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This study explores whether targeted microcredit can effectively alleviate households’ multidimensional relative poverty (MdRP) in rural China in the new era following the poverty elimination campaign and discusses it from a gendered perspective.

This study applies a fixed-effects model, propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage instrumental variable method to two-period panel data collected from 611 households in rural western China in 2018 and 2021 to explore the effects, mechanisms and heterogenous performance of targeted microcredit on households’ MdRP in the new era.

(i) Targeted microcredit can alleviate MdRP among rural households in the new era, mainly by reducing income and opportunity inequality. (ii) Targeted microcredit can promote women’s empowerment, mainly by enhancing their social participation, thereby helping alleviate households’ MdRP. The effect of the targeted microcredit on MdRP is more significant in medium-educated women households and non-left-behind women households. (iii) The MdRP alleviation effect is stronger in villages with a high degree of digitalization.

Learn from the experience of targeted microcredit. Accurately identify poor groups and integrate loan design into financial health and women empowerment. Particularly, pay attention to less-educated and left-behind women households and strengthen coordination between targeted microcredit and digital village strategies.

This study clarifies the effect of targeted microcredit on women’s empowerment and households’ MdRP alleviation in the new era. It also explores its various effects on households with different female characteristics and regional digitalization levels, providing ideas for optimizing microcredit.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the spillover effects of microcredit on the economy of Ecuador, with a particular focus on its potential as a poverty alleviation mechanism.

To address our research questions, we take into account the distance between cantons (Ecuador’s own administrative distribution) by adopting a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model. To this end, a database will be constructed with macroeconomic information about the country, broken down by canton (administrative division of Ecuador), and in a 2019 cross section, with a total of 1,331 microcredit operations in all 221 of Ecuador’s cantons.

We find a positive effect of microcredit on these neighbouring regions in terms of wealth generation.

We acknowledge that this study is limited to Ecuadorian cantons. Nonetheless, it is crucial to emphasize that focussing on an under-represented developing country like Ecuador adds significant value to the research.

Facilitating access to microcredit is one of the main solutions to address the goals proposed in the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Microcredit activity contributes to the creation of value and wealth in Ecuador, exerting a spillover effect in neighbouring areas that can generate positive multiplier effects and alleviate poverty. For all of the above reasons, our proposal for the country is to support and promote microcredit as one of the main solutions to address the goals proposed in the SDGs.

The novelty of this study lies in the use of spatial econometrics to observe the indirect effects of microcredit on the regions bordering the canton in which it was issued, thus examining the spatial effects of microcredit on wealth distribution.

The main purpose of this paper is to establish the mediating effect of credit counselling in the relationship between access to microcredit and survival of micro small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa post COVID-19 pandemic with data collected from rural Uganda.

Structural equation modelling (SEM) through SmartPLS 4.0 was used to generate the standardized parameters to test whether credit counselling mediates the relationship between access to microcredit and survival of MSMEs in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa post COVID-19 pandemic with data collected from rural Uganda.

The SEM bootstrap results revealed that credit counselling enhances access to microcredit by 27% to promote survival of MSMEs in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa post COVID-19 pandemic with data collected from rural Uganda.

The current study focused only on women MSMEs. Future studies may possibly collect data from all the MSMEs to draw better generalization of the findings within the sector.

The findings can help public finance policy to ensure provision of credit counselling to microentrepreneurs who borrow from different financial institutions to reduce the problem of loan defaults and delinquency rampant in lending. This could be done through conducting routine business education and counselling sessions for microentrepreneurs who often need credit to grow their businesses.

This study is amongst the first few studies to establish the mediating effect of credit counselling in the relationship between access to microcredit and survival of MSMEs in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic with data collected from rural Uganda. There is a dearth in literature and theory on the rehabilitative and preventive role of credit counselling in reducing repayment defaults amongst borrowers within the credit market to spur survival of MSMEs seen as the main enabler of economic growth, especially in developing countries. In fact, credit counselling acts as a safety net by substituting financial literacy and education to solve the rampant problem of overindebtedness amongst borrowers who are debt illiterate within the credit market.

