Category: Finance

In the fast-paced world of finance, ongoing digitization is disrupting the traditional rules of banking with profound consequences.  Our lives have also become more digital through shopping, social interactions, news, and information gathering, to name just a few.  A burgeoning amount of personal data is now being produced daily. The total amount of data created, […]

In 2024, CGAP and MFR research explored trends and challenges in trying to close the gender gap for small borrowers, specifically examining how different institutional structures link to different outcomes. Smaller institutions, often organized as NGOs or providing group loans, such as cooperatives, demonstrated the best outcomes for women borrowers. However, even though they deliver […]

Visit just about any downtown on a weekend and you will likely happen upon a farmers market. Or, you might grab lunch from a food truck outside a local brewpub or winery. Very likely, there is a community-shared kitchen or food entrepreneur incubator initiative behind the scenes to support this growing foodie ecosystem. As rural […]

Just a few years ago, South Africans paid a hefty price to keep their money safe, shelling out between $2 to $5 as monthly account maintenance fees and 50 cents in transaction fees – equivalent to 1.5% of the average person’s monthly income. With the country’s big five banks controlling 95% of the market, there […]

Republican lawmakers have been battling over a bill that includes massive tax and spending cuts. Much of their disagreement has been over provisions intended to reduce the cost of Medicaid. The popular health insurance program, which is funded by both the federal and state governments, covers about 78.5 million low-income and disabled people – more […]

SoftBank Group has obtained a $15 billion bridge loan with a one-year maturity to support its growing investments in artificial intelligence, according to reports from veritable sources. The financing will be used to accelerate the company’s AI initiatives, including the development of large-scale infrastructure projects such as the Stargate data center in collaboration with OpenAI. […]

You’ve probably heard the adage about not putting all your eggs in one basket. It’s an especially meaningful one for newspapers. For decades, they relied heavily on advertising revenue. That arrangement stopped working about 20 years ago, as audiences moved online and advertisers followed. News media outlets moved online as well, but they found themselves […]

Diversity training is more effective when it’s personalized, according to my new research in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Psychology. As a professor of management, I partnered with Andrew Bryant, who studies social marketing, to develop an algorithm that identifies people’s “personas,” or psychological profiles, as they participate in diversity training in real time. We embedded […]

Although technically they’re a fruit, tomatoes are one of the most-consumed vegetables, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Among the fresh produce the nation buys from foreign countries, tomatoes often rank first or second, behind avocados. This trade is now jeopardized because the Trump administration has revived a three-decade-old effort to limit imports. As […]

HONG KONG, May 19, 2025 — Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL), the world’s leading electric vehicle battery manufacturer, has completed the largest initial public offering (IPO) of the year to date, raising US$4.7 billion through its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX). Strikingly, the offering excluded onshore U.S. institutional investors by design, […]