Associate researchers

Beatriz Armendáriz is Lecturer in Economics at Harvard University and University College, London where she is a Senior Lecturer. Worked as a Research Fellow to the OECD, Paris, as Lecturer at the London School of Economics, and as a Visiting Associate Professor at MIT. Her research focuses on economic development and finance.

Co-authored the book The Economics of Microfinance with Jonathan Morduch MIT Press 2005. Currently working on various field projects, notably, on gender empowerment with the Innovations for Poverty Action researchers, notably with Dean Karlan (Yale University) and Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard University). Some relevant publications by Lecturer Armendáriz include "Peer Group Formation In An Adverse Selection Model" (with Christian Gollier), The Economic Journal, Vol. 110, No. 465 (2000), "Mircofinance Beyond Group Lending" (with Jonathan Morduch),The Economics of Transition, Vol 8, No. 2 (2000), "On the Design of a Credit Agreement withPeer Monitoring", Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 60 (1999), and "DevelopmentBanking", Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 58 (1999). Holds a PhD in Economics from l'EHESS (Paris), and an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge (UK). Lecturer Armendáriz grew up in Mexico. She is the Founder of Grameen Replications in Chiapas, Mexico.

E-Mail: barmend@fas.harvard.edu
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Arvind Ashta is a professor of finance, control and law at the Burgundy School of Business (Groupe ESC Dijon-Bourgogne) in France. He offers an optional course in Microfinance and has been invited to initiate courses in Microfinance at DePaul University (Chicago, 2007) and Pforzheim (2009).

Microcredit is currently his main field of research. Within this field he is looking at usury legislation, ethics, economics of capital flows and peer to peer lending. His other research interests include tax policy and corporate behavioural finance.

His publications include a forthcoming paper and a forthcoming book review in the Journal of Economic Issues (2009). His other publications are detailed in the CV. His working papers are available on:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=473010

He holds a B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, a PGDM from IIM Calcutta and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Paris 2 (Panthéon-Assas). He worked 17 years in Corporate Enterprises in India and France in the fields on Management Control and Accounting before entering academics.

E-Mail: Arvind.Ashta@escdijon.eu
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Currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Uppsala University, Ranjula Bali Swain’s research interests are primarily in the field of microfinance, rural credit markets, vulnerability and gender. In the past she has also worked as an Expert of Impact Assessment at the International Labour Organisation, Geneva. She has extensive field experience from Asia, Africa, Central America and Eastern Europe.

E-Mail: ranjula.bali@nek.uu.se
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Erwin Bulte is a professor of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at Tilburg University (The Netherlands), as well as a professor at the University of Wageningen (The Netherlands), where he is in charge of the department of Development Economics. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Cambridge University (UK) and an advisor on agrarian and development economics for the World Food Organization.

E-Mail: erwin.bulte@wur.nl
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James Copestake is a member of the Centre for Development Studies of the University of Bath since 1991. He teaches development economics at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He has carried out his own research and supervised doctoral students in the fields of agrarian change, microfinance, poverty, social protection and aid management. He has first-hand experience of carrying out research in India, Zambia, Malawi, Bolivia and Peru. Prior to joining the University he worked with the official British aid programme in Bolivia and India, and with non-government organisations in India and Zambia. He has carried research and consultancy sponsored by the Commonwealth Secretariat, DFID, ESRC, Ford Foundation, National Audit Office, Nuffield Foundation and the Wold Bank. James Copestake is an active member of the Development Studies Association. He has served as an external examiner for the universities of Birmingham, Bradford, Imperial College (Wye), Manchester, Reading, SOAS, Swansea and the Open University. He has a degree in economics from Cambridge, and an MSc and a PhD in agricultural economics from Reading.

He has published numerous articles, in the Journal of International Development, Development Policy Review, Small Enterprise Development, Journal of Development Practice, Journal of Microfinance and Journal of Development Studies.

E-Mail: hssjgc@bath.ac.uk
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Marcella Corsi is Professor of Economics at the Sapienza University of Rome and Visiting Professor at ULB (Department of Applied Economics). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Manchester (UK) and a degree in Statistics/Economics from University of Rome “La Sapienza”. She is currently scientific coordinator of EGGSI - Network on Gender Equality, Social Inclusion, Health and Long-term Care (from nov. 2007) on behalf of European Commission, DG Employment and Social Affairs and core member of the Research Working Group of the European Microfinance Network. In the past, she has carried out several research projects (e.g., about financial exclusion and microfinance, women empowerment, and migration) at international level. She has worked as consultant for OECD, European Parliament and European Commission, and for several Italian institutions.