Microcredit programs, which provide unsecured credit to individuals or groups, have often been viewed within the development field as a panacea for empowering women in developing countries and improving their families’ socioeconomic status. Some of these programs, such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, have made great strides toward improving the living conditions for the poorest of the poor. However, the beneficial outcomes of many of these programs to participants, and especially women, are often constrained by local cultural values/traditions and the imposition of masculine business models derived from the developed world's conceptualization of capitalism.

In this paper, we explore some of the root causes of the inability of many microcredit programs to deliver on their expected benefits, specifically to women borrowers in developing countries. We focus on universal shortcomings of microcredit programs that impede the success of all borrowers and on gender-specific shortcomings that negatively impact women borrowers. We highlight these shortcomings with the use of examples from our own experiences with microcredit programs in developing countries. Based on our critique, the final section of the paper presents five key recommendations for improving the structure and delivery of microcredit programs targeted at women in developing countries that recognize their unique needs and opportunities.

This chapter explores the determinants of satisfaction of the Islamic microcredit borrowers in Bangladesh. A total of 245, mostly educated and young, borrowers of rural development scheme, the largest Islamic microcredit institution (MCI) in the world, were included in a survey using a structured questionnaire. Factors were extracted using exploratory factor analysis. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify influential determinants of satisfaction of microcredit borrowers. Borrowers have identified the activities and interaction in the “center,” which includes weekly/monthly meetings, investment-related training, and group performance review, as the most vital factor influencing their overall satisfaction. Competence of the microcredit staffs and officials is the second important determinant. Trust plays the next important role in overall satisfaction of the borrowers with the Islamic microcredit institutions. Convenience, of applying for loan, getting an approval, and paying instalments, is the other influential determinant of the borrower’s satisfaction. The findings imply that given the competition and social need of the Islamic microcredit institutions globally, policymakers must ensure greater investment in human capital, in creating awareness about products and services of the Islamic microcredits, and in initiating a prudent change in the regulation so that Islamic microcredit can become a tool for sustainable socioeconomic development. Use of a proper marketing strategy can also help the MCIs to support the financial inclusion policy of the government. Satisfaction of the borrowers of the Islamic microcredit institutions is yet to arrive in Islamic marketing literature. The proposed borrower-centric model can help reduce poverty and the internal loan-shark problem through adequate engagement of relevant stakeholders.

The chapter looks for the conditions of a contribution of microcredit to poverty alleviation.

It uses socioeconomical hypotheses for defining a direct and fast positive effect of microcredit on the income of the poorest. The contribution raises ten issues or conditions at a micro, meso and macro level.

It is not often that these ten conditions are all completely met. So, the impact of microcredit is generally low as regards the alleviation of poverty. The problems to achieve them are linked to the specificities of the clients and of the prevailing institutions in various sub-Saharan Africa countries.

The chapter clearly identifies the limits of microcredit and their reasons.

Microcredit schemes fashioned after the Grameen Bank model are widely acclaimed for their potential for empowering the poor through access to credit based on social collateral. However, women market vendors in Ibadan refer to microcredit loans as owo komulelanta, a term which translates as “resting the breasts on a hot kerosene lantern,” a plain critique of the stringent conditions of loan repayment. This paper presents the lived experience of borrowers based upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2019. It reflects on the Nigerian state's neoliberal policies of microfinance and the experience of women borrowers. The paper argues that social–emotional vulnerability of women borrowers is exacerbated by the acceptance of a loan due to the rigid system of repayment and harassment from providers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the political effects of microcredit. The author provides the theoretical connections between microfinance and political empowerment and tests them in the context of Central Asia and the Caucasus, a region that is significantly lagging in political development and yet has a growing microfinance potential.

