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Promoted for its inclusivity, agricultural value chain (AVC) financing leverages social capital and mechanisms such as off-take agreements and forward contracts to reduce borrowing and lending costs and risks for both farmers and lending institutions. AVC financing has been defined as the flow of financial products and services to and among the various actors within the AVC to address constraints of production and distribution and fulfill the needs of those involved in the chain by reducing risk and improving efficiency. This paper investigates how farmers' involvement in AVC affects their access to credit.

The authors collected primary data from 400 crop farmers in northern Ghana through a semi-structured questionnaire and analyzed the data, using the multinomial endogenous switching regression model.

Joint participation in AVC increased the amount of formal and informal credit received by 64 and 78%, respectively, compared to nonparticipation. Similarly, participation in AVC horizontal linkage and AVC vertical linkage increased the amount of formal and informal credit received by 40 and 47% and 46 and 74%, respectively, compared to nonparticipation. Irrigation farming, extension visits, knowledge of AVC in the community, access to a storage facility and trust in contract farming significantly influenced farmers' participation in AVC.

The authors’ work offers valuable insights into how different dimensions of value chain participation can impact smallholder farmers' access to credit. This work also underscores the importance of considering both formal and informal credit sources when analyzing the outcomes of value chain participation. The findings could enable formal financial providers to identify, liaise and/or resource informal financial players such as value chain actors to supply both formal and informal credit to farmers in AVCs.

This article analyzes the determinants of credit constraints and their effects on the productivity of micro-firms in Colombia.

An Endogenous Switching Regression Model (ESRM) is estimated to analyze credit constraint impact on economic performance.

The results show that owner characteristics such as age and gender decrease the likelihood of being constrained. Firms' characteristics, such as legal status, the formality of the employees, commercial property and savings, are important for reducing credit constraints.

This article discusses how formal credit restrictions harm the economic performance of Colombia's micro-firms. The results show that the productivity of the micro firms in Colombia could increase, on average, by U$ 825 USD when all types of restrictions are eliminated.

This paper examines India's socio-economic attributes and different financial dimensions of financial inclusion (FI).

The paper uses a principal component analysis (PCA) to build indexes related to financial dimensions. It applies the logistics regression model and the Fairlie decomposition method to determine India's socio-economic and financial characteristics of FI.

Based on the logistic regression, socio-economic factors like age, gender, marital status, level of education and religion have an impact on FI. The use of financial institutions has positively contributed to the probability of FI, while the low proximity of financial service providers retards the process of FI. Fairlie decomposition concludes regional disparity and gender disparity in FI; however, the rural–urban gap in FI is not captured by the variables included in the study. The main reasons for the discrepancy are lack of education, financial literacy, the proximity of financial service providers and lack of financial institutions.

This paper makes two important contributions: first, it presents a micro-level analysis of FI across the socio-demographic strata of India, and second, it demonstrates the regional, rural–urban and gender disparity in FI in India.

The primary objective of this study aims to intensively explore the environment of Indonesian regulations and laws related to the Islamic banking system and micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) and unveil the restrictive laws and regulatory flaws that potentially hinder the Islamic banking institution and MSME industry in achieving financial inclusion and promoting sustainable growth.

This paper implements a qualitative method by implementing a multi-case study research strategy, both from the Islamic banking institutions and the MSME industries. The data were gathered primarily through an interview approach by adopting purposive uncontrolled quota sampling.

The findings of this paper reveal two essential issues: First, the regulatory imbalances and restrictions could demotivate and hinder the efforts of Islamic banks in providing access to finance for the MSME segment, hence, encumbering the achievement of the financial inclusion agenda from the Islamic banking industry. Second, the flaws in MSME registration and taxation might discourage the formal MSMEs from extending their business license and prevent the informal MSME units from registering their business. This issue would potentially lower their chance of accessing external financing from the formal financial institutions and participating in supportive government programmes due to the absence of proper legality.

Since this paper only observed six Islamic banks and 22 MSME units in urban and rural locations in Indonesia using a case study approach, the empirical findings and case discussions were limited to those respective Islamic banks and MSME participants.

By referring to the recommendations as presented in this paper, two critical policy implications could be expected from adopting the proposed recommendations, among others: By addressing the issues of the regulatory imbalance associated with the Islamic banking industry and introduce the deregulatory policies on profit and loss sharing (PLS) scheme implementation, this approach will motivate the Islamic banking industry in serving the MSME sector better and provide greater access to financial services, particularly in using the PLS financing schemes. By resolving the problems on MSME registration and taxation, this strategy will enhance the sustainability of the formal MSMEs’ operation and encourage the informal ones to register, hence, improving their inclusion into the formal financing services and government assistance programmes.

The present study attempts to address the literature shortcomings and helps to fill the gaps – both theoretical and empirical – by incorporating the multi-case study among Indonesian Islamic banks and MSMEs to extensively explore the Indonesia regulatory environment pertaining to the Islamic banking system (supply-side) and MSMEs (demand-side), and thoroughly investigates and reveals the restrictive laws and regulatory flaws that could potentially hinder the Islamic banking institutions and MSME industries in attaining financial inclusion and contributing to sustainable development.

This study aims to investigate whether gender predicts financial inclusion and whether education can fill the gender gap in financial inclusion when controlling for the effects of supply side factors of financial inclusion in low-income economies.

This study aims to investigate whether gender predicts financial inclusion and whether education can fill the gender gap in financial inclusion when controlling for the effects of supply side factors of financial inclusion in low-income economies.

