poor masses. The basic rationale of developing these industries are that they provide immediate large scale employment, ensure more equitable distribution of income, encourage decentralization of industries and eradicate poverty and unemployment. During the last three decades, many countries of the world have experienced the need and importance of entrepreneurship has been accepted as a strategy to achieve the twin objectives of promotion of entrepreneurship, particularly among the educated unemployed youth and also for rapid industrialization in the economy. The main object of this paper is to study the existing literature on entrepreneurship through Micro finance-SHG linkage in India in general and NER in particular. The analysis of this study is based on secondary sources. Efforts are also made in this paper to analyze the role of micro finance through SHGs in the promotion and development of entrepreneurship. This paper examines the different approaches of entrepreneurship and also explains the different key areas of micro enterprise development. Finally, this paper highlights the problems of micro, rural and women entrepreneurs and also suggested some specific measures based on the survey of existing literature, for the promotion of these industries in the country.
The availability of abundant renewable resources, lack of fossil fuels and difficult geographical terrain for grid line extensions contribute to the advantages of renewable based decentralized rural electrification in Ne-pal. Solar home system (SHS) and micro-hydro are the most commonly adopted off-grid renewable energy technologies in the country. This dis-sertation examines the market of renewable energy based rural electrifi-cation within prevailing policy and programmes framework. The study verifies whether the market has been able to serve the poor in Nepal. It also captures the perception of various stakeholders (e.g. private sup-ply/installation companies, NGOs, financial institutions and the donorâs programme) regarding the business, financing issues and the role of gov-ernment policy on the market development. In addition, the study dis-cusses and analyses renewable based rural electrification supply models, the economics behind rural electrification, market drivers and market distribution in the rural areas of Nepal. The financial mix in the off-grid rural electrification is generally charac-terized by subsidy, equity and credit. The study shows that awareness about renewable energy technologies and willingness to pay for electricity access has increased considerably. However, there is a huge financial gap between the cost of electrification and affordability among the poor. The distribution analysis shows there is significant increment in the extensive growth but decrease in the intensive growth rate of rural electrification thus indicating market expansion with uneven penetration among the ru-ral people. Solar PV technology is still not in the reach of the economic poor. Access to credit and cumbersome subsidy delivery mechanisms have been perceived as the major factors affecting the expansion of rural electrification by the stakeholders, requiring innovation in the credit and subsidy delivery system so that a larger rural population can be given ac-cess to electrification.
Paul Gertler, Harry Anthony Patrinos, Marta Rubio Codina
Mexico's Compensatory education programs provide extra resources to primary schools that enroll students in highly disadvantaged rural communities, thus increasing the supply of education.By reducing the price of schooling through school stipends conditional on school attendance and performance, Oportunidades is increasing the demand for schooling amongst its eligible beneficiary households.This study exploits the different phasing-in over time and space across these interventions to test their degree of complementarity (or substitutability).We focus on the effects on intermediate school quality indicators (failure, repetition and dropout) of teacher training, provision of supplies, and empowerment and financing of parent associations -on the supply side; and conditional on attendance cash transfers -on the demand side.Difference-in-difference estimates prove reducing the opportunity cost of schooling and decentralizing school management at the lower level as effective measures in improving educational outcomes.No robust evidence of synergies between the two interventions is found.
The importance of assessing the impact of microfinance schemes on poverty reduction cannot be overestimated. Poverty reduction is the raison-dâĂȘtre of microfinance. It is because other forms of finance are not usually accessible to the poor (due to high transaction costs, the poorâs lack of collateral, etc) that microfinance has been explored as a possible solution to poverty reduction. But it is more than that. The assumption underlying this argument is that poverty is partly explained by lack of economic opportunities and that microfinance can provide a sustainable path towards viable surviving economic strategies. Therefore, microfinance can be important not only because it can lead to poverty reduction but mainly because it promotes, in a non-patronizing and decentralized way, economic alternatives to the poor that are in principle more sustainable (permanent) in the long-run. Microfinance can be compared with other poverty reduction initiatives based on paternalistic concessions (e.g., basic income programmes) that are a priori unsustainable in the long-run because they are dependent on a continuous inflow of resources. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
We examine the pyramidal ownership structure of a large sample of newly listed Chinese companies controlled by local governments or private entrepreneurs. Both types of the owners use layers of intermediate companies to control their firms. However, their pyramiding behaviors are likely affected by different property rights constraints. Local governments are constrained by the Chinese laws prohibiting free transfer of state ownership. Pyramiding allows them to credibly decentralize their firm decision rights to firm management without selling off their ownership. Private entrepreneurs are constrained by their lack of access to external funds. Pyramiding creates internal capital markets that help relieving their external financing constraints. Our empirical results support these conjectures. Local governments build more extensive corporate pyramids when they are less burdened with fiscal or unemployment problems, when they have more long-term goals, and when their firm decisions are more subject to market and legal disciplines. The more extensive pyramids are also associated with smaller "underpricing" when the firms go public. Entrepreneur owners construct more complex corporate pyramids when they do not have a very deep pocket - as indicated by whether they are among the top-100 richest people in China.
Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Hans Dieter
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 70% of its population below the poverty line. Subsidized national poverty lending programs have failed to attain viability, mobilize savings and reach the poor in significant numbers. Informal institutions such as the ubiquitous dhikuti were ignored. During the 90s the government has created a new policy environment focusing on decentralization, poverty alleviation, economic and financial liberalization, and a differentiated legal framework for microfinance institutions (MFIs). This has paved the way for innovations such as the establishment of Grameen replicators as banks; the upgrading of dhikuti activities to savings and finance companies with doorstep services; and the transformation of the small farmer credit operations of the Agricultural Development Bank into profitable local MFIs cooperatively owned by their members. In the framework of a wider UNDP-supported program of the Asian and Pacific Development Centre in Kuala Lumpur on Microfinance for the Poor in Asia-Pacific, six MFIs were selected from Nepal and analyzed in terms of outreach to the poor, resource mobilization, viability and sustainability: two Grameen Bank replicators - one a bank and one an NGO; two NGOs sponsored under the government's Rural Self-Reliance Fund; and two cooperatives. The outreach of the NGOs was found to be insignificant while the outreach of the Grameen Bikas Bank at the regional level and of the cooperatives at the local level was sizeable. The cooperatives performed well in terms of portfolio efficiency and were found to be financially viable; the NGOs did reasonably well; while the Grameen Bikas Bank, substituting donor funds for internal resources, was lowest (though improving) in operational and financial self-sufficiency - despite a 100% on-time repayment rate. On the whole all MFIs appeared rather hesitant to utilize their newly won freedom to vigorously expand their market, mobilize internal resources, and differentiate their products and interest rates.
The paper provides a brief overview of the problems of physical agricultural marketing infrastructure in Africa, with particular reference to rural roads and marketing facilities, such as storage, processing and market centres. In order to overcome these constraints, it is necessav to strengthen macro policy changes, with particular reference to commodity marketing, rural finance and government decentralization policies with the obiective of providing more incentives to marketing enterprises and local authorities to promote infrastructure development. Changes in macro policies have to be supported by adequate training programmes, support to institution building and adjustment of aid strategies to encourage self-help in developing marketing infrastructure.