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This paper outlines an analytical framework for estimating households' access to formal credit across European transition economies shortly after the onset of the global financial crisis. This study, along with the individual-level socio-economic and demographic characteristics also considers the perceived quality of the institutions. The author wants to assess whether an adequate policy-level intervention to promote financial inclusion should account for the individuals' subjective evaluation of the political situation in their own country as well as their personal experience of corruption.

This paper identifies the main determinants of financial inclusion using European microdata (Life in Transition Survey II, LiTS II). In order to estimate individuals' access to formal financial markets, the author constructs a bivariate probit model to account for joint access to short-term and long-term credit products (Mohieldin and Wright, 2000).

The results show that improving people's access to financial markets across European regions requires a set of interventions at the institutional and local levels to link-up policies of financial inclusion and financial integrity.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by identifying a number of key causes of financial inclusion and the role of institutional (corruption crimes) factors in determining the levels of financial access in a country.

The rich financial knowledge of small and micro business owners helps to enhance the formal credit demand of small and micro enterprises and change the credit channel preference of small and micro enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between financial knowledge and the credit practices of 290 small and micro enterprises in China’s Jiangsu and Shandong provinces based on their formal credit needs and preferred channels of credit.

To measure the degree of the credit constraints of small and micro enterprises, this study applied questionnaire surveys to obtain information on the credit demand and supply of 363 small and micro enterprises in the Jiangsu and Shandong provinces. Firstly, a probit model is used to study the influence of financial knowledge on the formal credit demand and credit acquisition possibility of small and micro enterprises, and tool variables and a biprobit model are used to deal with the possible errors of endogenesis and sample selection. Secondly, a tobit model is used to study the influence of financial knowledge on the credit access of small and micro enterprises in different channels, and tool variables and a Heckman two-stage model are used to deal with endogenesis and possible errors in sample selection. Finally, this study carried out a series of robustness tests to make the conclusions more reliable.

This study is based on the perspective of the knowledge-based view to explore the impact of financial knowledge on the credit behaviour of small and micro enterprises. This study found that financial knowledge can increase a small and micro enterprise’s formal credit needs and drive the small and micro enterprise to actively apply for loans. Furthermore, financial knowledge has a significant and positive influence on the acquisition of formal credit and approved lines of formal credit and a significant and negative influence on the acquisition of informal credit and approved lines of informal credit.

The results indicated that increased financial knowledge can increase the likelihood of a small and micro enterprise to prefer formal credit and reduce the likelihood of it to prefer informal credit channels.

Financial knowledge is the ability to master basic economic knowledge and financial concepts as well as the ability to use knowledge to manage and allocate financial resources. The rich financial knowledge of small and micro business owners helps to enhance the formal credit demand of small and micro enterprises and change their credit channel preference. This paper offers a new perspective on the problems of credit constraint, low participation in formal credit markets and high participation in private credit markets among China’s small and micro enterprises and valuably supplements the research literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of financial inclusion on the enhancement of paddy farmers’ technical efficiency (TE). The impact was evaluated rigorously from different dimensions which could be useful in the policy discussion for enhancing efficiency in utilizing productive resources.

A cross-sectional data of randomly selected 120 paddy farmers from Khulna district in the Southwest region of Bangladesh were collected for this study. Initially, a stochastic production frontier approach was used for estimating farmers’ TE. Thereafter, ordinary least squares and quantile regression models were applied for unveiling the existing relationship between TE and various dimensions of financial inclusion after controlling all other socio-economic characteristics.

The study findings revealed that farmers were around 86 percent technically efficient and amongst them, credit takers were more efficient than non-credit takers. A non-monotonic relationship between TE and amount of credit was observed where TE was maximized at amount around 20,000 Bangladeshi Taka (USD255), a medium credit in terms of its amount. In addition, credit literacy was identified as a significant factor for improving TE. Though difference in the choice of sources for accessing credit had little impact on mean TE, its effect was found significantly higher for low scored technically efficient farmers compared to high scored farmers.

The policy toward widening the coverage of financial inclusion would be more effective than providing larger amount of credit to a limited number of farmers for improving their TE.

Such an in-depth assessment of the impact of financial inclusion on TE is probably the first effort in the Khulna district of Bangladesh.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how China's rural public pension affects farmers' formal borrowing, which has always been rationed.

This paper uses a difference-in-difference (DID) estimation to evaluate the effect of the implementation of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) at the end of 2009 on farmers' formal borrowing.

The results show that the NRPS significantly reduces farmers' formal borrowing from rural credit cooperatives (RCCs). The effect is significant among the elderly, eastern China and high-income groups.

This study contributes to the literature by identifying another potential reason for rural formal credit shortage. Policymakers and rural formal financial institutions should consider the demand side problem of lending.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the proportion of farmers with constrained and unconstrained participation in the agricultural credit market and estimate the parameters that determine agricultural credit market participation in Finoteselam town, Ethiopia.

The study followed cross‐sectional study design where primary data were collected from 210 households through a questionnaire survey in Finoteselam town, north western Ethiopia. A combination of purposive and random sampling techniques was employed. Descriptive statistics were used to identify the proportion of farmers with different levels of participation in the agricultural credit market. The bivariate probit model was estimated to identify the parameters that determine smallholder credit market participation.

