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Inadequate finance is considered a major factor limiting the growth of small-scale women-owned farm enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women empowerment programs such as table banking (TB) and women enterprise fund were initiated in an attempt to curb the credit gap affecting women in agribusiness. This paper determines the factors influencing the extent of credit access among women farm-entrepreneurs who are either members or nonmembers of TB groups in Kenya.

The study was conducted in Kericho County using a sample of 384 respondents. Factor analysis was used to generate three indicators of entrepreneurial orientation which were included as explanatory variables in the regressions. Double hurdle econometric model was employed to analyze the factors influencing the decisions on credit uptake and amount of borrowed loan. Separate models were estimated for members and nonmembers of TB groups since they differed in volume and source of loan accessed.

Results reveal that age of the woman and innovativeness negatively influenced credit access, whereas education level, participation in off-farm activities, number of farm enterprises, perception on interest rate, extension contacts and financial knowledge positively influenced the decision to access credit. On the other hand, participation in off-farm activities, risk-taking behavior, total land size, extension access and financial knowledge were statistically significant with positive correlation on the amount of loan borrowed. Significant factors differ between members and nonmembers of TB groups implying divergence in underlying credit access challenges once one has joined such groups.

The study did not consider supply-side factors affecting the amount of loan accessed by women farm-entrepreneurs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the pioneer studies using the double hurdle model to analyze factors influencing the extent of credit access specifically among women farm-entrepreneurs and carrying out the analysis by membership in TB groups.

Credit is essential in the farm business because it facilitates the adoption of productive technologies such as irrigation. However, access to credit remains a significant hurdle for sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghanaian farmers. Therefore, the authors assessed credit utilization and the intensity of borrowing by irrigated rice farmers in the Upper East region. In addition, how extension moderates the amount borrowed was analysed.

The multistage sampling approach was used in the study. The Tono and Vea irrigation schemes were purposively selected. Proportionally, 318 rice farmers were sampled from the Tono irrigation scheme and 159 from the Vea irrigation scheme. Cragg's double hurdle and moderation analysis were used.

It was uncovered that gender, age, years of farming, total farm size, rice farm size, contract farming and off-farm employment explain farmers' decision to borrow. On the other hand, the intensity of borrowing was influenced by gender, age, years of farming, rice farm size, contract farming and the number of extension contact. The moderation analysis revealed that extension contact improves the amount borrowed by farmers.

While there are irrigated rice farmers in other regions of Ghana, this study was limited to rice farmers under the Tono and Vea Irrigation schemes in the Upper East region.

This study investigated the moderating role of extension contact on amount borrowed in Ghana. This makes a modest addition to the limited literature on the moderating role of extension and credit access.

Research on financial inclusion (FI) in Islamic countries has evolved and gained prominence. This study aims to construct an extensive multidimensional FI index to ascertain the level of inclusion and trends in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) countries. Additionally, this study examines the potential role of Islamic finance in improving access to financial services.

Data for the study were collected from databases covering MENA countries for the period 2010–2020. An inclusion index has been constructed using the entropy method.

Key findings indicate that the overall FI has improved in Islamic countries. However, it should be noted that all MENA countries fall within the low or medium levels of the inclusion index. It was observed that insurance access and penetration savings were poor in the Islamic MENA countries.

The authors recommend that policymakers focus on insurance access and saving behaviour in their respective countries. Based upon these observations, policymakers should promote the economic benefits of Islamic finance, which will help improve FI and economic development in Islamic countries. This study emphasises the necessity of policy framework reform to provide Islamic financial services to the poorest in society at low or no cost for better economic benefits.

Most studies tend to overlook important indicators such as insurance, savings and credit penetration while calculating the index. These indicators add value to the existing literature. The majority of prior studies used United Nation Development Programme methodology or principal component analysis for Inclusion Index measurements. The adoption of the entropy weighting method is the novelty of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze determinants of farmers’ participation and credit rationing in microcredit programs using survey data from Ghana.

