Market failures affecting economic growth in poor rural areas are firmly on the agenda but for goods and services with private good characteristics are generally not conceptualised and understood in ways that help policy analysis and formulation to recognise and address these failures. We need a greater recognition and understanding of the causes and nature of coordination failures which lead t...

What was the recipe for the success of Raiffeisen’s banking model? What made it possible for imitations of this German rural cooperative microfinance institution to work well in some European countries, but fail in others? This paper answers these questions with a comparison of Raiffeisenism in Ireland and the Netherlands. Raiffeisen banks arrived in both places at the same time, but had drasti...

Income from off-farm sources is especially important for land-poor households. However, the pattern of participation in off-farm activities is heterogeneous across space. We explore the determinants of participation in off-farm non-agricultural employment using data for rural Mexico. In particular, we try to understand how the neighborhood and the neighbors’ characteristics and choices affect t...

In a country where for many generations the virtues of rural life have appeared to be a t the heart of the national ethos, there currently exists astonishingly little hard information about critical economic and social aspects of that life. That, a t least, is the conclusion of a recent review of research into the economics of rural poverty by economists Keith Bryant, Lee Bawden, and WilliarnSa...

This paper aims to make an evaluation of CAP contribution to landscape management in Bulgarian economy of rural areas. To sum up, landscape is a non-commodity output produced as direct or indirect outcome of the activities operating in a particular area and it is valued by society for its functions (use and non use values, ecological, recreational, cultural etc). Due to this complex nature, it ...

This paper addresses the emergence of microcredit programmes as a preferred strategy for poverty alleviation world-wide. Taking the paradigmatic case of Nepal, it engages a genealogical approach to trace how Nepalese planners’ enduring concerns about rural development intersect in surprising (and gendered) ways with donors’ present focus on deepening Ž nancial markets. In the resulting microcre...

Lesson learned in rural finance : the experience of the Inter-American Development Bank. p.cm. (Sustainable Development Department Technical papers series ; RUR-109) Includes bibliographical references. This paper presents background research that supports the development of the Bank's formal strategy on rural finance (GN 2123-3). Mark D. Wenner is a financial specialist in the Rural Developmen...

Poverty is still a predominantly rural phenomenon. However, the context of rural poverty has been changing across the world, with high growth in some economies and stagnation in others. Furthermore, increased openness in many economies has affected the specific role of agricultural growth for rural poverty reduction. This paper revisits an ‘old’ question: how does growth and poverty reduction c...

While a dairy cooperative provided the bylaws, managing a cooperative of rural hospitals has been a learn-as-you-go experience. This article presents the management principles that have been learned over the last 13 years. Its experience suggests that developing and managing partnerships requires behaviors different from those typically associated with the management of individual organizations.

INTRODUCTION 'Belonging' is a universal characteristic of human beings and is a basic human need. Rural nurses describe the nature of their practice as being embedded in working as a team where belonging is central to the success of the team and the individual nurse. As a result they form close professional and personal ties. The challenge for nursing students is to develop a sense of belonging...