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Despite the noticeable consequences of disruptive financial innovations, access to finance remains a major factor inhibiting the sustainable-growth potentials of young micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings. This study examines the determinants of financing options among micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings. Specifically, the study seeks to establish whether credit history, income, asset, gender, awareness and network capability have effects on formal and informal financing options among micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings.

This article uses the survey research design and administers a structured questionnaire among 300 purposively selected micro-entrepreneurs within the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Only 291 completed questionnaires are retrieved. This article also uses the multiple regression analysis to estimate the empirical model and test the research hypotheses respectively.

This article establishes that: (1) credit history and assets-based financing are significant determinants of formal financing options among young micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings, (2) gender and network capability are significant determinants of informal financing options among young micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings and (3) awareness is significant of both formal and informal financing options among young micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings.

This article examines the determinants of financing option among young micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings. Specifically, the study seeks to establish whether credit history income asset gender awareness and network capability have effects on formal and informal financing options among micro-entrepreneurs in informal settings.

Micro-enterprises, like any other business entity, face financing challenges. However, micro-enterprises often cannot access financial institutions as they cannot fulfill the conditions to obtain financing facilities from a formal financial institution. As such, they have to rely on family or friends for financing needs. The most critical challenge faced in this regard to Muslim micro-enterprises is finding out a way in which family and friends could give a financial helping hand without the involvement of riba (interest). At the same time, the person giving the financing can enjoy a profit. This paper aims to propose the Tawarruq Fardi Financing (TFF) model that Islamic micro-enterprises could use to fulfill their financial needs. It becomes a solution when obtaining financing from friends and family or any other third party who could be a private investor who does not want to engage in an equity relationship.

This study adopts a qualitative research methodology, combining descriptive and content analysis using the inductive reasoning approach.

The paper's outcome shows that the proposed TFF could assist Islamic micro-enterprises in obtaining Shariah-compliant financing without engaging in an equity partnership. It allows them to fulfill their financing needs bearing in mind the interest of both parties involved in the transaction.

This research will assist Islamic micro-enterprises to find out a Shariah-compliant financing facility from family, friends and any other private investors without entering into an equity relationship. The proposed model would be a Shariah-compliant alternative to interest-free loans and engaging in an equity relationship for the sake of getting benefits for both parties involved in the transaction.

This study aims to investigate whether social capital mediates the impact of financial capital on business performance in Cameroon.

The study uses quantitative data collected from 370 small businesses in Yaoundé and Douala in Cameroon. All businesses in the sample are formally registered and are in the services sector. A structural equation modelling (SEM) approach is used for the analysis.

Structural and relational capital constraints are significant mediators of formal and informal finance. The magnitude effects of relational capital are the largest, underlining information's importance in resolving small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs') financial constraints. In addition, the effect of informal finance constraints on business performance is larger in magnitude, confirming the substantial impact of informal finance on SME operations.

The paper confirms that relational and structural social capital are vital in business. However, the study did not investigate the disaggregated effects of these dimensions of social capital. Furthermore, how SMEs transition between formal and informal finance could provide further understanding of the role of social capital. A disaggregated and panel data set would help to provide additional insights.

Social capital emerges as a pivotal factor in enhancing SME access to finance. The results, therefore, confirm the relevance of a holistic approach to easing financial capital constraints for SMEs and enabling small businesses to connect more to various stakeholders to amplify business performance. In addition, the findings identified some intervention points for the governments in Cameroon as it seeks to use SMEs as its pivot for development and to catapult itself to emerging economy status in its Cameroon 2035 vision.

The value of the study lies in assessing the mediating effect of cognitive, relational and structural social capital constraints on business performance and comparing the effect of formal and informal financial constraints on business performance.

This policy paper compares the performance of state-owned enterprise (SOEs) versus private firms in selected emerging economies in Asia, focusing on a number of performance indicators. The indicators are internationally recognized quality innovation, product and/or service innovation, financing of operations, dealing with government regulations and labor performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no such comparative study for these indicators between SOEs and private firms and across countries. Most studies of SOEs have been national case studies. As such, they give us little knowledge of how a country compares with other countries at similar stages of economic development. A cross-country comparative analysis can help us identify broader trends and patterns.

The authors compare and discuss the performance of SOEs versus private firms in a number of emerging Asian countries, namely China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. To do so, the authors use data from the 2018 World Bank Enterprise Survey (which is the latest available) for the period 2012–2015. The authors focus on a number of key performance indicators, namely internationally recognized quality innovation, product and/or service innovation, financing of operations, dealing with government regulations and labor performance.

