This edition of faiVLive brings together expert practitioners and researchers to discuss how we should be thinking about the impact of COVID-19 and pandemic control policies on poor households in developing countries, what policy interventions are plausible and possible, what role does microfinance have to play, and what needs to happen to enable the global microfinance industry to be useful now and six months from now. . . .
Read MoreFAI In the News: Those Who Most Need The $1,200 Stimulus Checks May Wait the Longest (Time)
“This particular element is going to hit lower income people much more than higher income people,” says Jonathan Morduch, the executive director of NYU’s Financial Access Initiative. “They really have a double whammy—their incomes are being hit, and also the mechanism to help them is going to take longer.” . . .
Source: Abby Vesoulis, Time Magazine, Published April 1, 2020. . . .
Read MoreCOVID-19: How Does Microfinance Weather the Current Storm
By Tim Ogden and Greta Bull
This blog post was originally published on CGAP.org. . . .
COVID-19 has unequivocally arrived in the developing world. Hundreds of cases have been reported across Latin America and South Asia, and now there are at least 30 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa reporting infections. South Africa and India both announced yesterday that they would go into lockdown for three weeks, and others may soon follow. With health-care systems ill-equipped to cope with a pandemic, there are many reasons to believe that the effects of the virus in these countries will be even more damaging than in the developed world, with higher mortality rates. . . .
Read MoreThe Most Vulnerable Small Businesses and Communities Will Be Left Behind Without Targeted Action: The Fed and Treasury Can Make Sure They Are Not
By Bill Bynum, Joyce Klein, and Tim Ogden. . . .
This blog post was originally published on the Aspen Institute.org. . . .
You’ve heard about how important small businesses are to the economy and the nation. You’ve heard various figures being proposed to help those small businesses: $300 Billion, $350 Billion, $500 Billion. . . .
What you likely haven’t heard is who typically receives small business stimulus funds. Even with the vast figures being proposed those funds won’t reach the most vulnerable businesses or the most vulnerable communities. We know because we’ve seen it in the past. . . .
Read MoreResources for MFIs and Investors: What We’ve Learned from Past Shocks and Crises
This morning we spoke with Deborah Burand, Professor of Clinical Law and Co-Director of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship at the NYU Law School. She has a wealth of knowledge on how to support MFIs and investors after an economic crisis. . . .
She shared with us summaries of two papers that look back on 2009-10 when MFIs ran into trouble following the 2008 global financial crisis. . . .
Read MorefaiVLive: The Truth About Training Bibliography
In a webinar on February 20, 2020, Tim Ogden, Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative at NYU shared the latest insights on SME business training programs, with guest speaker David McKenzie, Lead Economist in the Development Research Group, Finance and Private Sector Development Unit at the World Bank. Tim and David discussed what we know about small business performance and productivity, the importance of management, and training impact evaluations--all essential for innovating SME training programs. This webinar was part of FAI’s new SME Insight Community, developed in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. . . .
Below are a list of the papers referenced during their conversation. You can download a PDF of this bibliography here. . . .
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