Suchergebnisse

Microfinance promise to serve low-income or disadvantaged beneficiaries excluded from the formal banking sector in a financially sustainable way (thus to achieve the so called "double bottom line" of financial and social performance) built excitement around the development of a global industry. However, for a long time an anti-subsidy position embedded in the international key donor community have shown little concern of social performance data and information on beneficiaries profiles in terms of various dimension of social and financial exclusion. Until recently, most of the emphasis of microfinance advocates has been devoted to MFIs financial performance following the "win-win" proposition, according to which financial viability should be sufficient to show social impact, a view that is supported by a controversial evidence and is based on a selective understanding of conceptual facts. Nevertheless, several initiatives recently translated into the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF) attempt to explore social aspects of microfinance providing a new definition of social performance more focused on the whole process leading to a social impact. Aim of this paper is to measure European MFIs social performance according to a core set of common indicators developed by the SPTF but using data collected in 2010 by the European Microfinance Network (EMN) on a sample of 170 microfinance actors operating in 21 countries out of 27 European Union (EU) member countries, current EU candidate countries and countries belonging to the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). The reference framework followed in the current social performance analysis examines the whole process of translating MFIs mission into social impact and includes the analysis of three connected dimensions of the social performance process corresponding to different set of indicators: the intent of the MFI, the effectiveness of the internal system and activities in achieving its targets, MFI outputs and eventually its capacity to positively affect clients life and ...

We analyze the role of the State in social investment (education, health services, etc.), different from those in infrastructures. We do so because, in the current economic and social situation, this type of investment, in addition to strengthening the European social model, could be particularly effective in creating new jobs. To test the link between social investment and employment we modify the Paolo Sylos Labini's employment equation model (MOSYL), inserting in the model social investment instead of those in infrastructures. The quantitative implementation is based on Eurostat data for the 28 EU countries, and the results are encouraging: the employment rate is strongly influenced by factors outside the labor market, which affect not only the general economic environment (represented by GDP), but also by elements linked to the social context, concerning the new forms of welfare. Text of the speech given at the conference "Paolo Sylos Labini e la politica delle riforme", held at Sapienza University of Rome on 04 December 2015, organized by the Accademia dei Lincei with Economia Civile.

Recent economic literature on poverty may be broadly divided into two strands. One strand investigates the multidimensional nature of poverty. The other strand, employing the large availability of household surveys, investigates the micro and macro determinants of monetary poverty, analyzing the role played by individual and household characteristics and macro socio-economic factors. In this framework, a gender approach has often been limited to the analysis of the coefficient "woman" in standard regression analyses of the determinants of poverty. By contrast, feminist research has consistently stressed the importance of a more holistic conceptual and empirical approach to encapsulate gender deprivation. This paper aims at building a bridge between the two mentioned streams, by analyzing the gendered nature of multidimensional of poverty. Although gender mainstreaming is specified in the European Union policy framework as a key element of active inclusion policies, this approach to policy design and monitoring is still underdeveloped. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Abstract
We use data from 298 showings of the television program "Affari Tuoi," which involves contestants making decisions between risky prospects with possible prizes of up to half a million euros, to estimate three models of decision-making under risk: Expected Utility, Rank-Dependent Expected Utility and Regret-Rejoice. We find that Regret-Rejoice does not significantly improve upon Expected Utility, while Rank-Dependent outperforms it. Interestingly, we find that the CARA specification fits significantly better than the conventionally-adopted CRRA specification. Crucially, we find a significant role for unobserved heterogeneity, implying that our estimates provide more superior estimates of risk attitude and of probability weighting than other studies.