Her research focuses on issues related to Social Inclusion, Social protection and Income distribution (often in a gender perspective). In the field of microfinance, she is the author of several articles published in English and Italian, and the editor of the book Donne e Microfinanza: Uno sguardo ai paesi del Mediterraneo (Aracne, 2008). She is also member of the scientific committee of Fondazione Risorsa Donna, an Italian MFI working mainly with migrant women (www.fondazionerisorsadonna.it)

E-Mail: marcella.corsi@uniroma1.it

Gregor Dorfleitner holds a degree in mathematics and business administration from the University of Augsburg, where he also did his Ph.D. thesis on index futures in 1998. He became full professor of finance at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in 2004. Since 2007 he has been full professor of finance at the Universität Regensburg, where he also has been director of the center of finance since April 2008. One of his main fields of research is the finance of microfinance, especially refinancing microfinance and risk management in microfinance. He has published more than 20 articles in international journals such as Applied Financial Economics, Quantitative Finance, Global Finance Journal, Insurance: Mathematics & Economics, International Journal of Theoretical & Applied Finance, and the Journal of Banking & Finance.

E-Mail: gregor.dorfleitner@wiwi.uni-regensburg.de
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Bert D’Espallier is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leuven-Lessius Business College (Belgium). He completed his PhD-thesis at Hasselt University (Belgium) in 2008 on the impact of capital market imperfections on corporate cash- and investment policies. He specializes in micro-econometrics applied to different fields within the broad context of finance, including microfinance. Current research projects include gender-impact on microfinance repayment rates, empirical techniques for measuring financing constraints, corporate governance and ill-advised acquisitions and agglomeration economies.

E-Mail: bert.despallier@lessius.eu
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Dr. Isabelle Guérin holds a Ph.D. in Economics and is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Research for Development (Provence University). As a socioeconomist, she specializes on interactions between household behaviour, vulnerability and social justice. She mainly deals with researches related to 1) household survival and livelihood strategies and 2) collective action and NGOs interventions, with a focus on microfinance, empowerment programmes and linkages with public policies. The main geographic areas of her fieldwork were Europe and West Africa, and are now India and North Africa.

Prof. Begona Gutiérrez Nieto is a member of the Accounting and Finance Department (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain). She holds a Ph.D. in Economical and managerial sciences. Her areas of research are: microcredit in Spain, and financial and accounting analysis of microfinance institutions.

Prof. Gutierrez Nieto has received the price ESIC-CAI for research in 2004 and the Accesit XVI price Dr. Rogeli Doucastella de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales, Fundación La Caixa, in 2004, for her research on microcredit in Spain.

She has published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society, in Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, in Development in Practice and the Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics.

E-Mail: bgn@unizar.es
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Valentina Hartarska is Associate Professor at the University of Auburn (USA) where she teaches finance, management, econometrics, economic development. She holds a PhD from the Ohio State University as well as as a specialized Master degree obtained after following a joint programme between the University of Essex (United Kingdom) and the Central European University (Hungary). Dr Hartarska has carried out research on different topics in microfinance, such as efficiency, governance, market discipline and regulation, impact analysis, and entrepreneurship. She has published articles in journals such as Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, World Development, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, International Review of Economics and Finance, Applied Economics, and Small Business Economics.

E-Mail: hartavm@auburn.edu
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Niels Hermes is a professor of International Finance at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). Upon completing his doctoral thesis in 1995, Dr Hermes has gone on to research the links between financial development and economic growth, and between international capital and microfinance. He has published articles in numerous reputable journals: The Economic Journal, Journal of International Money and Finance, World development, and the Journal of Development Studies.

E-Mail: c.l.m.hermes@rug.nl
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Susan Johnson is Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath (United Kingdom). Her main research interest is in investigating the means through which social and cultural factors influence the economy and in particular how these factors influence the operation of markets in developing countries. She therefore investigates at the boundary of economics and other social sciences, in particular drawing on economic anthropology and economic sociology to investigate the social and cultural dimensions of market transactions and market development. Her research can also be characterised as empirically driven and methodologically inductive in seeking to understand this boundary through the study of actually existing markets and the processes through which they are instantiated.

Having started her career as a development practitioner, her priority is research that engages theory with policy and practice. The core focus of her work to date has been on microfinance and the wider financial markets it operates within. She has therefore been engaged with a number of research and action research projects relating to the microfinance sector. More recently through her engagement with the Wellbeing in Developing Countries research programme (WeD) she has considered how markets relate to this wider goal.

She is Director of Teaching for the International Development Group and Director of Studies for the Masters programmes in International Development, Wellbeing & Human Development, and Globalisation & International Policy Analysis.

