Region
Europe & Central Asia

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"La inclusión financiera es fundamental para alcanzar la igualdad de género y fomentar el desarrollo económico sostenible. Al abordar las brechas existentes y brindar oportunidades equitativas, podemos fortalecer la autonomía económica de las mujeres y promover una sociedad más justa y próspera en general. El presente estudio tuvo como finalidad abordar (y profundizar) las barreras que enfrentamos las mujeres en el ámbito financiero y cómo pueden afectar nuestro empoderamiento, crecimiento y autonomía económica en España y América Latina."

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"In this document, the Platform on Sustainable Finance proposes a structure for a social taxonomy within the present EU legislative environment on sustainable finance and sustainable governance. This environment currently consists of:
(i) the existing legislation and proposed initiatives on the EU taxonomy; (ii) the proposed corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD); (iii) the Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation; and (iv) the sustainable corporate-governance (SCG) initiative. Although all these pieces of legislation influence this report, the focus of this work was above all on the present structure of the environmental taxonomy, a point which was even more stressed when public feedback highlighted that market participants expected a common structure for social and environment"

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"Download this study to learn about:
- The experience of the United States, Europe and other countries in channeling more than $2.2 billion in gender lens investing.
- The gaps and opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean to attract international investors.
- Success stories of companies in Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Brazil that are leading this trend."

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"Using survey data on Macedonian firms that participated in USAID programs providing technical and financial assistance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and on firms that did not, we estimate the effectiveness of such assistance in increasing the growth of employment in the assisted firms. We control for selection bias in program participation and use both kernel and caliper propensity score matching to estimate the excess growth of employment in assisted firms. We find that assistance programs raised employment growth by 16-20 percentage points in the first year after assistance and by 26-30 points by the third year."

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"This report unpacks why women's entrepreneurship is good for business and is essential for economic growth. Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a key driver of economic growth, and women-owned enterprises account for approximately 30-37 percent (8-10 million) of all SMEs in emerging markets. As such, women are the fastest-growing market segment, they start businesses at a higher rate than men, and it is expected that they will create approximately 50 percent of new small business jobs by 2018. In developing economies, SMEs are increasingly important, as they contribute to nearly half of the labor force."

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"This report presents the Rankings and Recognitions derived from the World Benchmark Study 2019-2020, sponsored by Qatar Development Bank. While traditional incubation and acceleration powerhouses in North America and Western Europe continue to be strongly represented, programs from around the world have captured top spots, underscoring the global importance of university, public, private and corporate incubators and accelerators for successfully nurturing the visionaries and changemakers of tomorrow."

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"Prior research hints at the accelerator as a new generation incubation model. Accelerators have become an umbrella term for any program providing a service structure of mentorship, networking opportunities and access to funding. The challenge, however, is to understand their distinctive characteristics and profiles geared towards reinforcing business start-ups. How do accelerators operate as a new generation incubation model and how do they differ from existing incubation mechanisms? This inductive study investigates 13 accelerators across Europe and adopts a design lens to identify the accelerator model's key design parameters. We identify five key building blocks and distinguish between three different types of accelerators, taking the primary design theme of the accelerator into account. We contribute to the incubation literature by extending recognition of the heterogeneity of incubation models, by delineating the accelerator as a distinctive incubation model and by introducing the design lens as a useful theoretical framework to investigate incubation models and their evolution."

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"This new resource by CSR Asia provides guidance and toolkits to help companies improve their gender diversity performance and design strategic community investment programmes aimed at empowering women economically. It intends to help companies see the value in investing in the economic empowerment of women in their workplaces and communities."

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"This paper is part of the Compendium of Evidence on the Effectiveness of Innovation Policy Intervention. This paper examines publicly supported policies for entrepreneurship development. Entrepreneurship policies are directed to encouraging socially and economically productive activities by individuals acting independently in business. Their principal objective is to increase a level of entrepreneurial activity which is considered to be below the social optimum. Policies may be implemented directly to address entrepreneurs' needs e.g. business advice programmes or through broadcast methods such as education policy. We have attempted to locate and focus on evaluations that reported on additionality / net effect or that use methods of causal inference to determine the effectiveness and impacts of policy. While policies and programmes for entrepreneurship can be simplistically modelled as a series of inputs beginning with cultural change followed by general and then more specific skill development, it is hard nevertheless to assess impact or trace causality because of the difficulty of defining discrete units of input, the presence of confounding factors and the length of time over which effects can build."

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"This report addresses the question: 'How do support programmes fulfil different roles for startups within startup ecosystems?' To put it another way, terms used for programmes supporting startups include: accelerators, coworking spaces, incubators, active seed investors, courses, competitions. But what is the difference?
In trying to answer this, this study interviewed over 30 practitioners, and undertook site visits to startup programmes operating in cities in high-income countries in Europe (Berlin, London, Munich, Cambridge), with the addition of Israel as a close neighbour."

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