The tax structure in Niger depends heavily on uranium mining and the rest of the formal sector. The slump in uranium prices has reduced tax revenues to 9% of GNP, which is not enough to finance an adequate level of public services. In this paper, tax reforms are considered which will raise more revenue while respecting criteria of equity, efficiency, and growth. The reforms mostly involve exten...

We study entrepreneurs’ start-up financing from banks and local financiers. An informal network, whose membership cannot be observed by outsiders, conveys the good signals it gets about the hidden types of network entrepreneurs to local financiers, which are then reflected in different loan terms. We show that there are winners and losers as a result of the network even among its members. Becau...

Microcredit and other forms of informal finance have so far failed to catalyze business growth among small scale entrepreneurs in the developing world, despite their high return to capital. This prompts a re-examination of the special features of informal credit markets that cause them to operate inefficiently. We present a theory of informal lending that highlights two of these features. First...

This paper studies TRAIL, a variation on traditional microfinance, where a microfinance institution appoints local intermediaries (traders or informal moneylenders) as agents to recommend borrowers for individual liability loans. Agents earn commissions that depend on loan repayments. There are no peer monitoring, group meetings or savings requirements. The loans are designed to finance agricul...

Young informal carers (YICs) are non-professional young individuals providing care and support in various forms, usually to immediate family members, afflicted from a diverse range of both long- short-term health conditions. Although there is significant knowledge about the information needs adult general, seeking characteristics YICs’ community understudied different. This study aims identify ...

This article is based on the premise that poverty has its own culture. Social system and subsystems of this culture are built on exploitation. The rich are exploiting the poor by putting them into a debt-trap of money-lending system. This system exists everywhere in the world wherever poverty exists. The poor people need money for their survival and as a result of it they become the part of the...

The evidence of the impact of informal care provision on the health of carers presents a complex and contested picture, depending on the characteristics of the care studied, including its duration, which has been relatively short in previous research (up to 4 years). Drawing on data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study, a 1% sample of linked Census records for respondents ...

Both informal and formal loans matter in agriculture. However, formal lenders provide much more production loans than informal lenders, often at a cost (mostly loan default cost) higher than what they can recover. For example, the Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP), providing about 90 percent of formal loans in rural areas, incurs high loan default costs. Yet, like other governmen...

We examine the heterogeneous effects of globalization on the interest rate setting by microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world. We consider MFIs as a mechanism to overcome the institutional void of credit for small entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies. Using a large global panel of MFIs from 119 countries, we find that social globalization that embraces egalitarian instit...