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Access to loans and other financial services is extremely valuable for micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises in developing and transition countries as it enables their owners as well as their employees to exploit their economic potential and to increase their income. Although this insight has lead development aid institutions to undertake many attempts to create sustainable microfinance institutions, only a small fraction of these has been successful so far. This article analyses what determines the success of attempts to provide financial services in general, and credit in particular, to low income target groups in these countries. We argue that it is crucial to understand, and to mitigate or even eliminate in practice, the serious and numerous incentive problems at the level of the lending operations as well as those at the levels of the human resource management and the governance of microfinance institutions. We attempt to show moreover, that unsolved incentive problems at only one level will ultimately undermine any potential success at the other levels. In our paper, we first analyse information and incentive problems from a theoretical perspective, using and extending the well-known Stiglitz-Weiss model of credit rationing, and derive theoretical requirements for solutions of these problems. In the light of these considerations, we then discuss how problems are solved in practice. Section 3 deals with the credit relationship. Section 4 extends the argument by showing how incentive problems within the institution can be handled, and section 5 analyses corporate governance-related problems of development finance institutions as incentive problems. In section 6 it is demonstrated why, and how, the incentive problems at the different levels, as well as their solutions, are interrelated. From this we derive the proposition that, as the institutional devices for dealing with these problems constitute a complementary system, any sustainable solution requires consistent arrangements of all elements and at all levels of the system. In the last section we will show the potential of strategic networks to set up institutions which we consider to be consistent systems for successfully solving the problems at all three levels simultaneously.
Während sich die Entwicklungsfinanzierung in Theorie und Praxis generell mit dem Finanzwesen in Entwicklungs- und Transformationsländern befasst, steht im Teilgebiet der Microfinance die Frage im Vordergrund, wie in diesen Ländern der Zugang ärmerer Bevölkerungsgruppen und speziell von Klein- und Kleinstunternehmer(innen), Kleinbauern und sonstigen wirtschaftlich Selbständigen aus eher niedrigen sozialen Schichten zu Kredit und anderen Finanzdiensleistungen verbessert werden kann. Obwohl es einige Vorläufer gibt, die schon früh die allgemeine Politik der Entwicklungsländer bezüglich ihrer Finanzsektoren und ebenso die dazu passende Entwicklungshilfe-Politik der Industrieländer der 60er und 70er Jahre mit ökonomisch-theoretischen Argumenten scharf kritisiert haben,1 waren in der Vergangenheit weder Entwicklungsfinanzierung im allgemeinen noch Microfinance im besonderen ein wirklich ernst genommener Gegenstand der ökonomischen Literatur, die man zum mainstream rechnen kann. Dem entspricht es, dass sich auch die Praxis der Entwicklungsfinanzierung sehr lange weitgehend unabhängig von ökonomisch- theoretischen Überlegungen vollzogen hat. Diese Situation hat sich seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt grundlegend verändert. Dies hat einen wesentlichen Grund darin, dass sich in der entwicklungspolitischen Praxis auf dem Gebiet der Finanzierung von Klein- und Kleinstbetrieben, eben Microfinance, Erfolge erzielen ließen, die vorher unvorstellbar waren. Mit einer deutlichen commercial orientation und einer Ausrichtung auf die genuinen Probleme des financial institution building konnte erreicht werden, dass es inzwischen einige Dutzend Finanzinstitutionen in Entwicklungs- und Transformationsländern gibt, die ökonomisch stabil und sogar profitabel sind und mit ihrem Leistungsangebot eine große Anzahl von "armen" Kunden erreichen, die bei den Kreditabteilungen der herkömmlichen Banken kaum über die Schwelle gelassen würden.2 Dies hat die Aufmerksamkeit von Forschern aus dem mainstream erweckt. Mindestens ebenso wichtig sind aber die immanenten Entwicklungen innerhalb der ökonomischen Theorie. Mit ihrer Hinwendung zum institutionalistischen Denkansatz hat die Wirtschaftstheorie auf einmal eine neue Aufmerksamkeit für die Phänomene entwickelt, die für die Praktiker der Entwicklungsfinanzierung seit langem von zentraler Bedeutung sind: Inzwischen kann man theoretisch nachweisen, dass es in der Tat Zugangsprobleme zu Kredit für "kleine Leute" gibt, dass das Angebot von Kredit für sie beschränkt ist und dass es nicht genügt, einfach nur staatlich auferlegte Restriktionen – die so genannte financial repression – zu beseitigen, um ....
