Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

This conference write-up synthesizes two days of IMTFI researcher presentations through a series of 6 blogposts (titles listed in bold within the conference program below) on the Virtualpolitik Blog authored by Liz Losh. View IMTFI's second cohort of awarded research projects 2010. Go to the Supplemental Material tab to download the conference program for the second cohort of IMTFI researchers: September 29-30, 2010 IMTFI Annual Conference for Researchers Program.

#1 – The Middle-Aged Technology (9/29/2010)

Session 1: Money and the Life-Course - “Money, Conflict, and Reciprocity in Rural Families in Zambia: The Case of Female University Students” - Robert Tembo, University of Zambia; “Consumption Smoothening, Financial Literacy and Old Age Vulnerability: Experiences of Success and Failure with a Private Pension System in Chile” - Aldo Madariaga, Nicolas Perez, and Rodrigo Figueroa, University of Chile

Session 2: Getting By and Making Do: Techniques for Mitigating Financial Insecurity-“Small Ruminants as a Source of Financial Security: A Case Study of Rural Women in Southwest Nigeria” - Isaac B. Oluwatayo and Titilayo Busayo Oluwatayo, University of Ado-Ekiti – Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria;  “Evaluation of Money Management Strategies Between the Urban and Rural Ultra Poor:“A Study in Tamil Nadu, India” - Lakshmi Kumar, Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) - Center for Micro Finance – Chennai, India; “Post-Redenomination and Money Management Among Ghana’s Urban Poor” - Edwin Mensah and Vivian Dzokoto, University of North Carolina

#2 – Live Networks, Dead Zones, and the Transnational Deceased (9/29/2010)

Session 3: The Circulation of People and Commodities -“Follow the Bean: Navigating Value Exchange and Vulnerability for Cooperative Coffee Farmers and their Stakeholders” - Melissa Cliver, Rudy Yuly, and Catherine Howard, Sustainable Seattle – Seattle, WA; “Mobiles, Migrants, and Money: A Study of Mobility at the Haitian-Dominican Republic Border” - Heather Horst, Erin Taylor and Espelencia Baptiste, UC Irvine – Irvine, CA; “Unknown Remittances of the Migrants who have Died Abroad: A Study on the Recovery and Dynamics of Usage Remittances in Bangladesh” - AKM Ahsan Ullah, The American University in Cairo – Cairo, Egypt

#3 – The End of Banking (9/29/2010) “Regulatory Aspects of Mobile Money in Developing Countries” by Leon Perlman

#4 – The Dead Live in America (9/30/2010)

Session 4: New Technology and New Sources of Data for the Study of Mobile Money and Branchless Banking -“The Impact of New Technologies on Social Payments: Case Study in Ethiopia” - Woldmariam Mesfin Fikre, Addis Ababa University; “Financial Inclusion in Sri Lanka: Constraints and Prospects” - Sirimevan S.S. Colombage, Munasinghe Institute for Development in Sri Lanka; “Banking on the Phone: Using Novel Sources of Data to Understand the Impact of Mobile Banking in Rwanda” - Joshua Blumenstock, UC Berkeley

Session 5: Money and Modernity in Indigenous and Marginalized Communities- “Financial Inclusion or Developmental Exclusion? The Carbon Credit Payment to Forest Inhabitants in Brazilian Amazon” - Shaozeng Zhang, UC Irvine; “Gender and Money: Case Studies from Philippine Indigenous Communities”Mary Janet M. Arnado, Research Institute for Gender and Women, Inc. - Manila, Philippines; “Moni, Marginality, and Modernization in Postcolonial Papua New Guinea”Eric K. Silverman, Wheelock College

Session 6: The Interface of Savings and Microfinance- “Adapting and Extending the Use of Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations through Village Savings and Loans Association: The Case of Care International in Malawi” Chinyamata Chipeta, Southern African Institute for Economic Research (SAIER) – Zomba, Malawi; “Banking and Microfinance in Brazil” - Kurt von Mettenheim and Lauro Gonzalez,Fundação Getulio Vargas – São Paulo, Brazil

#5 – Placing Trust in Kiva (10/1/2010) ‘“Democratizing Capital:’ Digital Lending Networks, Mobile Technologies and Women’s Solidarity Groups in Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemala” - Anke Schwittay and Paul Braund, RiOS Institute – Berkeley, CA

#6 – Theory as Storytelling (10/1/2010) “The Impact of M-PESA: Results from a Panel Survey of Kenyan Households” by Billy Jack