The author conducted a total of 100 in-depth interviews with microcredit clients in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in June 2010 and January 2011, respectively. The author chose my client samples randomly from two of the largest non-governmental microfinance institutions in these countries.

The findings of the survey reveal that microloans have only led to modest improvements in the socioeconomic status of the clients and had almost no effect on their political empowerment. Disaggregating the data further in terms of gender, type of loan and location of credit does not change the overall trends but reveals that to the extent that any political empowerment took place, group clients (mostly women) in urban settings were more aware and involved in political issues than individual clients in the villages.

Even with a carefully thought-out design, it is not clear how much the responses reflect the true and complicated impact of microfinance on the clients’ lives, a challenge that may be overcome in future research with focus group analysis or an ethnographic analysis of microcredit clients over a long period of time.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, these observations can help inform microfinance institutions, donor organizations and governments about the true potential of microfinance. A realization of the limits of this unique development tool may prove useful in reorienting the goals of foreign aid and designing a more effective approach to development.

Despite the extensive literature on the economic and social effects of microcredit, very little attention has been given to how economic empowerment generated by microcredit can translate into political empowerment at the individual level. This paper lays out the theoretical reasons for why such a relationship might exist and tests these hypotheses systematically in two countries, taking into account gender, type of loan instrument and location of the loan.

Microcredit has become a popular tool for women's socioeconomic development across the globe. The purpose of this study is to examine the influences of gender ideology on women's microcredit participation and their status within the household in rural Bangladesh.

The study adopted a cross‐sectional design. Data were collected from 342 randomly selected married men in five northwest villages. A path analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized model.

Almost 52 percent of the married women were microcredit‐borrowers. However, in 81 percent of cases the loans were fully controlled by their husbands. This study indicates that low socioeconomic status influences women borrowing loans while conservative gender ideology constrain them from using the loans. It also appears that their husbands' liberal gender ideology facilitates women's use of loans (active microcredit participation), which in turn improves their status as household co‐breadwinner.

Though the study is based on men's reports and also correlational (not inferential) by nature, it provides a comprehensive understanding about the way microcredit intervention has been practiced in rural Bangladesh. This may have significant policy and practical implications.

The study discuses under what conditions microcredit intervention can contribute to improve women's status in rural Bangladesh. It is recommended that microcredit intervention should address patriarchal ideology by creating an environment where people may have a chance to re‐think the importance of women's roles and contributions.

The study is original in the linking of theory, policy and practice in the context of patriarchal ideology and microcredit interventions for enhancing women's status in rural Bangladesh.

The leading multinational companies tend to expand their marketing activities to bottom of pyramid (BOP) market. The BOP market comprises many segments, however, little is known about the purchase behaviour of BOP market or segments therein. Microcredit provides credit access to customers in BOP market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate youth’s intentions of obtaining microcredit in the post-war era, which could be a segment of BOP market.

The sample comprised 1,250 youth aged 18-27 selected from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Surveys were administered for data collection. After testing measurement model, two structural models – full model and non-mediated model (direct effects model) were run to test hypotheses.

Positive affect, subjective norms, entrepreneurial desire and self-identity enhanced intentions of obtaining microcredit, whereas perceived deterrents reduced those intentions. Additionally, self-identity mediated the association between positive affect, entrepreneurial desire, perceived behavioural control and knowledge of microcredit, and intentions of obtaining microcredit.

This study was conducted amongst youth in one country. Also, the data were cross-sectional. Hence, the model needs testing with youth and adults in other post-war contexts and with longitudinal data.

The findings of this study inform how effectively microcredit can be marketed to youth in post-war contexts and to the other segments of BOP market.

A unique purchase behavioural model is suggested with the mediating role of self-identity, to enhance intentions of obtaining microcredit in BOP markets, such as youth in post-war contexts. This study contributes to literature relating to purchase behaviour and self-identity, with particular reference to BOP market.