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This report brings together the results of an eight-part series of presentations by leading experts in issues directly related to microfinance institutional sustainability. It is intended for microfinance institution (MFI) board members, managers, and staff members as well as for government regulators, supervisors, and donor staff members. The first four chapters include topics in risk management: (1) risk management systems, (2) good governance, (3) interest rates, and (4) micro-insurance. The last four chapters include four topics in new product development and efficient delivery methodologies: (5) housing microfinance, (6) micro-leasing, (7) disaster preparedness products and systems, and (8) new technologies. The objectives of the series were as follows: i) to strengthen MFIs by disseminating innovative approaches in risk management, cost control, governance, and new technologies; ii) to promote a South-South exchange of experiences and lessons learned; iii) to promote greater ties among the MFIs in the region and between MFIs and government supervisors and regulators; and iv) to highlight the Bank's ability to mobilize international technical expertise in microfinance.

This dissertation is a price history of agricultural commodities, specifically, live cattle, live sheep, beef, mutton, wheat, and maize during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Villa de San Felipe el Real de Chihuahua, Mexico. Using data drawn from the institutions of food distribution, the meat monopoly, el abasto de carne, the grains warehouse, la alhóndiga and the maize fund, el pósito , this study explores the relationship between the countryside and the urban center and explains other social phenomena. Patterns of grains prices were the reverse of those found in Central Mexico. Falling maize prices, in particular, reflected the declining silver economy and declining population levels found in San Felipe during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Cattle, sheep, beef and mutton prices more closely followed the mild inflation rate found in the rest of Colonial Mexico. Frontier warfare, frequent droughts and declining silver production were the causes of this long-term economic slide. As the Chihuahuan economy did not share in the eighteenth-century economic boom experienced in Central Mexico, neither did Chihuahuan society experience the late-colonial social distortions found in the regions to the south. It is not surprising, therefore, that the residents of the northern frontier of New Spain did not participate in the Hidalgo Revolt of 1810.