Browsing by Person "Dufhues, Thomas Bernhard"

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    Constraints and potential of livestock insurance schemes: a case study from Vietnam
    (2004) Fischer, Isabel; Dufhues, Thomas Bernhard; Lemke, Ute
    Livelihood systems of poor rural households are often so fragile that a small misfortune can destabilize households for years. Strategies for coping with risk include informal mutual aid agreements and/or formal microinsurance schemes. In developing countries, insurance markets are usually underdeveloped.Nevertheless, if the development path is supported by strong structures and institutions, anonymous markets will, over time, replace informal insurance networks as they are more efficient. In Vietnam, livestock is an important household income source and has additional non-economic functions in the households. For a long time, rural financial institutions in Vietnam financed only a small array of agricultural investments, but these frequently included livestock purchase. The absence of off-farm investment possibilities further promotes investment in livestock production. Failure of an investment, especially when loan-funded, can leave a household in an extremely vulnerable position. Livestock death is considered to be a major factor contributing to poverty. Farmers using credit to purchase livestock face two risks at once: (1) loss of the livestock due tovdisease and subsequently (2) failure of investment. Farmers would like to reduce the uncertainty, but a broad-based livestock insurance scheme does not exist in Vietnam. There are only a few formal and semi-formal schemes with very limited outreach. Thus, access to formal insurance is almost non-existent, and farm households have to rely mainly on informal mutual aid schemes within their social networks to reduce their risks. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on the general feasibility of a livestock insurance scheme in Vietnam. In this context, the demand for and supply of livestock insurance schemes is discussed. Quantitative (N=322) and qualitative data collection took place between 2001 and 2004. The quantitative data comprise cross-sectional household-level data from three different districts in Northern Vietnam. Four different types of insurance providers were selected for analyzing the supply side: 1. Insurance tied to credit within a state-owned company; 2. Insurance tied to credit within a development project; 3. A state-owned insurance company (which collapsed); 4. A private insurance company. By selecting these different insurance providers, the range of livestock insurance types offered in Vietnam was covered. The main result is that provision of sustainable livestock insurance is hampered principally by unreliable data on livestock mortality and by premia that are set politically at a low evel.
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    Towards demand-driven financial services in Northern Vietnam: a participatory analysis of customer preferences
    (2003) Dufhues, Thomas Bernhard
    Analyzing secondary and primary data, this paper suggests a shift in national development policies from solely promoting rural credit to supporting savings activities. The household data are econometrically analyzed applying the Conjoint Analysis (CA). The CA gave valuable insights into how to improve outreach of formal financial institutes (FFIs) by adapting the credit products to client preferences and revealed an unattended demand for savings instruments. Due the enormous credit outreach of the FFIs in Vietnam, it would be more efficient to launch a credit consolidation policy and to implement a reliable and sustainable deposit collection system at the village level. However, in national policymaking a paradigm change must take place and the capability of rural households to save needs to be recognized by policy-makers.
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    Visualizing rural financial market research in Northern Vietnam through pictures
    (2003) Geppert, Meike; Dufhues, Thomas Bernhard
    One of the many tasks of financial market research is to develop client-oriented financial products. In order to ensure that the financial products reflect the necessities and preferences of the clients, profound participation of the target group throughout the whole research process is important. The use of pictures reduces problems of understanding and makes communication more interesting since everybody is now an insider in the discussion and can thus contribute his or her opinion. The use of pictures in research enhances participation and the research findings will be more target-group oriented. The extent to which the expense associated with using pictures in research ? which is not to be underestimated ? justifies the gains in terms of the information and data collected is rarely assessed. This article is addressed to researchers who investigate in similar situations and will offer them a basis of experience that they can take advantage of. The authors assume that information about the usefulness of the different techniques applied might be most interesting for other researchers. They conclude that the use of pictures in financial market research revealed some interesting results, albeit sometimes at quite a high cost. Nevertheless, the impact of supportive pictures on the quality of new knowledge is difficult to assess, since we have no way of answering the question of whether it would have been possible to obtain the same information without the suppor of pictures.