|
on Microfinance |
| By: | Markus K. Brunnermeier; Nicola Limodio; Lorenzo Spadavecchia |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the tradeoff between competition and financial inclusion given by the vertical integration between mobile network and money operators. Joining novel data on mobile money fees built through the WayBack machine, with sources on network coverage and financials, we examine the staggering across African operators and countries of platform interoperability – a policy that promotes transactions and competition across mobile money operators. Our findings show that interoperability lowers mobile money fees and reduces network coverage and mobile towers, especially in rural and poor districts. Interoperability also results in a decline in various survey metrics of financial inclusion. Keywords: Mobile Money, Interoperability, Financial inclusion JEL Codes: E42, L14, O10 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:igi:igierp:696&r=mfd |
| By: | Simplice A. Asongu (Yaounde, Cameroon); Nicholas M. Odhiambo (Pretoria, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | The present study contributes to the extant literature by assessing how microfinance institutions (MFIs) affect female entrepreneurship, contingent on female unemployment levels. The study focuses on 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for the period 2004 to 2018. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions, which put emphasis on nations with high, low and intermediate levels of business constraints. The analysis is tailored to provide avoidable female unemployment levels in the implementation of policies designed for MFIs to promote female business ownership. The hypotheses that MFIs are favorable for female business owners and some critical rates of female unemployment should be avoided in order for the favorable incidence to be maintained is exclusively valid in the 10th quantiles of the cost of business by females and time to start-up a business by females. Policy implications are discussed. This study has complemented the extant literature by providing actionable female unemployment critical masses that governments can act upon in tailoring the nexus between the relevance of MFIs in the doing of business by females. |
| Keywords: | Africa; Microfinance; Gender; Inclusive development |
| JEL: | G20 I10 I32 O40 O55 |
| Date: | 2023–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aak:wpaper:23/007&r=mfd |
| By: | Cyrielle Gaglio (University of Helsinki; Sciences Po, OFCE, France); Erika Kraemer-Mbula (University of Johannesburg); Edward Lorenz (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to study the links between the use of digital communication technologies, innovation performance and productivity for a sample of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in a middle-income country, South Africa. Based on the results of an original survey carried out in 2019, we investigate these links for a sample of 711 manufacturing MSEs located in Johannesburg. We estimate the relations sequentially, first estimating the relation between digitalization and innovation, and secondly the relation between innovation and productivity. Our results show that selected digital communication technologies including the use of social media and the use of a business mobile phone for browsing the internet have a positive effect on innovation, and that innovation conditional on the use of these technologies has a positive impact on labor productivity. |
| Keywords: | Digital communication technologies, Product innovation, Productivity, MSEs, Johannesburg |
| JEL: | O14 O31 O4 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2022-19&r=mfd |
| By: | Jarko Fidrmuc; Christa Hainz; Werner Hölzl |
| Abstract: | We study how firms’ individual credit market experience influences their beliefs about the bank lending policy, using the Austrian Business Survey between 2011 and 2016. Firms which have recently experienced a loan rejection are more likely to believe that the lending policy is restrictive. We see similar effects for firms who were granted loans, but with conditions worse than anticipated. Exploiting the panel structure shows that firms without recent credit market experience are less likely to change their beliefs, which converge towards the middle category. Our findings are in line with theories of rational inattention and with asymmetric experience effects. |
| Keywords: | Formation of beliefs, rational inattention, pessimism, persistence, behavioral macroeconomics |
| JEL: | G21 E51 D22 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ifowps:_392&r=mfd |