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Nigeria's Vision 2020 has expressed a bold desire for the country to be among the world's top 20 economies by the year 2020. The economy has posted impressive growth figures since 2003, driven by higher oil revenues and a series of home-grown economic reforms. The country is now firmly on the road to middle-income status. But what else do government and the private sector need to do to create the jobs and growth that will underpin the national development strategy? What are the challenges that Nigeria's businesses face today? 'An Assessment of the Investment Climate in Nigeria' provides answers to these questions. Based on a survey of 2,300 companies, it provides evidence-based recommendations designed to support Vision 2020 and the president's seven-point agenda. The authors find that government must move quickly to create jobs and reduce poverty. Key challenges include a desperate shortage of energy and a poor transportation network, as well as low levels of education and continuing unrest in the Niger delta. In addition, Nigeria's workers need to become more productive in order to compete in a globalized economy. As a matter of fact, they are less productive than workers in more dynamic countries, such as Brazil, China, and Kenya. Improving productivity will require simultaneous efforts to foster competition, improve specific aspects of the business environment, and facilitate better management and training within individual firms. In addition to the issues of productivity, Nigeria's best firms have not been able to expand their market share. Consequently, policy makers need to address and elimate obstacles to competition, including barriers to entry, convoluted taxation, property registration, and licensing.

The study examines the determinants of credit delivery from formal and informal sources to women households who belong to below poverty line in Ganjam district of Odisha, apart from analysing determinants of participation of women in self-help groups to avail credit, and identifying the factors influencing loans borrowed by BPL households. The study showed that majority of the households received loans from formal sources for agricultural purposes. However, a lower proportion of SHG members availed insurance services due to their low income. The results of logistic estimates clearly showed that factors such as age, education, number of children of the respondents, status as head of the household, sources of income, caste, informal debt, distance of banks, migration, economic status of households, etc. played a crucial role in determining women's participation in SHGs to borrow credit.

To tackle the growing menace of environmental degradation, the idea of green entrepreneurship has gained popularity, which is the process of creating new goods and technologies to solve environmental problems. Like traditional entrepreneurs, green entrepreneurs also need financial backing from financial institutions. However, no empirical evidence was found regarding the relationship between formal credit and green entrepreneurship. This analysis is an effort to plug this vacuum into the literature by analyzing the impact of formal credit on green entrepreneurship in high, middle, and low-income economies from 2011 to 2021. The study has employed various econometric techniques such as fixed-effects, random-effects, 2SLS, and GMM. The results show that formal credit substantially develops green entrepreneurship in high, middle, low-income, and full samples. Besides formal credit, GDP, environmental pressure, trade openness, technological development, and human capital are crucial in green entrepreneurship development in all samples. Policymakers may collaborate with financial institutions to create and provide specialized financial products and services catering to green entrepreneurs. Graphical Abstract

Background Currently, food and nutrition insecurity are global challenges. Millions of people are still suffering from this problem in Ethiopia. Smallholder farmers that dominated the agricultural sector in most developing countries like Ethiopia are deemed as one avenue to address such challenges. The purpose of this review was, therefore, to scrutinize the impact of smallholder agriculture production on food and nutrition security from Ethiopian context. Empirical studies were retrieved through electronic databases and the backward searching mechanism in which the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart were used to select the empirical studies and to report the review results. Results The finding of the review indicated that, smallholder farmer plays a decisive role in an effort towards improving food and nutrition security through either directly as sources food and/ or indirectly provides means and mechanisms to access the required food type at different level. Furthermore, it is found that, female contributed more in securing food and nutrition status of households compared to their male counterparts. Yet, both male and female smallholder farmers are faced different challenges including lack of access to agricultural infrastructures and facilities, plant and animal disease, and gender- based difference on access to and control over productive resources. Conclusion and recommendation. Given the contributions of smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia, there is a need to strengthen capacity of female and male smallholder farmers through provision of gender responsive agricultural advisory services and credit services tailored to the local context as options in improving food and nutrition security in Ethiopia.

In the spring of 2012, the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan and the World Bank commissioned a diagnostic assessment of financial practices and strategies among urban and rural Bhutanese. The resulting survey, the Bhutan financial inclusion focus group survey, represents one of the first efforts to capture household financial management practices in the country. The assessment, undertaken at the request of a government working group led by the Royal Monetary Authority, was designed to inform Bhutan's Financial Inclusion Policy by providing information about households' use of and demand for financial services. Since the research mainly captures the perspectives of Bhutanese households, this report does not present recommendations. Instead, its findings from the field research provide qualitative evidence that has informed the financial inclusion policy by highlighting opportunities and challenges in increasing financial inclusion.