The authors use the Garrett Ranking Technique to analyze farmers’ reasons for participation or non-participation in credit programs, a probit regression model to estimate factors influencing farm households’ participation, and the Heckman’s sample selection model to identify factors influencing farm households’ probability of being credit rationed by microcredit programs.

The results reveal that farm households participate in credit programs because of improved access to savings services and agricultural loans. Fear of loan default and lack of savings are reasons for non-participation in credit programs. Furthermore, membership in farmer-based organizations (FBOs) and the household head’s formal education are positively associated with farmers’ participation in credit programs. The likelihood of farmers being credit rationed (i.e. their loan applications were either rejected or the amount of credit they applied for was reduced) is less likely among higher income farmers and members of FBOs such as farmer cooperatives and savings clubs.

The findings suggest that policy strategies aiming to improve access to savings and credit services should educate farmers and strengthen FBOs that could serve as entry points for financial service providers. Such market smart strategies have the potential to improve farmers’ access to financial services and reduce rural poverty.

Although existing studies have examined farmers’ participation in credit markets and credit rationing separately, the unique contribution of this paper is the analysis of participation in microcredit programs as well as the likelihood of farmers being credit rationed in Ghana.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the micro determinants of the extent of credit rationing experienced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana.

The study adopted the direct approach to investigating the presence of credit rationing. This involves the use of surveys permitting loan applicants to report on their credit market experiences. The multinomial logistic regression model was then applied to the survey data to arrive at the findings reported.

The study amongst other things confirms the existence of credit rationing in the SME sector. It also revealed that the extent to which SMEs are rationed varies and these variations are determined by the characteristic of the SME owner and the characteristics of the business.

The use of the survey method in investigating credit rationing could introduce some biases in the responses obtained. However, the lack of publicly available data did not permit the use of the indirect method which is based on the testing for possible violation of the permanent income hypothesis. Despite its weakness, the survey method remains the more realistic approach to investigating credit constraints especially in the data-constrained developing countries. The design and piloting of the questionnaire as well as the use a large sample size all went a long way to reduce any possible biases in the responses.

Despite the fact that a number of studies exist on SME financing problem in Ghana, available studies present the problem as if it were the same for all SMEs. Even though there is evidence to suggest that SMEs may be rationed in the credit market to different extents, currently, there are no known studies that have empirically investigated the various degrees of rationing and factors that determine the extent to which SMEs may be credit rationed. This paper thus attempts to contribute to the literature by unearthing these factors.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors determining the incidence and extent of indebtedness among agricultural households in rural India.

This study is based on a nationally representative survey carried out under the 70th Round of the National Sampling Survey Office (NSSO) across rural India. Data on household characteristics, farming characteristics, indebtedness and extent of outstanding credit have been extracted from the comprehensive survey data. Four research hypotheses have been formulated and tested using simple statistical techniques. Further, using the Heckman Selection Model, the study assesses the factors determining the agrarian indebtedness among households in rural India.

The results from the descriptive analysis show that there is a significant difference in socio-economic and farm characteristics of indebted and non-indebted households. Further, the level of indebtedness differs across sources of the loan, landholding sizes and geographical locations among agricultural households. The results of regression analysis clearly indicate that household characteristics, farm characteristics and sources of loan determine both the incidence and extent of indebtedness among agricultural households.

The main limitation of the study is that only the data giving information regarding the amount of outstanding loans have been collected, and there is no information regarding the amount of credit availed, the purpose and the due date of payment. Further, there is scope to improve the robustness of the empirical model by adding and modifying explanatory variables.

There are only a limited number of empirical studies providing an understanding of the factors determining the indebtedness of agricultural households in rural India. Hence, this study is a good value addition to the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if credit rationing persists even in the era of financial liberalization, the extent to which individual, firm and loan characteristics influence the rationing behavior of commercial banks and whether the agricultural sector is discriminated against in the commercial bank credit market.

The study employed a probit model with marginal effects and a generalized Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition estimation on a randomly selected data of 1,239 entrepreneurs from eight commercial banks’ credit records about their individual, firm and loan characteristics.

