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The purpose of this paper is to study land title’s credit effect from a financial inclusion perspective in China. The focus is both small land holding and poor farmers. Formal and informal finances are considered to test their differences in land title’s credit effect.

The authors use augmented inverse-probability weights of the doubly robust method to test the effect of land titling on the rural credit market by addressing self-selection, endogeneity and heterogeneity concerns.

Results show that the poor, non-poor and small land holders with land titles are willing to borrow more from formal financial institutions. Land titling increases loan accessibility for non-poor and small land holding farmers. As for informal financing, large land holding and non-poor farmers show a decrease in informal lending. Land titling has a financial inclusion effect for some farmers, but poor farmers’ credit restrictions are not entirely solved by land titling.

This is the first study that focuses on the financial inclusion effect of farm land titling in China.

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.

While there is growing attention to the efficacy of business and political ties in emerging economies, there are not many studies explicitly examining the relations of business and political ties to small and medium enterprises (SME) strategy formation in emerging economies outside of the East-Asian setting. This study attempts to refine the facilitating role of formal strategic planning (FSP) in the relation of business and political ties to financial firm performance.

Structural equation modeling and conditional mediation analyses were used.

The authors show that while business ties are positively related to FSP, political ties are negatively associated with it. In addition, this study provides empirical evidence that FSP positively mediates the relation of business ties to financial performance. Conversely, there exists a negative indirect relationship between political ties and financial performance. This study shows that the demand uncertainty negatively moderates the relation of FSP to financial performance.

The findings offer noteworthy inferences for firm managers and policy makers, who should evaluate the benefits and costs carried by business and political ties.

This exploratory study aims to investigate the financing issues faced by Indian small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. It also classifies the financing constraints into four financing gaps, namely, demand, knowledge, supply and benevolence.

The study uses the convergent interviewing technique to highlight the key issues being faced by SME owners in financing. Forty-four owners from different industries and having dispersed demographics have been interviewed in the study.

The findings reveal the real-time issues being faced by SME owners. SMEs faced both demand- and supply-side constraints. The most common financing challenges are high cost of credit, complex procedures of lending institutions, information asymmetry, creditworthiness and self-abstaining from external financial resources. Issues pertaining to lack of knowledge and awareness about the financial products and services are also being noticed by the researchers.

This study identifies the major financing concerns of SMEs and thereby provides a directional approach to the policymakers in the area of SME financing.

The study offers a better and data-based understanding of financing issues being faced by the SME owners. The usage of convergent interviewing allows the researchers to highlight the common issues raised by the SME owners.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways to mitigate gender bias in entrepreneurial financing. The authors aim to unveil the role entrepreneurs’ gender played in formal and informal financing under Chinese context, as well as the moderating role corporate social responsibility (CSR) played in such relationships.

This paper adopts ANOVA test and multiple regression method to empirically examine the relationship of entrepreneurs’ gender, formal financing, informal financing and CSR with second hand data from The Eleventh Private Enterprise Survey covering a sample of firms across China.

The results demonstrate that comparing to start-ups led by men, start-ups led by women are less likely to get either formal or informal financing. The results also suggest that CSR negatively moderates the impact entrepreneurs’ gender has on formal financing but not on informal financing.

By focusing on both formal and informal financing, the research of gender’s effects on firms’ financing has been extended. Also, by proving that CSR can help to mitigate gender bias in formal financing, contribution has also been made to the research field of gender financing. This paper contributes to the CSR literature by sorting out another benefit CSR has in new venture financing. Overall, findings of this study deepen the existing understanding of gender issues in the context of entrepreneurial financing.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of owner/manager characteristics in explaining the capital structure decisions of entrepreneurial enterprises in emerging economies using a sample of Chinese small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Although mainstream theories from the finance literature are useful in explaining capital structure decisions for large firms in developed economies, they do not adequately explain the financing behaviour of SMEs in developing economies.

The authors' mixed methods approach utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how managerial factors influence the capital structure of Chinese SMEs.

The findings suggest that the capital structure of SMEs in China is primarily influenced by aversion to external control and propensity to take risk. It was also found that owners with better networking ties generally require less debt financing because they can access adequate external resources through informal channels.