E-Mail: s.z.johnson@bath.ac.uk
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Cécile Lapenu, a citizen of France, is the executive secretary of CERISE (Comité d’Echange, de Réflexion et d’Information sur les Systèmes d’Epargne - crédit – http://www.cerise-microfinance.org). CERISE is a platform of France-based, leading MicroFinance support organizations (CIDR, CIRAD, GRET, IRAM and IRC-SupAgro). CERISE was started in 1998, and since then it has organized various studies and seminars on the following themes : financing of agriculture, governance, social performances and impact, MFIs in remote rural areas, etc. Before joining CERISE in January 2001, Cécile Lapenu was a post-doctoral fellow at IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, USA) working on the Rural Finance Team in the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division. From 1993 to 1997, she worked on the development of rural financial system as a researcher at the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement. She received a Ph.D in agricultural economics from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier.

E-Mail: cerise@globenet.org
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Robert Lensink is a professor in Finance and Financial Markets at Groningen University (The Netherlands). His main field of research includes microfinance, finance and development and international finance. He has published several books and more than 60 articles in international journals such as The Economic Journal, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, and the Journal of Banking and Finance.

E-Mail: b.w.lensink@rug.nl
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Roy Mersland has extensive international management, consulting, and research experience working with international and cross cultural teams from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. He combines a microfinance consultancy practice with a research engagement at the University of Agder in Norway. As a consultant he works on donor effectiveness, MFI efficiency, strategic planning, corporate governance, self-help microfinance systems and microfinance and disability. As a researcher his main topics is related to microfinance management and governance, but he has also written articles on self help microfinance groups as well as microfinance and disability. Roy Mersland was a wide international network both in the microfinance practitioner community as well as in the academic community. He was the main organizer of the content of the European Microfinance Week in 2007 and 2008.

E-Mail: roy.mersland@uia.no
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Henk A.J. Moll studied horticulture in Utrecht and joined the Organization of Netherlands' Volunteers to work in Zambia in the co-operative movement.  He later returned to continue his studies in agricultural economics at Wageningen University. He is currently an associate professor in Agricultural Economics with a specialisation in rural finance and agricultural policy analysis.  He teaches microfinance topics related to agriculture and rural development at both the masters and doctoral levels.  Professor Moll’s research is focused on rural institutions and the economics of crops and livestock. He is also the chairman of the Credit Committee of ICCO, which is one of four NGOs in The Netherlands' focusing on the developing world.

Professor Moll worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Tanzania, Sri Lanka and in Rome.  He was then invited to join the Netherlands' Ministry of Development Cooperation to design and establish a co-operative microfinance programme for small farmers in West Java, Indonesia.

E-Mail: Henk.Moll@wur.nl
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PhD in economics Solène Morvant-Roux is a microfinance project leader at Farm Foundation (www.fondation-farm.org) and Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institut de Recherches pour le Développement, France. Her research interests include microfinance in rural areas with a focus on financing agricultural activities, debt, social institutions and migration.

From a methodological perspective, her research relies on a combination of qualitative and quantitative tools.

As a PhD candidate she lived one year in Mexico as a research fellow of the Centre d’Etudes Mexicaines et Centroaméricaines (CEMCA) where she studied a microfinance institution implemented in remote rural areas. She also has short term field experience in different countries such as: Morocco, Togo, Guinea and Madagascar. Dr Morvant-Roux is the author of articles published in Savings and Development, in Revue Tiers-Monde and in Horizons Bancaires.

E-Mail: solene.morvant@gmail.com
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Marc Raffinot is an associate professor at Paris-Dauphine University (France), specialising in Development Economics, Development Finance, Development Policies, and Development Macroeconomics.  He also teaches at Sciences Po Paris (France) and at the Lebanese University (Beirut). Professor Raffinot works as an expert for the European Commission (Applied Macroeconomics for developing countries) and as a consultant in development economics. He was formerly a Research Director at SEDES (Société d’étude du développement Economique et social). He also was formerly director of Vocational Training at the ESGE (Ecole Supérieure de Gestion des Entreprises, Dakar, Sénégal, now CESAG), and professor at ITPEA (Institut technologique de Planification et d’Economie Appliquée, Algiers, Algeria). Professor Raffinot has over 35 years of experience in microfinance, in Francophone African countries, Latin America (Nicaragua) and Asia (Cambodia).  His fields of expertise include: macroeconomics, debt sustainability, public and development finance.

E-Mail: marc.raffinot@dauphine.fr
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Trond Randøy is Professor of International Financial Management at University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. Professor Randøy has a PhD from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and a MBA from the University of Oregon.

His research interest focuses on Corporate Governance and International Business. He has authored more than 20 articles in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management and Governance, International Business Review, and Journal of Banking and Finance. Professor Randøy has also been leading several research projects with both public and private funding. He is currently board member in three different companies.

E-Mail: Trond.Randoy@uia.no
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Dr. Joakim Sandberg holds a Ph.D. in Practical Philosophy from the University of Gothenburg(Sweden) and is currently research fellow at the same university. He is also honorary research fellow in Global Ethics / Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, and associate researcher at CERMi (Belgium).

