Editor's Note: Katia D'Hulster is a senior financial sector specialist in the Financial Systems Department of the World Bank. She is the author of a recently-released policy note on the benefits of a non-risk-based capital measure, the leverage ratio, as an additional prudential tool to complement minimum capital adequacy requirements.
Bloggers at CGAP are wondering if microcredit squeezes out informal moneylenders, or if microfinance loans can actually lead to additional forms of borrowing.
Unfortunately, the latter is quite prevalent. Richard Rosenberg explains:
I attended a session from yesterday's Entrepreneurship and Growth Conference on "Indian Entrepreneurial Success in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom". RAND corporation's Krishna B Kumar attempted to explain the extraordinary successes of Indian expatriate
Brookings has released a report on the state of access to finance in developing countries, taking a specific look at the lessons learned from the mobile banking sector in Kenya. The report paints a troubling picture of the state of financial access in many developing countries, but then gives some reasons for optimism.
First, the bad news:
The FT profiles each of the Federal Reserve's doves and hawks.
Plus, the case for Fed independence.
Does car sharing take cars off the road? Or just put walkers into cars?
Despite economists’ frequent assumption that humans are rational economic agents, let’s admit it, we have limitations; we may be weak, altruistic, easily manipulated or scatter-brained among many other things. Thus, results based on, say field experiments relying on one-off interviews may tend to miss a lot of that important human behavior.
While IFC is strengthening its involvement in India, China is deepening its economic ties in Africa.
IFC chief executive Lars Thunell is in Delhi this week, attending the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit. Thunell is looking to boost the IFC's capital base by $2.4bn, much of which will be dedicated to the world's poorest countries and regions, including India.
