Jamie M. Zimmerman: All Publications, Events and Press

Can Online Investing End Poverty?

Communications — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
03/19/2008 - 4:00pm

"Invest Wisely. End Poverty." This is the goal of eBay's new online microfinance investment marketplace, MicroPlace. While online microlending has been growing more popular with peer-to-peer offerings such as the non-profit Kiva.org, MicroPlace is charting a whole new course in the microfinance industry, offering socially-minded Americans a new way to offer microloans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. As the only broker-dealer in the microfinance arena, MicroPlace is the first and only online service offering a way for investors to invest in the working poor, and earn both a social and financial return on the investment.

On March 19th, a panel of experts on social development and microfinance discussed MicroPlace's potential to reach everyday investors in the United States, as well as the opportunity to help people in developing countries. The event also touched on the larger themes of microfinance policy and fighting poverty, including how loans provided by microfinance institutions can help the working poor come out of poverty and begin to realize the possibilities of longer-term assets such as a thriving business, home, and nest-egg for retirement, as well as the systemic and institutional challenges the microfinance industry faces in reaching the world's poor.

Tracy Turner, founder and General Manager of MicroPlace, began the discussion by stressing the need for the microfinance industry to be profitable in order for it to be sustainable. One way to help achieve profitability is for individuals to think of securities based on the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) as a new “asset class” -- along with stocks, bonds, property, and other types of assets.

After Turner introduced MicroPlace, Shari Berenbach, Executive Director of Calvert Foundation explained the nature of her organization’s cooperation with the website. Calvert Foundation is an issuer of a number of the securities offered on MicroPlace, essentially acting as an intermediary between the microfinance institutions seeking loans and the investors in the United States and elsewhere seeking investments. Calvert Foundation is also responsible for ensuring due-diligence is done on the MFIs that it lends the proceeds from the purchase of the securities to. Next, Robert Mosbacher, Jr. President and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), explained how OPIC, a government agency, guarantees the securities that Calvert Foundation sells to investors through MicroPlace.

Kate McKee, a senior advisor to CGAP, a consortium of microfinance funders, subsequently offered MicroPlace a few kudos and a few quibbles. The kudos included: working hard to get the regulatory compliance “right,” and educating potential investors about difference in poverty from country to country. At the same time, McKee said she had a few concerns, including about the potential of MFIs listed on MicroPlace to be harmed by financial crises, natural disasters, political instability, and mismanagement of funds.

Looking ahead, MicroPlace’s Turner said that after spending the past year building the regulatory infrastructure and “back-office” capacity of the website, the company is turning its attention to improving its user interface. Changes will include providing investors with more search criteria by which they can choose their investment, such as which institutions offer the highest rate of return and which offers loans primarily to women and/or the “poorest-of-the-poor.”

The Global Assets Project of the New America Foundation, along with Calvert Foundation and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), with the support of the International Gateway at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, cordially invite you and your colleagues for a special event discussing one of the newest innovations in asset building and poverty reduction.

In Care of Nigeria's Poor

Communications — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
02/01/2008 - 10:00am

Last year, Nigeria's newly-elected president set forth a seven-step agenda to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals and turn Nigeria into a top-20 industrialized nation by 2020. But this will be no easy task. Nigeria's wealth inequality is among the worst in Africa - a situation illustrated by the contrast between the nation's substantial oil wealth and a poverty rate of around 50%. Nigeria's National Poverty Eradication Program (NAPEP) responded to this challenge in December 2007 by launching an ambitious conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, In Care of the Poor (COPE).

In February, the New America Foundation/Global Assets Project and Displaced Children and Orphan's Fund's STRIVE program led by the Academy for Educational Development hosted development economist, Dr. Magnus Kpakol, for his first public U.S. presentation and discussion of the COPE program.

Kpakol first introduced COPE, a program takes an innovative twist on conventional and increasingly popular CCT programs in place around the world. The program not only provides cash transfers, but also skills training and micro-enterprise start-up funds to households in exchange for enrolling and keeping their children in school and providing for their basic health care needs. Dr. Kpakol outlined how the central government set up the program. This included the government picking 12 states to participate in the "pilot" phase of the program, and the government expecting these states to contribute matching funding for the program.