Joakim’s main academic interests are moral philosophy and applied ethics, especially business ethics. He is currently involved in two major international research programmes: He is a co-organiser of the AHRC Research Network on Microfinance, a research network which discusses ethical issues concerning microloans to the poor, and he is member of Sustainable Investments, a research programme which concerns to what extent pension funds can and should acknowledge environmental standards in their investments. Joakim has published articles in journals such as Business Ethics: A European Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, and has contributed to books such as The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, and Ethics: A University Reader.

E-Mail: joakim.sandberg@filosofi.gu.se
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Jean-Michel Servet holds a PhD. in economics from the Université Lumière Lyon 2. He teaches Development economy at the The Graduate Geneva (Geneva) since October 2003 and was teaching Economics at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 from 1990 to 2003. He was also visiting professor at the Brown University of Providence in the United-States in 1992 and associate professor at the Senghor University in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1993, 1994 and 2006.

From 2001 to 2003, Prof. Servet was research director at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) at the French Institute in Pondicherry (India). He was the vice-president of the Comission of Social science of the IRD in 2001, and had created and directed the Centre Walras (CNRS-Université Lyon 2) from 1997 to 2001. He was responsible of the Finance and Exclusion research program of the Centre Walras, and research director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (1994-1996). Prof. Servet collaborates with numerous institutions, among which the Institut Karl Polanyi (Concordia University) in Montréal, the ARAFDES, the ILO, and the Caisse des dépôts et consignations.

He has published articles in Finance et Bien Commun, in the Revue internationale de l’Economie Sociale, in the Journal des Anthropologues, the Journal of Consumer Policy, and is the author of the reference book Banquiers aux pieds nus, la microfinance.

E-Mail: jean-michel.servet@graduateinstitute.ch
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MS Sriram graduated from the Institute of Rural Management in Anand and was a research fellow at the Indian Institute of Management of Bangalore. He is currently Professor and Chairperson of the Finance and Accounting Area of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIMA). His teaching responsibilities include Financial Reporting and Analysis in the Post-Graduate Programme and an Elective on Microfinance Management for PGP-ABM. He also co-teaches a course on Social Entrepreneurship. His current research and writing concern the financial flows of the rural poor, the transformation experiences of NGOs to MFIs and the understanding of the financial management practices of seasonal migrants. MS Sriram has published books on Microfinance and Development and has also contributed to numerous publications. He has published research papers in Small Enterprise Development, Journal of Rural Development, and Journal of Microfinance, among others. MS Sriram also works as a consultant, and has done missions for various international and national organisations. He has now been appointed as the ICICI Bank - Lalita D Gupte Chair Professor in Microfinance.

E-Mail: mssriram@iimahd.ernet.in
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Currently, Hubert Tchakoute-Tchuigoua is Professor in the Organization, Control, and Management academic Pole of Bordeaux Management School (France). In June 2008, he obtained a PhD degree in Management sciences, with highest honors, from the University of Bordeaux IV. His research focuses on microfinance and is structured around three main axes: organizational architecture and governance, financial structure, and growth. He is the author of articles published in National (France) and international journals, notably Revue Science de Gestion (ISEOR), Finance Contrôle Stratégie, Savings and Development, Quarterly review of Economics and Finance, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics.

E-Mail: Hubert.Tchakoute@bem.edu

Sylvaine Trinh is a professor of sociology at Paris-Dauphine University (France) and director of the masters programme in Sustainable Development and Responsibility of Organisations. Her research focuses on the links between corporate activities, environment and sustainable development. Ms. Trinh is an expert on Asia-Pacific societies.

E-Mail: sylvaine.trinh@dauphine.fr
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Aad van Tilburg graduated in econometrics from Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1971. He is an associate professor in marketing at Wageningen University (The Netherlands).  His research interests include the functioning and performance of markets, marketing channels and supply chains of grains and perishable products within tropical countries and on an international level.  Professor van Tilburg has published in Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics, European Review of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Journal of African Economie, and Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science. He was co-editor of several books:Agricultural Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in a Changing World (1997, Kluwer), Agricultural Marketing in Tropical Africa (1999, Ashgate Publishing), Agricultural Markets Beyond Liberalization (2000, Kluwer) Marketing tussen Wetenschap en Maatschappij (2006, Wageningen Academic Publishers) and “Tropical Food Chains” (2007, Wageningen Academic Publishers).

E-Mail: aad.vantilburg@wur.nl
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He has been lecturer in economy at the Université de Paris Dauphine for 10 years. He gave few courses in developement finance, macro and micro economy and econometry. Baptiste has also given lectures in microfinance at the IEP Paris (“Sciences Po” Paris). He works on the informal informelle, microcredits and microfinance and more generally on the finacial systems of the developing countries. Recently, he focused his works on the borrowers motivation to repay on time the individual loans and more specifically on the role of garantee on the individual loans.

E-Mail: baptiste.venet@dauphine.fr
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