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Abstract: Small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries. The rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity. However, measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks, which are likely to be correlated with capital stock. The authors use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in their sample, regardless of whether they apply for credit. They accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in Sri Lanka, and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous (positive) shock to capital stock. After controlling for possible spillover effects, the authors find the average real return to capital to be 5.7 percent a month, substantially higher than the market interest rate. They then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns. Returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household, but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty.
Interest rates have been a contentious issue in microfinance for many years. While higher interest rates for microloans are often justified by the underlying costs of making small loans in rural areas, this is not always the case. Furthemore, this issue is especially relevant to the impact investors such as impact investment funds and development finance institutions that fund microfinance institutions (MFI) to expand lending to smallholder farmers and other micro-borrowers in the agrifood system. Questions about the adequacy of interest rates charged by MFIs targeting farmers often arise during the due diligence (DD) process and can provoke animated discussions during investment committee meetings. The frequency and intensity of these debates at multiple investment committee meetings of impact investment funds co-financed by the European Commission actually prompted the idea to produce this technical guide. This toolkit provides guidance on how to analyse interest rates of MFIs from a responsible lending perspective and how to strengthen responsible lending practices more broadly. It is mainly targeted at impact investors and other financiers with a double-bottom line investing in MFIs as part of their broader development and impact mandates. It may also be useful for a broader audience concerned with micro- and agricultural finance and rural development, including international financing institutions (IFIs) and other development practitioners. This publication is part of the Investment Toolkits series under the FAO Investment Centre's Knowledge for Investment (K4I) series.
In this hard-hitting polemical Karnani demonstrates what is wrong with today's approaches to reducing poverty. He proposes an eclectic approach to poverty reduction that emphasizes the need for business, government and civil society to partner together to create employment opportunities for the poor.
The second issue in a new series, Global Financial Development Report 2014 takes a step back and re-examines financial inclusion from the perspective of new global datasets and new evidence. It builds on a critical mass of new research and operational work produced by World Bank Group staff as well as outside researchers and contributors.
Economic and social progress requires a diverse ecosystem of firms that play complementary roles. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms constitutes one of the most up-to-date assessments of how large firms are created in low- and middle-income countries and their role in development. It argues that large firms advance a range of development objectives in ways that other firms do not: large firms are more likely to innovate, export, and offer training and are more likely to adopt international standards of quality, among other contributions. Their particularities are closely associated with productivity advantages and translate into improved outcomes not only for their owners but also for their workers and for smaller enterprises in their value chains. The challenge for economic development, however, is that production does not reach economic scale in low- and middle-income countries. Why are large firms scarcer in developing countries? Drawing on a rare set of data from public and private sources, as well as proprietary data from the International Finance Corporation and case studies, this book shows that large firms are often born large—or with the attributes of largeness. In other words, what is distinct about them is often in place from day one of their operations. To fill the “missing top†? of the firm-size distribution with additional large firms, governments should support the creation of such firms by opening markets to greater competition. In low-income countries, this objective can be achieved through simple policy reorientation, such as breaking oligopolies, removing unnecessary restrictions to international trade and investment, and establishing strong rules to prevent the abuse of market power. Governments should also strive to ensure that private actors have the skills, technology, intelligence, infrastructure, and finance they need to create large ventures. Additionally, they should actively work to spread the benefits from production at scale across the largest possible number of market participants. This book seeks to bring frontier thinking and evidence on the role and origins of large firms to a wide range of readers, including academics, development practitioners and policy makers.
Provides a comprehensive picture of issues dealing with different sources of entrepreneurial finance and different issues with financing entrepreneurs. The Handbook comprises contributions from 48 authors based in 12 different countries.
This thematic third volume of the Asia Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Monitor 2021 focuses on the digitalization of microfinance in Bangladesh. The MSME sector provides much of the income in rural Bangladesh, but its growth is constrained by limited access to affordable finance. This volume reports on a 2021 baseline study carried out in Bangladesh to pilot a randomized controlled trial to determine whether a digitalized group-based credit scheme could be introduced at an affordable price. The findings provide justification for further study on the digitalization of microfinance.
There is no denying the fact that microcredit (MC) has been playing an important role in the movement for poverty alleviation. But by the same breath it is also a hard fact that it has serious limitations in terms of its delivery system, rules of repayment, interest rate charges, etc. These limitations made it largely fail to realize its potential and expected goals. A credible study on the productivity of MC was required to determine its actual interest/profit paying capability. In the absence of any established economic justification, based on productivity, this exorbitantly high interest rate is found morally untenable and has become the primary target of criticism for its minimal or marginal achievements. As a result, recently the government rightfully fixed 27% as the maximum interest rate chargeable for microcredit (with effect from July 2011). However, we need not undermine the importance and efforts of the microcredit movement, both as an economic as well as a social institution, for the betterment of the poor in the society. We need not be selfish and miser to give the movement its due credit. MC should not be summarily viewed as unuseful and unsuccessful. It has been making some contributions to the betterment of the poor and it should be given the appreciation it deserves. But like many other researchers we are troubled by the contradicting attitudes of the microcredit providers toward the borrowers. In one hand they are concerned and committed to pull the poor out of poverty, on the other hand they are so harsh in the timely payment of repayment installments putting a blind eye to the sufferings of these poor borrowers. Therefore, MCIs need to be more innovative to be able to serve and take care of the wellbeing of the critical group among the borrowers. We are also puzzled to see that in spite of the exorbitantly high interest rate charges and all other limitations, increasing number of these poor are borrowing credit from these MCIs. This surgical study on the inside view of microcredit in Bangladesh, using a rich data set developed through a survey of 555 sample borrowers from rural, semi-urban, and urban areas of all 7 administrative divisions of Bangladesh, is an effort to address these issues and find answers to these and other questions like its potentiality to become a growth tool in the third sector economy. To our own best assessment this study made three major contributions to microcredit literature: a) application of economic-profit counting method in economic productivity analysis, b) identification of the critically vulnerable group among the borrowers; and c) the revelation that microcredit is respected by the borrowers more as a social than economic institution. To them, microcredit has facilitated their social and political empowerments and safeguarded their social status. An additional feature of this monograph is that it includes a chapter reflecting on the status of Islamic microcredit in the country. We are thankful to the sample micro borrowers for their sincere cooperation and responses in the operation of this research. We are equally thankful to the field investigators for their honest and untiring search for information. We are thankful to Professor Dr. Abu Bakr Rafique Ahmed, Pro Vice-Chancellor of International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh for his most valuable suggestion to include in the book a separate chapter on Islamic microfinance. This chapter has certainly enhanced the focus of the monograph. Lastly we are grateful to Professor Dr. Anisuzzaman Chowdhury of University of Western Sydney, Australia, and Senior Economic Affairs Officer, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, New York, for writing a thoughtful foreword to this work.