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Competing with the ‘Bank of Mom’: What makes informal finance so popular – and how can financial services providers respond?
After tracking the financial activities of lower-income Americans for a full year, the U.S. Financial Diaries project found that informal financial mechanisms were enduringly popular - even when formal alternatives were used. What makes them so appealing - and how can financial services providers respond? We discuss these issues in part two of our Q&A with FAI Executive Director Jonathan Morduch.
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- Education
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Global Pharma’s R&D Re-Balancing
Earlier this week, in Michael Woodhead’s superb blog China Medical News, he wrote about “major problems with ‘serious’ research clinical trails carried out in China.” Michael points to a JAMA article and then proceeds to elaborate:
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- Education, Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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- research
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Understanding the ‘Invisible Finance Sector’: FAI Executive Director Jonathan Morduch discusses the U.S Financial Diaries’ research on informal finance – Part 1
It’s easy to assume that informal financial tools like family loans are only used when people lack access to formal finance. But that’s not what the U.S. Financial Diaries project has found. In part one of this Q&A, Financial Access Initiative Executive Director Jonathan Morduch discusses the enduring appeal of informal finance among low-income people - and what it means for financial services providers.
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- Education
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‘My Home, Your Business’: A New Evaluation Tool Based on Nearly 100 Cases, 25 Interviews With Firms, Experts in Affordable Housing
Ghost towns built by well-meaning developers and governments can be found in many corners of the world. But these failed projects only tell part of the story. Innovative companies and partners are learning from the past and building houses people want to live in and business models that make investors listen, according to "My Home, Your Business – A Guide to Affordable Housing Solutions for Low-Income Communities.”
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- Impact Assessment
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Building Corridors for Shared Prosperity: Seven lessons from Intellecap, IFC on ‘what works’ in international expansion of inclusive businesses
IFC, in partnership with Intellecap, released a new report “Corridors for Shared Prosperity” at the Sankalp Africa Summit in Nairobi last week. The report is a repository of knowledge about “what works” in successful replication of businesses and presents a framework for systematic transfer. Eleven businesses across agriculture, health care and renewable energy that expanded from India to South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa were identified for analysis.
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- Education
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New Source of Cells for Modeling Malaria
In 2008, the World Health Organization announced a global effort to eradicate malaria, which kills about 800,000 people every year. As part of that goal, scientists are trying to develop new drugs that target the malaria parasite during the stage when it infects the human liver, which is crucial because some strains of malaria can lie dormant in the liver for several years before flaring up.
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- Education, Health Care
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- research
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Artificially Intelligent Robot Scientist ‘Eve’ Could Boost Search for New Drugs
Eve, an artificially-intelligent 'robot scientist' could make drug discovery faster and much cheaper, say researchers writing in the Royal Society journal Interface. The team has demonstrated the success of the approach as Eve discovered that a compound shown to have anti-cancer properties might also be used in the fight against malaria.
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- Education, Health Care
- Tags
- research
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Stanford Launches Major Effort to Expedite Vaccine Discovery with $50 Million Grant
The funding will establish the Stanford Human Systems Immunology Center, and will accelerate efforts to develop vaccines for the world's most deadly infectious diseases.
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- Education, Health Care