7 March 2012
CERMi Research Day
One-day workshop organized for CERMi members only
at SBS-EM (ULB)
13 March 2012
CERMi Seminar
"Making Microfinance Boards Effective: An Empirical Analysis"
by Prof. Niels HERMES (University of Groningen, NL)
at SBS-EM (ULB)
20 March 2012
CERMi Seminar
"Microcredit: An Answer to the Gender Problem in Funding?"
by Prof. Sophie BRANA (Université Bordeaux IV, FR)
at SBS-EM (ULB)
WP-CEB 12-001
"Microfinance, the long tail and mission drift"
by Serrano-Cinca C. and B. Gutiérrez-Nieto
December 8, 2011
Joint Doctoral Fellowship in Microfinance
Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium
& University of Agder, Norway
More information about this fellowship
November 29, 2011
Former PhD student (now Associate Researcher) Anaïs PÉRILLEUX has received a scholarship from the Belgian American Education Foundation (BAEF) a couple of months ago and is now carrying out a one-year post-doc research at Yale University, under the supervision of Prof. Timothy Guinnane.
November 15, 2011
CERMi is proud to announce that Koen Rossel-Cambier, one of its researchers, successfully defended his PhD thesis on "Combined microfinance" at the Université de Mons on 9 November 2011.
Congratulations to him!
October 10, 2011
Discover our 6th CERMi Newsletter (October 2011)!
What you'll find in this edition :
CERMi (Centre Européen de Recherche en Microfinance / Center for European Research in Microfinance), draws together researchers, involved in microfinance activities in developing countries, from the Centre Emile Bernheim (Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles) and from the Warocqué Research Centre (Université de Mons). The CERMi also collaborates with the European Microfinance Programme.
Microfinance provides financial services, including credit, savings and insurance, to poor customers with little or no access to the traditional banking sector. It has come to be regarded as a very important component of strategies aimed at reducing poverty. Over the last decade, the microfinance industry has experienced rapid growth creating a constant demand for new knowledge to help guide its development.
CERMi, which is part of the Académie Wallonie-Bruxelles, was created with the goal to become an active participant in this process. It aims to study the management of a wide range of microfinance financial institutions, represented by NGOs, cooperatives and commercial companies. Thanks to an interdisciplinary approach, CERMi hopes to make substantive contributions to the body of knowledge on microfinance which will help the industry deal more effectively with its future challenges.
From a microeconomic and managerial perspective, CERMi is undertaking research on institutional aspects including governance and risk management of microfinance institutions, as well as the concept of a client-driven approach toward the development of financial services and products. From a macroeconomic and sociological point of view, CERMi focuses on matters of regulation and local government policy, as well as the roles played by central banks and international donors. Links between microfinance and the traditional banking sector are also analysed, and throughout this research, special attention is given to ethical considerations that are specifically relevant and critical to the evolution of the microfinance industry.
