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on Community banking and credit unions |
| By: | Mabiso, Athur; Hossain, Marup; Zhanuzakova, Rakhat |
| Abstract: | The Agricultural Services Programme for Innovation, Resilience, and Extension (ASPIRE) was implemented nationwide in Cambodia between 2015 and 2022, with the objective of demonstrating an enhanced model of agriculture services provision and to assist smallholder farmers in achieving profitable and resilient businesses. The project covered over 143, 000 households through extension services, financial inclusion programs and infrastructure development tailored to the needs of Cambodian agriculture. Through its holistic approach, the project focused on evidence-based policy making, strengthening extension services' capabilities, enhancing extension services and building climate-resilient infrastructure. This impact assessment of ASPIRE was conducted using publicly available survey and geospatial household data from 2020 and 2021. |
| Keywords: | Community/Rural/Urban Development |
| Date: | 2025–07–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:unadia:413152 |
| By: | Wilko Bolt; Nicole Jonker |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether the primary current account that consumers typically use for their everyday shopping and banking transactions remains an effective cross-selling channel for banks amid digitalisation, regulatory reform and increased competition. Using a unique 2024 consumer survey of 2, 326 Dutch consumers, we find no evidence of a broad structural decline in banks’ overall cross-selling opportunities in the Netherlands. The primary current account continues to “anchor†bank-customer relationships. However, this anchoring role varies by product category and consumer segment. Cross-selling has weakened for savings and investment products, while remaining relatively stable for mortgages. Furthermore, digitalisation is not only associated with more multi-banking but also supports financial product acquisition at the consumers’ main bank, suggesting that it does not uniformly erode incumbent banks’ cross-selling capacity. Consumer preferences are central: perceived benefits of single-banking strengthen cross-selling and reduce multi banking, whereas perceived transparency of financial conditions has a modest effect. |
| Keywords: | Consumer behaviour; Retail banking; Cross-selling; Multi-banking; Digitalisation; Transparency |
| JEL: | D14 G21 G28 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:873 |
| By: | Shyamal Chowdhury; Prabal Roy Chowdhury; Joeri Smits |
| Abstract: | After decades of microfinance expansion and despite charging higher interest rates, moneylenders continue to exist alongside microfinance institutions (MFIs). We develop a dynamic model with ex post moral hazard, in which borrowers use MFI loans for production and can rely on moneylenders for bridge loans after shocks to repay MFIs and preserve future access to MFI credit. We then study how MFI competition shapes the coexistence between MFIs and moneylenders. The effect of competition on MFI credit is ambiguous: it may weaken repayment incentives or replace moneylenders as bridge lenders. By contrast, competition unambiguously reduces moneylender credit. In a village-level randomized expansion in Bangladesh, stratified by baseline MFI presence, one additional MFI reduces the number of moneylender loans by roughly 30-40% two to three years later, with no detectable effect on MFI or overall borrowing. This suggests that, in markets where MFIs rely primarily on the threat of exclusion to induce repayment and moneylenders provide emergency finance, gains from additional MFI entry may be greater in less saturated areas. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.12186 |
| By: | Andrea Boitani (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Maurizio Franzini |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between economic inequality, growth and social welfare, challenging the conventional identification of welfare with GDP and the widespread assumption that greater equality necessarily entails lower growth. An Atkinson-type social welfare function is first adopted in which welfare increases with average income and decreases with inequality. Using stylised income distributions broadly reflecting the contemporary United States and the more egalitarian Scandinavian economies of the 1980s and 1990s, it is shown that faster growth in a highly unequal economy may generate less welfare than slower growth in a more equal one. Progressive taxation combined with uniform transfers increases welfare, even when redistribution involves substantial efficiency losses of the kind represented by Okun’s “leaky bucket”. Dynamic simulations further indicate that a more unequal but faster-growing economy may require several decades to reach the welfare level of a more egalitarian, slower-growing economy; progressive taxation significantly shortens this convergence period. Finally, an alternative welfare measure is introduced, which is based on individual aversion to disadvantageous inequality, whereby welfare depends partly on the income gap relative to the richest group. Under this approach, aggregate welfare may rise while the welfare of the bottom 90 % declines, thereby undermining conventional applications of both the Kaldor–Hicks compensation principle and the Pareto criterion. |
| Keywords: | Economic inequality; Social welfare; Economic growth; Progressive taxation; Inequality aversion. |
| JEL: | D63 I31 O40 H24 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie1:def156 |