The findings provided support for the gender gap in financial inclusion using the most basic measure of financial inclusion. However, using formal savings and access to credit, the gender gap hypothesis is not supported. Moreover, the results revealed that education reduces the gender gap in the basic form of financial inclusion. However, this study could not find any significant difference between men and women's financial inclusion in terms of saving at a bank or borrowing from a bank though men tend to save more than women informally.

The current study contributes to the literature by examining the role of education in the relationship between gender gap and financial inclusion when controlling for the effects of heterogeneous infrastructure and the supply side factors of financial inclusion among the selected countries.

Digital credit is spreading rapidly across Sub-Saharan Africa and holds potential for financial inclusion and female financial autonomy. Women in developing economies have long been targeted by microfinance institutions due to the women’s reliability and positive spillover effects. Yet, adoption rates for digital financial innovations remain moderate among rural women in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors explore whether female preferences for digital and conventional credit differ from males.

The authors conduct a Discrete Choice Experiment with 420 smallholder farmers in central Madagascar, one of the region's poorest countries, to assess preferences for selected digital and conventional credit attributes.

Results of the mixed logit model and the comparison of the willingness-to-pay via Poe-test suggest high general demand for both credit forms. The demand of female respondents is higher than that of males, suggesting that they might be underserved. This holds for both credit forms. However, differences in willingness to pay for the credit attributes are mostly not statistically significant, indicating that designing gender-specific services may not be advisable.

This article is believed to be the first to assess and compare gendered willingness to pay for digital and conventional credit. The study’s findings give valuable insights to decision-makers in development politics as well as the fintech industry.

This paper investigates constraints to yield enhancing technology adoptions, highlighting credit using data pooled from the first three waves of the Ethiopian socio-economic surveys.

Direct elicitation methodology is used to identify household's non-price credit rationing status. The panel selection model specified to examine causal effects of credit constraint on adoption variables allows us to tackle self-selection into adoptions and potential endogeneity of credit constraint while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in both the selection and main equations.

Results show that about 54% of sample households face credit rationing, predominantly demand-side risk rationing. There is a negative association between measures of credit constraint status and adoption variables. The effect is stronger when the demand-side credit rationing is accounted for and when within household variation in credit constraint status overtime is considered as opposed to across constrained and unconstrained households.

Expanding physical access to institutional credit alone may not necessarily spur increased uptake of credit and instant investment by farm households. For a majority of them to take advantage of available credit and improved technology, interventions should also aim at minimizing downside risks.

This paper incorporates the role of downside risk in influencing farmer's decisions to uptake credits and subsequently his/her adoption behaviors. The researcher approached the topic by state-of-the-art method which allows obtaining more reliable results and hence more specific contributions to research and practice.

This paper aims to examine the level of economic efficiency and factors that influence economic efficiency among seed potato producers in South-western Uganda.

The paper analyses the economic efficiency of 499 informal and 137 formal seed producers using primary data collected through a structured questionnaire. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the study sites and specific farmers. A one-step estimation procedure of normalized translog cost frontier and inefficiency model was employed to determine the level of economic efficiency and the influencing factors.

The results showed that mean economic efficiencies were 91.7 and 95.2% for informal and formal seed potato producers, respectively. Furthermore, results show significant differences between formal and informal seed potato producers in economic efficiency at a one percent level. Market information access, credit access, producers' capacity and experience increase the efficiency of informal while number of potato varieties, market information access and producers' experience increase economic efficiency for formal counterparts.

Most seed potato producers, especially the informal ones do not keep comprehensive records of their production and marketing activities. This required more probing as answers depended on memory recall.

Future research could explore panel data approach involving more cropping seasons with time variant economic efficiency and individual unobservable characteristics that may influence farmers' efficiency to validate the current findings.

The paper shows that there is more potential for seed potato producers to increase their economic efficiency given the available technology. This has a direct implication on the economy through increased investment in the production and promotion of high yielding seed potato varieties to meet the growing national demand for potatoes.

The paper bridges the gap in literature on economic efficiency among seed potato producers, specifically in applying the normalized translog cost frontier approach in estimating economic efficiency in the context of potato sub-sector in Uganda.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2021-0641

Providing loans, particularly to small-scale farmers, is one of the roles of formal financial institutions. Lending to small farmers is risky. An institution's health is closely related to the institution's ability to manage credit and portfolio risk. Expanding smallholder farmers' access to finance while maintaining a sustainable financial system is essential; however, pandemics present additional challenges. Accordingly, as reported in the literature, the pandemic's high loan default rates and decreases in return on assets (ROAs) call for further credit risk management research. There have been limited studies on credit risk management during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), so this article aims to provide useful information on its influences.

Researchers used data from formal financial institutions in 2018 (before COVID-19) and in 2021 (during COVID-19) to accomplish the study's broad objective. Descriptive and inferential statistics were the main analytical tools. The credit risk management indicators were categorized into collateral management, loan management, loan recovery management, governance and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Weights were assigned to each category based on the importance to credit risk management. A binary logit model was employed in assessing the factors influencing credit risk management as proxied to loan repayment, while Ordinary Least Square (OLS) was used to examine factors that influence ROAs.

One of the most noteworthy findings is that credit risk management is affected by different factors and magnitudes before and during the COVID-19 era. Loan recovery and ICT management indicators were most influential during the pandemic. In addition, the study noted that low agricultural productivity during the pandemic contributed to an additional challenge in loan default rates because of various COVID-19-containing measures. Additionally, there was a lack of governance and ICT management capacity to drive credit and portfolio risk management during the epidemic.

The paper presents new empirical findings on credit risk management during the COVID-19 era. The study used a methodology which has not been used previously in credit risk management in Nigerian financial institutions. Therefore, this research could become the cornerstone of further academic research in other developing countries using this methodology.