MICROFINANCE IN ASIA

Lack of credit access is severe in low income and poor families that are normally considered to have fewer opportunities to borrow from banks due to insufficient valuable assets for collateral. These low-income households face limited opportunity to acquire new technology and working capital for agricultural production and thus tend to fall behind. As a result, providing access to finance to low-income rural households has been considered an important component of any rural development strategy. Microfinance programmes, in particular, have been gradually embedded in national strategies of many developing countries as they are poverty-focused. They aim to facilitate the access to financial services such as credit for the poor who are usually disadvantaged in terms of access to conventional financial services from formal financial institutions. The objective of this book is to provide an overview of microfinance programmes in Asia focusing in particular on the determinants of the accessibility of rural households to microcredit. The book studies seven Asian countries such as China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh with two specific case studies.

Readership: Graduate students and researchers in the fields of international finance and Asian economies.

Christopher Gan is the Professor of Accounting and Finance at Lincoln University, New Zealand. He earned his PhD in Agricultural Economics (with a specialisation in rural finance) from Louisiana State University, his Master of Economics and Trade from Indiana State University, and his Bachelor of Arts in Economic Development from Warren Wilson College, the United States. He has published more than 100 refereed journal articles and has more than 50 professional presentations. He is the Chief Review Editor of Applied Economics and the Associate Editor of the International Economic Finance Journal. He is also on the editorial board of several refereed journals. He has won Best Paper Awards at international conferences in 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2010. His research interests include microfinance, banking, the Asian economy, development economics and financial economics.

Gilbert V Nartea is Associate Professor of Finance at The University of Waikato, New Zealand. He has a PhD in agricultural economics (specialization in finance) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Master in Economics from the University of New England, Australia, and B S Agribusiness Management (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines. He has published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Journal of Asian Economics, Pacific Basin Finance Journal, Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money, Accounting and Finance, International Review of Economics and Finance, among others. His research interests are in microfinance, empirical asset pricing, decision analysis, risk management, and investments.