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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between rural banks’ efficiency and their lending provision for micro and small businesses (MSBs) in West Java Indonesia. Rural banks are special banks that are generally located in the district and sub-district areas and they are very involved in providing loans to MSBs.

The study includes 212 rural banks in various districts in West Java province over the 2012–2016 period. Data envelopment analysis is employed to obtain banks’ technical efficiency and panel data analysis is used to reveal the impact of rural banks’ efficiency on their loan provision to MSBs.

The findings reveal that technical efficiency of the rural banks has a significant positive impact on their loan provision to MSBs in West Java Indonesia. These results have underscored the importance of rural banks in maintaining and increasing their bank efficiency levels to enhance their capacity in providing loans to MSBs.

The results of this study have brought some implications for practitioners (rural bank management) to maintain and improve their efficiency in order to expand their capacity to lend to MSBs. The roles of Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or the Indonesia Financial Services Authority in monitoring the efficiency of rural banks and overseeing the provision of their loans to MSBs are also very necessary in ensuring good performance of rural banks in terms of both aspects, respectively.

This study highlights the importance of rural banks in providing loans to MSB segments. The contribution of rural banks in stimulating the development of MSBs is believed to be able to produce positive social implications in terms of empowering the economic and social life of MSBs in their local communities.

The study fills the literature gap by revealing a significant relationship between bank efficiency and loan provision for MSBs in the context of rural banks.

The aim of this paper is to find out why women artisans in Peru avoid the sole ownership of their enterprises while preferring to work in associations.

The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 28 women artisans in Peru during their participation in a fair organized by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture in Lima (Peru). Thematic analysis was subsequently used to develop the main themes and sub-themes of the study.

The authors of the present study have found that women artisans in Peru choose to work in associations instead of via the sole ownership of their enterprises because of the following three categories of motives: contextual (low operational cost of family-owned associations, more compliance with the surrounding institutional context), cultural (commitment to parenting, experiencing less marginalization, zero responsibility, and greater work flexibility) and marketing-related motives (eliciting more social support, guaranteeing more invitations to participate in artisanal fairs).

This paper contributes by filling a gap in the literature on artisan entrepreneurship in which studies on women artisans in Latin American contexts and why they choose to work in associations have been limited so far.