Search results for "Development studies"

Economic crisis and educational crisis : looking ahead

1986

The worldwide economic crisis has now been with us for a good ten years and, for many countries, the end of the tunnel is not yet in sight and is probably a long way off. So what kind of crisis is this, that can continue for so long, given the fact that, etymologically, the term denotes a brief, crucial moment when the outcome of a troubled situation is decided, for better or for worse? Infelicitous as the term commonly used to describe the present state of the world economy may be, it is none the less true that what is designated as a crisis encompasses a historical phase in which economic growth is lower than in the preceding phase and the problems bound up with certain economic trends (i…

Pirates or entrepreneurs? Informal music distributors and the Nigerian recording industry crisis

2020

This paper is based on field research in Lagos and seeks to examine a group of actors that is often neglected in the literature as well as in local discourses. I refer to these actors as informal m...

The effectiveness of rural versus urban nonprofit organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo

2017

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a country with high natural resources, but it has suffered from decades of civil wars and social turmoil, being heavily aid-dependent. In the DRC, several Nonprofit Organisations (NPOs) are major players in fighting poverty and enhancing welfare. This research aims to analyse the effectiveness of small NPOs in improving poor peoples’ lives through health, education, and economic activities. Two NPOs working in the DRC, one in a rural and the other in an urban area, are compared by researching the aid sites and surveying 201 households (aid beneficiaries). Our case observations and the survey results facilitate analysing the mission accomplishment, e…

Rethinking Civil Society in Development: Scales and Situated Hegemonies

2016

Ethnic residential segregation is often explained with the claim that ‘immigrants don’t want to integrate—they prefer to stick together with co-ethnics’. By contrast, mixed neighbourhoods are seen as crucial for achieving social cohesion. In line with spatial assimilation theory there is a normative assumption that people interact with those living nearby. From interviews on neighbourhood qualities and locations valued by Oslo residents of Turkish, Somali and Polish backgrounds, we raise questions about the validity of two assumptions: that most immigrants want to live in the same neighbourhoods as co-ethnics; and that they want to live close to co-ethnics because they do not want to integr…

Diversification is in the Detail: Accounting for Crop System Heterogeneity to Inform Diversification Policies in Malawi and Zambia

2020

Crop diversification is a common agricultural policy objective. However, the determinants and impacts of crop diversification are heterogeneous and depend on a range of crop-specific characteristics. Index-based measurements of crop diversification, common in the agriculture economics literature, are unable to account for this heterogeneity. Using two national panel surveys from Malawi and Zambia, we develop a multinomial treatment effects model to examine the determinants of adopting seven discreet cropping systems and their impacts on maize productivity and crop income stability. The results of this approach are compared to those obtained when using a Gini–Simpsons index. Differences betw…

Educational Pathways and Gender Differences in Labor Market Entry in France

2015

International audience

The Returns to Education in Rwanda

2005

05077; International audience; Based on data from the 1999–2001 Household Living Conditions Survey conducted by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, we estimate wage equations for employees in Rwanda, treating the choice of employment sector as an endogenous process and making separate estimates for workers in the modern and traditional sectors of the economy. The results show that returns to education increase with the level of education, contrary to the pattern typically reported in the literature and that the returns to higher education is particularly high in Rwanda. A noteworthy feature in the results is that the returns to education are quite different across sectors of empl…

India’s Turn to Rights-Based Legislation (2004–2014): A Critical Review of the Literature

2018

This article surveys the academic literature on rights-based legislation and critically discusses key findings and arguments that emerge from this literature. I conduct this survey and discussion in light of a wider understanding of the political economy of Indian democracy as resilient but limited in terms of substantial forms of redistribution and recognition in favour of subaltern groups. This contradiction has arguably become especially pronounced in the context of neoliberalisation, where, despite the active participation of the poor in electoral democracy, socioeconomic inequality has reached dramatic heights, and I discuss rights-based legislation as a response to this. In conclusio…

Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union

2007

Focus on Women in Microfinance Institutions

2013

Abstract We provide empirical evidence on focusing on women in microfinance and its consequences for microfinance institutions (MFIs). Based on a global dataset, the results indicate that a focus on women is associated with group-lending methods, international orientation, smaller loans, and non-commercial legal status. We find that a focus on women significantly improves repayment but does not enhance overall financial performance because of higher relative costs. Moreover, the higher relative costs do not stem from servicing women per se but from the smaller loans offered to women and the group-lending methodology practised by MFIs focusing on women.