The study revealed that 48 percent of smallholder farmers are constrained non‐participating (i.e. rationed out) from the agricultural credit market due to lack of access to the service, 44.8 percent of them are constrained participating, 2.4 percent unconstrained participating and 4.8 percent of them are unconstrained non‐participating. Estimation results of the bivariate probit model indicated that variables such as high dependency burden, large landholding size, household's labor endowment, participation in off‐farm employment activities and incurring unforeseen expenses increased the probability of households to participate in agricultural credit markets. On the other hand, village dummy variable, old age of household head and borrowing from other sources decreased the probability of households participating in the agricultural credit market.

The findings raise policy concerns to devise a mechanism for creating a functioning rural insurance market, improve the labor market for encouraging off‐farm employment activities, devise wealth‐creating schemes and address the credit need of those smallholder farmers who are still rationed out from the agricultural credit market.

Little has been done on the subject of agricultural credit market participation in Ethiopia. Hence, this research will add to the thin literature on the subject.

This study explores the benefits of business financial inclusion from the Islamic perspective in Nigeria by selecting Kano state as a case study.

Primary data were generated through semi-structured interviews with experts who comprised professional accountants/consultants and experienced traders. Thematic analysis was applied to examine the data collected. In addition, observations were made in some selected stores and shops to complement the interview results.

The study finds that the benefits of business financial inclusion include recordkeeping improvement, reduction of the risks of bad debts, reduction of the risks associated with cash, enhancing business zakāh for poverty alleviation, sales improvement and business growth, getting supports from government and other development organizations and the provision of employment opportunities.

This study is purely qualitative, and, as such, it has some limitations in terms of generalization.

The practical implication of this study is that the use of electronic payment methods, especially point of sales, enhances the business financial inclusion, which consequently maximizes their wealth and contributes to the reduction of poverty to the barest minimum in the society.

The social implication of the findings is that businesses that are financially included are in a better position to discharge religious, philanthropic and other benevolent activities, such as zakāh, qard hasan, waqf and sadaqah, for the welfare of the ummah.

The study points out the benefits of financial inclusion not only to businesses but also to other members of the society at large.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of financial access, financial depth, financial efficiency and financial stability pillars on income inequality and poverty among a panel of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

This paper captures cross-sectional dependence among the income groups through the dynamic common correlated effect approach for a data set of 28 selected SSA countries from 2000 to 2017.

This study reveals that the financial development pillars exert positive and significant impacts on income inequality across the income groups. The results show that the effects of the financial development metrics on poverty are different across the income groups. The results also indicate that the pillars improve poverty reduction for low- and lower-middle-income countries. However, there is a minimal effect on poverty reduction in upper-middle-income countries. The differences among these income categories suggest the need for policymakers to account for income levels when prescribing policies that could engender financial development and poverty reduction in the region.

This paper examines the effects of financial development on both income inequality and poverty by using the newly developed World Bank financial development strategic metrics. It captures cross-sectional dependence in the full sample of selected SSA countries and their income categories.

In the absence of well-developed, formal institutional frameworks, informal network-based strategies have been argued to be especially viable in emerging economies. However, some empirical research has challenged these earlier theoretical arguments. In light of new evidence, this chapter develops a contingency perspective differentiating firms' networks as strong ties and weak ties. It suggests that while strong-tie networks are typically found during the early phase of institutional transitions, weak-tie networks are more likely to be developed and leveraged during the late phase of transitions. The upshot is that as the performance benefits of strong ties decline during institutional transitions, emerging weak ties' impact on firm performance is likely to increase.

The purpose of this article is to examine the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) proposition, where private companies can both be profitable and help alleviate poverty by attending low‐income consumers.

The literature on BOP was reviewed and some key elements of the BOP approach were proposed and examined.

There is no agreement in the literature about the potential benefits of the BOP approach for both private companies and low‐income consumers. However, further research on characterizing the BOP segment and finding the appropriate business model for attending the BOP can provide some answers to this issue.

The article provides some guidelines to managers as to how they need to adapt their marketing strategies to sell to the BOP market, and what type of partnerships they need to build in order to succeed.

The article presents a thorough analysis of the key elements involved in the BOP initiative: companies' motivations, characterization of the BOP consumers, and the business model to attend the BOP.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the factors that drive gender income differences among farmers in Cambodia with a focus on the role of formal credit.

To decompose the gender income gap, this article employs the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique, while a two-stage least square (2SLS) regression is also employed to check the causal effect of formal credit usage on earnings.

Results show a positive effect of formal credit on farmers' earnings and the gender gap in formal credit usage is not found. Despite that, formal credit still contributes to the gender earnings gap with a higher return to credit usage for male farmers. This can be due to the difference in the level of education, financial literacy and other dimensions in favor of men, allowing them to use credit more effectively than women.

The findings underline the importance of boosting general and financial education among female farmers in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the expansion of access to financial services for women must be accompanied by policies addressing gender gaps in other economic and social dimensions, so that women are able to reap the potential benefit of using those financial services.

Lack of research focuses on the link between the gender gap in the use of financial services and the gender income gap. The significant gender gap in returns to formal credit usage found in this study demonstrates that the benefits of gender equity in access to and usage of financial services also depend on the effects of other indicators that policymakers must be aware of.