The study revealed that credit rationing persists and that applying for a relatively longer payment period, providing collateral and guarantor, being illiterate, being relatively older and being in the agricultural sector increases the likelihood of being credit rationed, while having some relationship with the bank, having non-mandatory savings and applying from a bank with relatively high interest rates reduce the likelihood of being credit rationed. The study also revealed a credit gap of 17.77 percent and a positive discrimination against borrowers in the agricultural sector as the gap was largely being influenced by unexplained factors.

The research was intended to cover a large number of commercial banks in Ghana. However, most of the banks were unwilling to provide such information about their borrowers; hence, the research was limited to only eight commercial banks who provided the author with the information needed for the study.

The study concludes that policies that enhance human capital, women, and older access to credit and agricultural-oriented financial services and others, will go a long way to reduce rationing and increase access to credit, especially to the agricultural sector.

The research proposes the use of group lending as a form of collateral and monitoring to ease risks and default, and hence supports sustainable funding to increase access and outreach.

The paper looks at the comprehensive way about the various factors determining credit rationing in that it considers not only the individual, economic/firm and loan characteristics but also the extent to which discrimination toward the agricultural sector exists in the commercial banks credit market.

This paper aims to investigate the link between agency costs mitigation via three levels of rights protection (minority rights protection, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency issues) provides the propitious climate for financing investment opportunities around the world.

We use Bartlett’s three-group method to stratify countries based on how well they protect investors as measured by the scores provided in the Doing Business dataset developed by the world bank for 189 countries. We then test a variety of independent hypotheses that the alleviation of agency costs via three levels of protection (minority investors’ rights, contract enforcement, resolving insolvency issues) is associated with better access to credit via the banking system, better valuation of listed firms via the stock market and higher investment and growth.

Our findings support Agency Theory which explains why the absence of legal protection of external investors leads to stock markets and financial institutions failing to fulfill their role of financing the economy.

The policy implication from this study indicates that countries ought to (1) develop legislation that protects investors’ rights, (2) improve the quality of their judicial system in terms of enforcing the legislation and (3) build the framework for resolving disputes during insolvency as these are important ingredients for a developed financial system.

We use the World bank dataset and a new methodology to quantify the significance of the relationship between minority rights protection, ineffective enforcement, lack of bankruptcy laws and access to firm financing via the banking sector and the stock market. It provides new evidence that the quality of the judicial system in a country matter for firms’ ability to raise financing and enhance value creation.

本文旨在探討一個假設，該假設為透過三級別權利保障（保障少數群體的權利、執行合同、解決破產問題）的代理成本緩減會為世界各地的金融性投資機會提供良好的氣侯。

我們以巴特利特（Bartlett）的三組法把國家分組，分組方法是基於該國家保障投資者的程度，而保障程度是以世界銀行為189個國家而制定的營商資料集內提供的評分來衡量的。我們把國家分組後，便就各樣的獨立假設進行測試。這些假設是：透過三級別保障（保障少數股權投資者的權利、合同的執行、解決破產問題）的代理成本緩減是連繫於透過銀行系統而產生的更佳信貸途徑，透過股市的更佳上市公司估值及更高的投資和增長。

研究結果証實了代理理論，該理論說明為何當外來投資者沒有得到法律保障時，結果會導致股票市場和金融機構不能履行其為經濟提供資金的角色。

本研究具有政策方面的意義，因研究顯示了國家應該：（1）設立保障投資者權利的法律；（2）在執行法律方面，改善其司法系統的素質；（3）建立解決破產時爭議的體系。這些是應該做的，因它們是一個已發展的金融體制的重要元素。

本文強調了一個保障投資者權利的法律環境所需的三個特定要素：對少數股權投資者權利的保障、有效的執行、有效的破產法律及透過銀行部門和股票市場而取得公司融資。這提供新的證據, 證實這三級別權利保障對公司籌集資金及提高價值創造的能力而言至為重要。

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.