The main limitation concerns the extent to which the paper's findings can be generalised to outside of the specific location in which the research was undertaken. Future research might be extended to other emerging economies to determine whether the findings of this research are unique to China or robust across emerging economies, given different institutional contexts.

Given the critical importance of fostering growth of private enterprise in China, policy makers should be aware of how the attitudes of owner/managers impact on the development of SMEs when developing mechanisms to support them.

Citizens in economies which provide sufficient financing and support to entrepreneurial enterprises generally enjoy a higher standard of living than societies which do not.

This paper fulfils an identified need for studying how entrepreneurial firms in emerging economies make the financing decisions necessary to expand and grow.

The undervaluing of care work, whether conducted informally or formally, has long been subject to debate. While much discussion, and indeed reform has centred on childcare, there is a growing need, particularly in countries with ageing populations, to examine how long-term care (LTC) work is valued. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the way in which employment policies (female labour market participation, retirement age, and precarious work) and social policies (care entitlements and benefits/leave for carers) affect both informal carers and formal care workers in a liberal welfare state with a rapidly ageing population.

Drawing the adult worker model the authors use the existing literature on ageing care and employment to examine the approach of a liberal welfare state to care work focusing on both supports for informal carers and job quality in the formal care sector.

The research suggests that employment policies advocating increased labour participation, delaying retirement and treating informal care as a form of welfare are at odds with LTC strategies which encourage informal care. Furthermore, the latter policy acts to devalue formal care roles in an economic sense and potentially discourages workers from entering the formal care sector.

To date research investigating the interplay between employment and LTC policies has focused on either informal or formal care workers. In combining both aspects, we view informal and formal care workers as complementary, interdependent agents in the care process. This underlines the need to develop social policy regarding care and employment which encompasses the needs of each group concurrently.

Many countries around the world are facing great challenges from their ageing population with shrinking workforce, this will put more pressure on their financial system and will increase the public spending on care costs provided to older people. Egypt is in the phase of establishing a new law for older people care's rights, a law that will organise how older people in need for care would benefit from access to government financial support and how will families support their older relatives financially and how the care costs will be shared between the older people, their families and the government.

The paper examines the suitability two cost-sharing methods and applying them to assess the effect on the individuals and families' income strain.

The preferred approach can be used for sharing costs as it applies a gradual funding withdrawal by the government and provide more fairness and flexibility for application in different regions. Besides, the parameters of this approach can be used by policy makers to control the levels of funding.

The paper will be the first to discuss the intergenerational fairness from a financial perspective in Egypt to avoid forcing older people into poverty or resorting to poverty trade-off.

The aim of this paper is to propose solutions for improving internal controls and transparency to alleviate concerns of international community over alleged linked with terrorist groups.

The authors explore the counter-insurgency theory and political process model to explain the current state of counter-terrorism activities aimed at Islamic NGOs after 9/11.

The authors believe the idea of money flow disruption to be of greater importance than freezing the accounts to suppress terrorism financing.

Islamic NGOs established for philanthropic and humanitarian aid in third world Muslim countries have been accused of being involved in terrorism financing. This revelation is to the disadvantage of the donors who do not channel their donations for such activities. The authors propose risk management framework useful at operational level to detect and prevent welfare activities financing warfare activities.

The proposed risk management framework is to complement various regional and international initiatives championed by Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering and Financial Action Task Force to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct comparative research of small innovative entrepreneurship under different types of institutional environment in Russia and the USA.

A survey was administered among small innovative firms in the State of Minnesota (USA) and Novosibirsk Oblast (Russia). Mann-Whitney test for median differences adjusted for multiple comparisons using Benjamini-Hochberg procedure is used to establish statistically significant dissimilarities between Siberian and Minnesotan populations.

The results indicate that there are significant differences in the challenges faced by the Russian and American firms. The most important among them are the lack of legal structure for innovation and availability of qualified staff in Russia.

The study is limited to two regions with comparable economic and geographic environments.

It is indicated in the results that significant changes in institutional business environment are necessary for the future development of innovative entrepreneurship in Russia.

This study is the first of its kind to compare the challenges facing small innovative entrepreneurship in Russia and the USA.