Following Kpakol's presentation, international development experts commented on the use and effectiveness of Conditional Cash Transfers for poverty eradication, wealth accumulation, and social protection around the world. Allyn Moushey, an advisor for the Poverty Analysis and Social Safety Nets program at USAID said she believed Nigeria's COPE is the first CCT program of such a scale in Africa. Alan de Brauw, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Reserach Institute (IFPRI) stressed that transparency, such as in regards to which children are chosen to participate in COPE, is important. Kpakol agreed with this point.

Questions for future consideration about Nigeria's COPE, and CCTs more generally, include: Even with its community-driven and microfinance elements, what potential does the program have to enhance livelihoods and empower Nigeria's future generations? What hurdles must it overcome in order to succeed? What U.S. partnerships and resources could be mobilized to support the development of the program? Coupled with other poverty eradication initiatives, does COPE hold the promise to meet the President's goals of increasingly access to education, health and food security and providing jobs and micro-credit to the poorest of the poor? And what lessons does Nigeria's approach offer other countries in their fight against poverty?

-Jeff Meyer is a program associate for the Global Assets Project in the Asset Building Program.

Jamie Zimmerman in Globe and Mail | 'Trade Deal for Colombian Rights'

Communications — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:53:00 -0500

New America in the News:
A trade deal is good for Colombian human rights (The Globe and Mail - Canada)
Studies suggest increased trade may help improve human- and labour-rights deficiencies. In their recent book Trade Imbalance: The Struggle to Weigh Human Rights concerns in Trade Poliymaking (link), Susan Aaronson and Jamie Zimmerman argue that increased trade brings about increased "integrity rights," such as freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, torture and killings. ...

Trade Imbalance

adminn — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:04:00 -0400

Trade is controversial; around the world many people believe that trade agreements, even trade per se, undermines particular human rights such as labor rights or access to affordable medicine (the right to health). But trade and trade agreements can also advance human rights, directly or indirectly. In fact, some countries use trade policies to advance specific human rights such as labor rights or property rights.

Nonetheless, policymakers struggle to achieve both goals because:

The global economic environment is increasingly complex Human rights conditions, priorities and policies change constantly. Policymakers have no mandate to coordinate trade and human rights Most governments have no structure… more

Trade Imbalance

Communications — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/05/2007 - 12:15pm

In the coming months, the U.S. Congress will vote up or down on trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, Peru, and Korea. These elected officials will not examine these agreements solely on their commercial or foreign policy benefits to the American people. They will also weigh whether or not each agreement advances particular human rights abroad. However, these Representatives proceed with little information about how trade agreements, and even trade per se, affect human rights at home or abroad. Although scholars, policymakers, and activists have long debated this relationship, in truth we know very little about it.

In the recently published book, Trade Imbalance, authors Susan Ariel Aaronson and Jamie M. Zimmerman shed much needed light on this complex issue. They use stories about frogs, chocolate, culture, tires and other topics to provide readers with new insights into the relationship between trade and human rights. They include the first study of how South Africa, Brazil, the United States, and the European Union struggle to coordinate trade and human rights objectives. They also look at how human rights issues are seeping into the WTO. Finally, Aaronson and Zimmerman also suggest ways in which policymakers can right the balance between their trade and human rights goals.

Susan Ariel Aaronson is Research Associate Professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Business and the Elliott School of International Affairs. Jamie M. Zimmerman is Associate Director of the Global Assets Project, a joint venture of the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation and the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, Aaronson and Zimmerman were colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise – Washington Center. Aaronson was Senior Fellow and Director of Globalization Studies, where Jamie Zimmerman was Associate Director.

Join the New America Foundation and the Financial Times for an engaging discussion on the role of human rights in trade policy. Following the presentation, FT correspondent Eoin Callan will lead a robust Q&A session.

Praise for Trade Imbalance

"Economists generally assert that negotiations over trade and human rights should be kept separate. But as Aaronson and Zimmerman demonstrate, governments haven't heeded that advice. Instead, states have used trade policy as a way of advancing such goals as labor rights, the abolition of slavery, and access to medicines. This book will force scholars to reconsider the fundamental question of why it is that countries pursue bilateral and multilateral trade agreements in the first place."
--Ethan B. Kapstein, Paul Dubrule Professor of Sustainable Development, INSEAD

"Anyone interested in the trade and human rights linkage will find this book to be a valuable resource."
-- Steve Charnovitz, George Washington University, School of Law