The comparative analysis uncovers some interesting differences between the two types of firms. For example, somewhat surprisingly, SOEs tend to innovate more than private firms. However, the single most significant pattern the authors find is that in middle-income Asia both types of firms face formidable challenges with respect to doing business – e.g. scarcity of relevant training programs for employees. Therefore, the priority of policymakers must be to improve the overall business environment for all firms, regardless of their ownership structure.

The nature of this paper is a policy paper. This is because the data used in this study is survey data, conducted every four–five years (or more) for each country in the study and available for very few countries. As the data are not available for a continuous period of time, The authors could not conduct empirical research for this topic and thus made it a policy paper that presents a comparison across Asian countries as case studies.

The five selected Asian countries are interesting case studies for a comparative analysis since they are middle-income countries where SOEs play a significant role in the economy. Furthermore, state ownership is an important institutional dimension in emerging markets, and strong ties with the government can influence the performance of SOEs through various market and non-market channels. Despite the potential importance of the research theme, there is very little existing research on cross-country comparisons of the performance of SOEs vis-à-vis private firms. This could be explained by scarce data availability. With this in mind, the study attempts to shed some light on SOEs' performance and add to the rather limited literature.

Corruption has been evidenced as one of the major factors that drive a firm's dynamics and growth. This study examines the relationship between corruption and financing structure decisions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.

The authors use a longitudinal data set from the Vietnam's SME Survey in the period 2007–2013 and adopt the two-stage least squares method to deal with endogeneity.

After controlling for endogeneity and firm heterogeneity, the authors find that, overall, corruption does significantly affect the decisions of financing sources. Given that, corruption increases the use of informal debt and decreases the levels of formal debt, owner's equity and retained earnings.

The findings suggest implications for corruption-combating actions and policies.

Different from previous studies that either provide evidence of government corruption and a firm's capital structure at the country level or focus on corruption and debt only, we deliver a more comprehensive analysis on the nexus between corruption and various financing sources.

The challenge of accessibility to adequate housing in several countries by a large percentage of citizens has given rise to different housing programs designed to facilitate access to affordable housing. In South Africa, the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) was created to provides housing loans to low- and middle-income earners. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the implication of the macroeconomic risk elements on the performance of the NHFC incremental housing finance.

This study used a mixed-method approach to examine the time-series data of the NHFC over 17 years (2003–2020), relative to selected macroeconomic indicators. Additionally, this study analysed primary data from a 2022 survey of NHFC Executives.

This study found that incremental housing finance addresses a housing affordability gap, caters to disadvantaged groups, adapts to changing macroeconomic conditions and can mitigate default risk. It also finds that the performance of the NHFC’s incremental housing finance is premised on the behaviour of the macroeconomic elements that drive its strategy in South Africa.

Unlike previous works on housing finance, this case study of the NHFC considers the implication of macroeconomic trends when disbursing incremental housing finance to low- and middle-level income earners as a risk mitigation measure for the South African market. Its mixed method use of quantitative and qualitative data also allows a robust insight into trends that drive investment in incremental housing finance in South Africa.

Access to financing has long been identified as a stumbling block for the economic endeavors of immigrant entrepreneurs (IEs) in host countries. Yet, little is known about the internal enablers for the IEs success to overcome their financing barriers in host countries. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the theoretical concept of the financial ambidexterity of IEs as a potential behavioral ability some IEs develop over time to access financing in both host and coethnic contexts.

The paper uses sociopsychological lenses to introduce and discuss the term “financial ambidexterity of IEs” by synthesizing empirical evidence drawn from the different literature on immigrant entrepreneurship, biculturalism, financial literacy and cultural intelligence. This discussion is carefully embedded within the framework of the immigrant entrepreneurship literature.

The study proposes and discusses the role of bicultural identity integration, cultural intelligence and financial literacy in enabling the “financial ambidexterity of IEs.” It further defines the “financial ambidexterity of IEs” as their ability to explore and exploit financing opportunities, either simultaneously across the contexts within which they are embedded, e.g. coethnic and mainstream, or alternately in one context when barriers occur in the other.

The paper mainly contributes to the literature on immigrant entrepreneurship by suggesting an explanation for how IEs overcome financing barriers in their host countries, and why some IEs are more successful in that than other peers. Moreover, the paper attempts to advance the understanding of immigrants' entrepreneurial endeavors using a sociopsychological lens that considers cultural, cognitive and knowledge-related factors.