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Posts Tagged ‘transaction cost’

The End of Money?

Posted in Orality, The village, tagged , , , , , on January 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The cashless village: in a pre-cash village like this (Solomon Islands), value is not stored in currency. Villagers don’t depend on cash to exchange value, either.

In The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers – and the Coming Cashless Society (Da Capo Press, Boston MA, 2012) David Wolman seeks not the end of money generally but specifically the end of paper cash – the sooner the better.

 

He spends a year living without cash – those germ-infested, cocaine-smudged notes – and (more…)

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Rural Market Failure — Interest Rates

Posted in Financial cooperatives, History, Microfinance, tagged , , , , , on January 18, 2012| 1 Comment »

Krong Pailin, Cambodia. In the rainy season a 1-2 km trip can take much of the day.

Rural microcredit rates have risen sharply since the dawn of the microfinance revolution. Most modern rates range from 12-60% annually, with unsubsidized rates below 12% being extremely rare. The alternative for most poor borrowers is either no credit at all, or much higher informal rates.

At the dawn of the microfinance revolution, during the 1860s-90s, the Raiffeisen banks of rural Germany charged 5½% (per annum, declining balance) on small farmers’ loans, (more…)

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