How long does it take to emit an electron from an atom? This question has intrigued scientists for decades. As such emission times are in the attosecond regime, the advent of attosecond metrology using ultrashort and intense lasers has re-triggered strong interest on the topic from an experimental standpoint. Here, we present an approach to measure such emission delays, which does not require attosecond light pulses, and works without the presence of superimposed infrared laser fields. We instead extract the emission delay from the interference pattern generated as the emitted photoelectron is diffracted by the parent ion’s potential. Targeting core electrons in CO, we measured a 2d map of photoelectron emission delays in the molecular frame over a wide range of electron energies. The emission times depend drastically on the photoelectrons’ emission directions in the molecular frame and exhibit characteristic changes along the shape resonance of the molecule.
The nucleosynthesis of elements beyond iron is dominated by neutron captures in the s and r processes. However, 32 stable, proton-rich isotopes cannot be formed during those processes, because they are shielded from the s-process flow and r-process β-decay chains. These nuclei are attributed to the p and rp process.
For all those processes, current research in nuclear astrophysics addresses the need for more precise reaction data involving radioactive isotopes. Depending on the particular reaction, direct or inverse kinematics, forward or time-reversed direction are investigated to determine or at least to constrain the desired reaction cross sections.
The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will offer unique, unprecedented opportunities to investigate many of the important reactions. The high yield of radioactive isotopes, even far away from the valley of stability, allows the investigation of isotopes involved in processes as exotic as the r or rp processes.
The influence of temperatur and pressure on the fluorescence quantum yield of N-methylacridone (9,10-dihydro-9-oxo-10-methyl-acridine) in toluene in the range of 283-313 K and 1 bar to 2.5 kbar, respectively, has been investigated. Treatment of the data in terms of the Eyring transition-state theory leads to a consistent interpretation of the observed effect. The unusually large increase of the quantum yield with increasing pressure is attributed to a positive volume of activation, ⊿V≠, for the thermally activated S1-T2 intersystem crossing which is known to be the only deactivation process (of the Si-state) competing with fluorescence. Comparison of the values for ⊿H≠, the activation enthalpy of this process, determined at various pressures, indicates a decrease in ⊿H≠ at elevated pressures. Since ⊿H≠ can be associated with the S1-T2 energy gap involved in intersystem crossing, this result further confirms the conclusion that the change in Franck-Condon factors alone cannot account for the decrease in the intersystem crossing rate with increasing pressure.
The photochemical cleavage of the endoperoxides of anthradichromene and benzodixanthene into the parent hydrocarbon and oxygen is shown to be an adiabatic photoreaction originating from an upper excited singlet state. This photochemical behaviour is described by a theory for the photochemistry of endoperoxides developed by Kearns and Khan.
The thermal and the photochemical reactions of the endoperoxide of Tetrabenzo(bc,fg.lm,pq)- pentacene have been investigated with respect to its photochromic properties. The thermal yield of irreversible rearrangement reactions was determined to be Adec = 0.045. From the activation parameters of the thermal cycloreversion. forming the parent hydrocarbon and oxygen, a half life time of 114 years at 20 °C has been extrapolated. For the quantum yield of the irreversible photochemical rearrangement a value of Qdec = 0.03 was obtained. As can be seen from the wavelength dependence of the photocycloreversion quantum yield Q1, cycloreversion occurs not only from the thermalized S2(πccπ*cc) but from higher excited states too. The maximum quantum yield was found at 302 nm to be (Q1 = 0.15. From our results it follows that this endoperoxide is of high quality in respect to the colour change colourless/blue and to thermal stability, whereas the reversibility is only moderate.