Portfolios of the Poor

Ruthven, OrlandaVE; Morduch, Jonathan; Rutherford, Stuart

doi:10.1515/9781400829965

Cited by 200 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…People often balk at annualized interest rates that exceed 500%, which are typical of payday loans. But if trade-offs guide how money-poor borrowers think of the fee, then the rates in the alternative time frames will have little influence because they do not represent actual expenses (Collins, Morduch, Rutherford, & Ruthven, 2009). Instead, as Bertrand and Morse (2011) have shown, the concrete fees to be paid will have more impact, presumably because these are judged against competing expenses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scarcity Frames Value

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Economic models of decision making assume that people have a stable way of thinking about value. In contrast, psychology has shown that people's preferences are often malleable and influenced by normatively irrelevant contextual features. Whereas economics derives its predictions from the assumption that people navigate a world of scarce resources, recent psychological work has shown that people often do not attend to scarcity. In this article, we show that when scarcity does influence cognition, it renders people less susceptible to classic context effects. Under conditions of scarcity, people focus on pressing needs and recognize the trade-offs that must be made against those needs. Those trade-offs frame perception more consistently than irrelevant contextual cues, which exert less influence. The results suggest that scarcity can align certain behaviors more closely with traditional economic predictions.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scarcity Frames Value

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…An extensive literature has shown that female micro-entrepreneurs may be particularly constrained by financial rigidities in the market and by the lack of exposure to good practices in financial management. The effects of this gender disadvantage have been previously documented in access to capital (Bruhn and Love 2009;Collins et al 2009;de Mel et al 2010), in management know-how (de Mel et al 2010) and in access to business networks (Rosenthal and Strange 2012;Field et al 2016). We stratified our sample by the gender of the micro-entrepreneur and examined the differential impact of 2 The breakdown according to sectors is food retail (55%), nonfood retail (clothes, household items 31%) and services (restaurants 14%).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…In contexts of imperfect capital markets, sustaining an optimal level of savings can allow microentrepreneurs to overcome credit constraints, optimize their cash flows, build long-term financial and business assets (Ashraf et al 2005;Collins et al 2009) and, consequently, improve the performance of their businesses (Dupas and Robinson 2013). However, supply-side constraints may limit the extent to which micro-entrepreneurs have access to the necessary tools to effectively manage their finances and save.…”

Section: Financial Management Skills Savings and Gender In Micro-enterprise Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Closing the Gender Profit Gap

Batista¹,

Sequeira²,

Vicente³

2021

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examine the complementarity between access to mobile savings accounts and improved financial management skills on the performance of female-led micro-enterprises in Mozambique. This combined support is associated with a large increase in both short and long-term firm profits and in financial security, when compared to the independent effect of each of these interventions. This support allowed female-headed micro-enterprises to close the gender gap in performance and financial literacy relative to their male counterparts. The main drivers of improved business performance are increased financial management practices (bookkeeping), an increase in accessible savings and reduced transfers to friends and relatives.

show abstract

“…The intent is to prevent polite but limited answers, and encourage people to share their views and interpretations of their worlds. 'Listening' is, of course, also linked to the notion of 'giving voice' to people living in poverty (Chambers, 2005;Collins et al, 2009), which is in line with the 'Voices of the Poor' -a project initiated by the World Bank in the late 1990s (Narayan et al, 1999;World Bank, 2008). Fourth, the approach highlights inclusion as an essential ingredient: this implies a behaviour that is sensitive to gender-and age-based differences that may lead to (self)exclusion, something that is found as a weakness in, for example, focus group discussions, public meetings and other forms of participatory rapid appraisals.…”

Section: The Rca Principlesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Ethics, intimacy and distance in longitudinal, qualitative research: Experiences from Reality Check Bangladesh

Arvidson

2013

Progress in Development Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article contributes to debates about ethical and methodological dilemmas experienced in international development studies. It departs from a research experience based on a longitudinal study, the Reality Check Approach, that puts intimacy, immersion and consensus at its core. These concepts signify an ethically motivated approach that aims to ‘give voice’ to people living in poverty. They also describe an ideal research relationship assumed as the basis for good quality data. The article examines the difficulties encountered when faced with ambiguous meanings in people’s responses, and shortcomings of the approach. These include the combining of ethical and instrumental motivations in the research framework and ambivalent roles and conflicting ethics, highlighted in the conflictual notions of ‘giving someone space to talk’ and ‘making someone talk’.

show abstract

Portfolios of the Poor

Cited by 200 publications

References 0 publications

Scarcity Frames Value

Scarcity Frames Value

Closing the Gender Profit Gap

Ethics, intimacy and distance in longitudinal, qualitative research: Experiences from Reality Check Bangladesh

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About