This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:
Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, and a verifiable credit history. It is designed to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. Many recipients are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 an estimated 74 million people held microloans that totaled nearly US$40 billion. Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and 98 percent. The first economist who had invented the idea of micro loans was The Very Reverend Jonathan Swift in the 1720’s. Microcredit is part of microfinance, which provides a wider range of financial services, especially savings accounts, to the poor. Modern microcredit is generally considered to have originated with the Grameen Bank founded in Bangladesh in 1983 by their current Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus. Many traditional banks subsequently introduced microcredit despite initial misgivings. The United Nations declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit. As of 2012, microcredit is widely used in developing countries and is presented as having "enormous potential as a tool for poverty alleviation." Microcredit is a tool that can possibly be helpful to reduce feminization of poverty in developing countries.
Danone S.A. is a French multinational food-products corporation based in Paris. It was founded in 1919 in Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris, where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index. Some of the company's products are branded Dannon in the United States.
Grameen Bank is a microfinance specialized community development bank founded in Bangladesh. It provides small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral.
Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist, entreprenur, politician, and civil society leader who has been serving as the 5th Chief Adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh since 8 August 2024. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. Yunus has received several other national and international honors, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.
Social entrepreneurship is an approach by individuals, groups, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a wide range of organizations, which vary in size, aims, and beliefs. For-profit entrepreneurs typically measure performance using business metrics like profit, revenues and increases in stock prices. Social entrepreneurs, however, are either non-profits, or they blend for-profit goals with generating a positive "return to society". Therefore, they use different metrics. Social entrepreneurship typically attempts to further broad social, cultural and environmental goals often associated with the voluntary sector in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care and community development.
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty is an autobiography of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus. The book describes Yunus' early life, moving into his college years, and into his years as a professor at Chittagong University. While a professor at Chittagong University, Yunus began to take notice of the extreme poverty of the villagers around him. In 1976, Yunus incorporated the help of Maimuna Begum to collect data of people in Jobra who were living in poverty. Most of these impoverished people would take a loan from moneylenders to buy some raw material, using that raw material to create some product, and then selling back the good to the moneylender to repay the loan, earning a very meager profit. One woman interviewed made no more than two cents per day creating bamboo stools using this system. The list Begum brought back to Yunus named 42 women who were living on credit of 856 taka.
Grameen Fund is a not-for-profit company in Bangladesh established by Muhammad Yunus to provide risk capital to small and medium enterprises (SME) beyond the scope of Grameen Bank's objectives of providing microcredit to the very poor. Incorporated on 17 January 1994, Grameen Fund started operation in February 1994, inheriting 40 projects of Grameen bank with assets of 391 million Bangladeshi taka investmented in small industries, fisheries and agriculture. Its lending capital is provided by Grameen Bank and other institutions like Calvert Foundation. From the first Calvert Foundation investment, approximately 6,000 permanent jobs have been created or maintained in agriculture, engineering, poultry, dairy, fishery, and handicrafts sectors.
Bertrand Moingeon, was Professor of Strategic Management is Executive Vice-President and Dean for Executive Education and Corporate Initiatives at ESCP Business School and formerly at HEC Paris.
The Grameen family of organizations has grown beyond Grameen Bank into a multi-faceted group of both commercial and non-profit ventures. It was first established by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder of Grameen Bank. Most of the organizations in the Grameen group have central offices at the Grameen Bank Complex in Mirpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank started to diversify in the late 1980s when it began attending to unutilized or underutilized fishing ponds, as well as irrigation pumps like deep tubewells. In 1989, these diversified interests started growing into separate organizations, as the fisheries project became Grameen Fisheries Foundation and the irrigation project became Grameen Krishi Foundation.
Humanistic capitalism is a concept that seeks to unite humanism, specifically the safety and health needs of people and the environment, with market forces and a market-based economy. It is often seen as a middle ground between the ideas of modern capitalism and democratic socialism.
Grameen Danone Foods, popularly known as Grameen Danone, is a social business enterprise, launched in 2006, which has been designed to provide children with many of the key nutrients that are typically missing from their diet in rural Bangladesh. It is run on 'No loss, No dividend' basis. Initially, Grameen Danone agreed to pay an annual dividend of one percent to shareholders, however, in December 2009, the board of Grameen Danone agreed to waive any monetary return.
Grameen America is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit microfinance organization based in New York City. It was founded by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus in 2008. Grameen America is run by former Avon Chairman and CEO Andrea Jung. The organization provides loans, savings programs, financial education, and credit establishment to women who live in poverty in the United States. All loans must be used to build small businesses.
Patient capital is another name for long term capital. With patient capital, the investor is willing to make a financial investment in a business with no expectation of turning a quick profit. Instead, the investor is willing to forgo an immediate return in anticipation of more substantial returns down the road. Prominent examples of patient capital includes pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and university endowments. Governments with access to patient capital may have greater maneuverability in formulating domestic economic policies.
Blended Value refers to an emerging conceptual framework in which non-profit organizations, businesses, and investments are evaluated based on their ability to generate a blend of financial, social, and environmental value. The term is usually attributed to Jed Emerson, and sometimes used interchangeably with triple bottom line. Blended value propositions are founded on the notion that value cannot be bifurcated, and is inherently made up of more than one measurement of performance. For example, under a blended value proposition, a for-profit business would consider their social and environmental impact on society alongside their financial performance measurement. Within the same context, non-profits would consider their financial efficiency and sustainability in tandem with their social and environmental performance. Blended value suggests the true measure of any organization is in its ability to holistically perform in all 3 areas.
The Yunus Centre, in Dhaka, Bangladesh is a think tank for issues related to social business, working in the field of poverty alleviation and sustainability. It is 'aimed primarily at promoting and disseminating Professor Yunus' philosophy, with a special focus on social business'. As of 2023 it is chaired by Prof. Muhammad Yunus, and its executive director is Ms. Lamiya Morshed.
Yunus Social Business (YSB) is an impact-first organisation with a non-profit impact-investing arm, Yunus Funds, and a corporate social-innovation consulting arm, Yunus Corporate Innovation. Both business units are based on furthering the concept of social business, as developed by YSB Co-founder and Chairman Professor Muhammad Yunus.
Emmanuel Faber is a French businessman. He was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of Danone, and the Chairman of the Board of directors. He was subsequently appointed Chair of the International Sustainability Standards Board.
Kashf Foundation is a non-profit organization, founded by Roshaneh Zafar in 1996. Kashf is regarded as the first microfinance institution (MFI) of Pakistan that uses village banking methodology in microcredit to alleviate poverty by providing affordable financial and non-financial services to low income households - particularly for women, to build their capacity and enhance their economic role. With headquarters in Lahore, Punjab, Kashf have regional offices in five major cities and over 200 branches across Pakistan.
MASK Associates is a social business registered in Bangladesh involved in the manufacturing and export of raw jute and jute products. The company was established in 1982 by S.B. Kader, a Commercially Important Person (CIP) as declared by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Bangladesh. MASK Associates began its journey by representing REB Willcox of London, UK. The company currently exports raw jute and jute yarn, hessian/sacking cloth/bags, and caddies worldwide.
