The "Farmers’ Organizations and Sustainable Development" Special Issue is now published!

The Special Issue on “Farmers’ Organizations and Sustainable Development”, edited by Wanglin Ma, the Editor Marco A. Marini and Dil B. Rahut, has now published the 14 papers in Volume 94, Issue 3.

The papers examine how farmers’ organizations (e.g., farmer groups, cooperatives, self-help groups, and producer companies/organizations) influence technology adoption, farm performance and intra-household decision-making, explore the nexus between external interventions and cooperative membership, as well as investigate organizational governance and efficiency of farmers’ organizations as business entities. The obtained findings provide policymakers with solid evidence and new insights on how to design appropriate policy instruments to facilitate the sustainable development of farmers’ organizations by enhancing their contributions to achieving sustainable development goals.

Please find the September issue here, and enjoy reading these papers!

Read the new Editor's Choice article: Gender pay gap in the microfinance industry: A global perspective

Md Aslam Mia, Lucia Dalla Pellegrina, Wai-Yan Wong, Sunil Sangwan

The inception of modern microfinance around four decades ago in Bangladesh was to reduce the systematic credit gap faced by female entrepreneurs. Since then, microfinance has expanded to over 120 countries, helping millions of poor to get access to credit facilities, particularly women. Motivated by the contribution of microfinance in promoting women empowerment and poverty alleviation in various dimensions, we investigate whether Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), while providing small scale banking and financial services to the poor, also work towards minimizing the gender pay gap among their workforces. To answer this research question, we use a large dataset from the developing world, employing econometric techniques to analyze the data. Our results show that women within MFIs, unlike in many other industries, are unlikely to suffer pay discrimination. Instead, our findings suggest that women can use their gender-affinity attributes to serve a larger number of female clients compared to their male counterparts. According to the role of women as better bankers to the poor, our regression outcome also confirms that among MFIs they likely earn higher payment (including bonuses and ancillary benefits) than men. Our findings support the evidence that MFIs not only promote loan facilities to women, but they also care about their female workers by rewarding them with better payment to reward their valuable contribution in the workplace, while enhancing their overall living standards.

2023 Impact Factor: 2.5
5-year Impact Factor: 2.4