Inspiring Poor Women to Empower Themselves

Empirical studies on the impact of micro level intervention strategies on poverty among poor women in Botswana are lacking, yet women are a valuable asset for the economy of the country. Continued marginalization and disempowerment of women has become a serious problem which merit urgent attention. This article investigates the potential of the Grow Model in transforming the lives of 14 women who belong to the Kgopolano GROW Group in Molepolole, Botswana. Data was collected in May 2014 using primarily in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The analysis utilized both content and thematic approaches. The results showed how the Grow Model has inspired women to empower themselves and self-transform into productive and prosperous lives. The results affirm the strength of the GROW model in promoting empowerment for social change in marginalized contexts. Key policy recommendations recognizes the limitations of the GROW model and build on its strengths.

Local Governments in Brazil

Brazil is a federal country in which local governments have become the main providers of universal social services funded by the three tiers of government. The chapter presents the general characteristics of the country´s local governments and its position in the federal system, describes the distribution of revenue and governmental functions, shows the incremental increase in local resources and their earmarking for social policies, the complex system of funding and regulation created and discusses the role of local governments in the provision of universal social services. The argument put forward is that local governments have become the hub of the provision of universal social services while the federal government is in charge of policies targeting the poor. Local governments, however, are dependent on funding from other levels of government raising concerns about the sustainability of the provision and the expansion of universal social services as well as concern about improving their quality.

An Assessment Relationship between Social Exclusion and Transportation

Having been used extensively since the 1980s, the concept of social exclusion has given a new impetus to the discussions of poverty and disadvantageousness. The concept of social exclusion, which can be defined as the condition in which certain individuals or social groups cannot integrate into the society either socially or economically or politically, leads to social cohesion problems. This triggers segregation of the society, particularly in large cities, in both social and spatial terms. In the context of accessibility, “urban transport” appears as one of the most important factors determining level of social inclusion/exclusion of the individuals or groups. In this study relation between social exclusion and transport has been evaluated as an attempt to identify socio-spatial segregation pattern of Ankara.

Digital Entrepreneurial Charity and Solidarity for Social Change

Microcredit has been studied from many perspectives. In this chapter, we analyze KIVA, the most important Person-to-Person microfinance organization from the perspective of social change, and we study how it has impacted on the nascent of a new wave of entrepreneurs known as digital entrepreneurial charity. Applied to KIVA, we analyze the impact of the digital space and its Internet-based Peer-to-Peer Lending to create social change in the poor, while alleviating the poverty thanks to solidarity and charity. This work concludes affirming that banking the poor and education, with the intensive use of Internet-based devices, is the best way to alleviate poverty in our digital and globalized economic world.

FDI and Trade in Services Towards Sustainable Economic Growth

The paper empirically investigates the inter-linkage between FDI inflow and international trade in service sector in India. Service sector emerges as the fastest growing sector worldwide during current phase of globalization, contributing more than 60 percent of output and almost 35 percent of trade in global economy. The sector also accounted for 63 percent of global stock of FDI. With hosting a large amount of FDI inflow, Indian service sector is also identified globally due to its substantial improvement in growth and export in international market. So there needs a study to explore the theoretically established causal relationship between FDI inflow and international trade in services towards sustainable and service led economic growth in India. The authors collect monthly data from DIPP, Government of India and RBI over a globally witnessed emerging period from January 2009 to June 2016 and apply ADF and PP unit root tests followed by least square estimation after testing the seasonal effects. Their findings imply unidirectional causality between FDI inflow and export Indian services.

Remittances and Economic Growth

Economic growth has become an important study growth matter. By economists economic growth is defined as capital stock growth, rising per capita GDP, increased access for manufactured goods and services for consumption and so on. In economic growth affect several factors and policies. Corruption, lack of investment, inappropriate institutions, inappropriate education etc. are some of obstacles to economic development. Consumption and investment are important components of aggregate demand with multiplicative effect in development. Remittances of migrants are significant potential financial capital used for investments, reflected in economic development and social prosperity. Remittances in Kosovo since 1960 have always been increasing. Participation of remittances to GDP in Kosovo in 2010 is about 12%. Remittances are the highest contributor to the Kosovo trade deficit coverage and are higher than foreign direct investments. Remittances unfortunately for various reasons are not exploited and are not sufficiently exploited for economic development.

The Impact of Corruption on Economic Growth

Even though corruption is correlated to political and moral degradation, there is no consensus on the impact of corruption on economic growth. Although, theory leans to the view that corruption has negative impact on growth, still empirical evidence and counter arguments show that there might be positive implications for corruption. This paper compares the corruption impact on growth in 17 developed European countries vs. 15 developing MENA countries using a pooled OLS model and a random effects model for the period (1999-2012). This paper contributes to the literature by examining the impact of corruption on growth in scarcely examined countries in Europe and MENA. Also, the paper findings are intriguing because they show that the region, as a proxy to degree of development, significantly influences the effect of corruption on economic growth.

Digital Equity and Policy

The policy of digital equity aim to close the various issues of digital divide. As digital convergence and informatization progresses, it is becoming more important to better utilize various resources. Therefore, making a qualitative difference about the digital divide issue is urgent, and relevant policies and efforts need to be strengthened to narrow the digital divide. In this regard, the overall improvement of information literacy of the public is required as it can increase the convenience in citizens' everyday lives and can create added value. It is, therefore, necessary to continue the development of policies and projects to narrow the digital divide. The Korean government plans to keep strengthening its support with policies to legislate regulations that narrow the digital divide and provide fair opportunities to access information, and to improve information literacy. The efforts to narrow the digital divide and effective policies to achieve the goal must be continued to relieve social conflict and integrate the society.

Assessing Robustness of Asian Countries Ranking

The term ‘digital divide' refers to the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas with regard to both their opportunities to access Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and to their use of Internet. Composite indicators are regularly used for measuring the divide and in benchmarking the country's performance. But often it creates controversies regarding the subjectivity that is connected with their construction methodology more specifically the weighting and aggregation issues. The paper attempts to assess the robustness of the ranks generated by the composite digital divide index using different weighting and aggregation schemes in case of Asian countries. Here four weighting techniques Iyengar-Sudarshan Method, Benefit of Doubt Method, Principal Component Analysis and Unobserved Component Model and three techniques of aggregation viz. Linear Aggregation, Geometric Aggregation and Weighted Displaced Ideal Method are used for mutual comparison.

The Challenges of Using Zero-Rating (Free Basics) for Addressing the Affordability of ICT Access in Developing Countries

As the body of evidence on the usefulness of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for poverty reduction and development continues to grow, mobile network operators (MNOs), development agencies, and regulators are employing various measures to increase universal access. These measures are motivated by corporate social responsibility, pro-poor ideologies, and regulatory requirements imposed by regulators. While regulators have employed price controls and infrastructure sharing, MNOs have employed free basics to provide internet access to those who could not afford it. The introduction of free basics seems plausible, but it is fraught with implementation challenges. This article discusses such challenges with a view to clarifying how the steps taken to foster affordability affect the conflicting interests of different stakeholders on the ICT data and voice eco-system.