East Asia and the Pacific is a region of dynamic growth. Women have contributed significantly to this growth and have benefited from it through active participation in the labor market. However, women are still disproportionately represented in the informal sector and in low paid work. Efforts to identify barriers to women's business and entrepreneurial activities in the region are critical not only to facilitate inclusive growth in a national context but also to counter the increasing trend of female migratory flows in the region. This report highlights' both the challenges and the economic opportunities for businesswomen in the region offers some useful potential pointers for reform.

This study is an attempt to investigate the motivation behind the decision to participate in the credit market of SMEs from perspectives of behavioral finance and social capital theories. In addition, the study also examines the effect of behavioral finance and social capital factors on the credit source selection among SMEs. This study's design strategy involves conducting questionnaire surveys to SMEs owners and statistical techniques to analyze the determinants of credit participation and credit source selection of borrowers. The findings showed that personal traits of SMEs owners/managers in terms of behavioral finance factors such as debt and risk attitudes, present biased and overconfidence and firms networking also have impacts on the firms' credit participation and credit source selection. The research is one of the few studies that consider the influence of behavioral finance factors on firms financing decision. Furthermore, our result also contributes to explain the common use of informal credit market in developing countries.

This study is an attempt to investigate the motivation behind the decision to participate in the credit market of SMEs from perspectives of behavioral finance and social capital theories. In addi- tion, the study also examines the effect of behavioral finance and social capital factors on the credit source selection among SMEs. This study’s design strategy involves conducting questionnaire sur- veys to SMEs owners and statistical techniques to analyze the determinants of credit participation and credit source selection of borrowers. The findings showed that personal traits of SMEs owners/ managers in terms of behavioral finance factors such as debt and risk attitudes, present biased and overconfidence and firms networking also have impacts on the firms’ credit participation and credit source selection. The research is one of the few studies that consider the influence of behavioral finance factors on firms financing decision. Furthermore, our result also contributes to explain the common use of informal credit market in developing countries.

Worldwide income taxation in the country of residence is a legal dogma of international taxation. We question this dogma from the perspective of relations between developed and developing countries from legal and economic perspectives, and make a modern and fair proposal for tax treaties. We show under which conditions a developing and a developed country will voluntarily sign a tax treaty where the developing country is more inclined to share the information with the developed country and whether they should share revenues . Moreover, we demonstrate how the conclusion of a tax treaty can assist in the implementation of a tax audit system in the developing country.

Fostering the entrepreneurship of women is important for Pakistan's economic growth and inclusion agenda, and access to financial services is an important component of starting and growing a business for women entrepreneurs. Most women?owned businesses are small, household?based cottage industries; microfinance products should be a natural source of start?up and working capital finance for this clientele. Microfinance portfolio data suggest that although Pakistan's sector has shown improvement in reaching women, it still lags its regional peers, only 59 percent of microfinance clients are women. The original purpose of this work was to determine whether women entrepreneurs have access to, and are using, microfinance loans as a source of finance for their businesses. However, the findings of the report go beyond the narrow objective of understanding whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) are reaching Pakistan's businesswomen. As the research unfolded, the evidence suggested that not only are women entrepreneurs not being served, but also that the outreach to women in general is potentially more limited than previously assumed and that the issues of consumer protection and responsible lending practices in Pakistan might merit further exploration. The report raises and addresses two distinct issues. First, some evidence suggests that women are often not the final users of loans, but rather are conduits to male household members. The report documents findings that suggest that the practice of passing on loans to male household members is potentially quite widespread; women may be bearing all the transaction costs and risks of accessing loans, but are not the final beneficiaries. Second, a very low proportion of female microfinance clients are entrepreneurs. The report explores why businesswomen in Pakistan may not be using microfinance products to meet their startup and working capital requirements, in spite of identifying access to finance as a key constraint to their business operations. The report focuses on products, services, policies, and other elements of the business model of microfinance in Pakistan that affect both demand for and access to microfinance by women borrowers, some of whom fall into the narrower category of entrepreneurs.