1,720,957 research outputs found
The financial systems approach to development finance: Origin, evolution and prospects
No full textThis article focuses on the prospects of the financial systems approach to development finance to ensure sustainable access to financial services for microentrepreneurs. It discusses three prerequisites for the success of this approach: the continued application of financial liberalisation policies; the delivery of financial services on a commercially viable basis by emulating the successes of informal financial intermediaries in solving the problems normally experienced by the formal financial sector when serving microentrepreneurs; and the continued appropriate support from governments and the donor community. It is postulated that these prerequisites will be fulfilled, making the author cautiously optimistic that the financial systems approach to development finance will succeed in securing sustainable access to financial services for microentrepreneurs in the 21st century.
South African banks and the unbanked: Progress and prospects
Get PDFConsideration is given to what the big four South African banks have done since the late nineties to open up their lending facilities to the unbanked, taking cognisance of the trends internationally, finally leading to a conclusion as to the most appropriate strategy for the future. The banks' focus has been on lending to low-income salaried individuals, making use of the downscaling strategy. Inappropriate credit technologies in this very competitive market segment led to a serious setback in 2002 when two bank micro-lenders had to terminate their operations. In contrast to their enthusiasm for the low-income market, the banks have shown a lack of interest to engage micro-entrepreneur lending, but this is to an extent vindicated by the international experience. Establishing banks dedicated to micro-finance by means of specialised public/private sector partnerships emerges as the most appropriate strategy to engage with micro-entrepreneurs. The big four banks' focus in micro-lending is expected to remain on consumption related loans for low-income salaried individuals.banking, credit, South Africa
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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