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Wiley InterScience | |||||||||
  International Social Science JournalVolume 57 Issue 185, Pages 493 - 508 Published Online: 4 Nov 2005 © 2009 UNESCO
Abstract | References | Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 604K) | Related Articles | Citation Tracking  Markets in virtue: the promise of ethical funds and micro-credit
Javier Santiso is Chief Economist for Latin America and Emerging Markets in the Economics Research Department of BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria). His latest books are: The political Economy of Emerging Markets: Actors, Institutions and Crises in Latin America (New York and London, Palgrave, 2003); Amérique latine: Révolutionnaire, libérale, pragmatique, Paris, Autrement, 2005; Latin America's Political Economy of The Possible: Beyond Good Revolutionaries and Free Marketers, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2006(forthcoming).
Copyright © UNESCO 2005. ABSTRACTThe politics of ethical correctness responds on occasion – or often as its detractors would claim – only to enlightened self-interest. To set up an ethical fund, or to commit to a micro-finance programme, may be a mere concession to the Zeitgeist or an indirect enhancement of self-esteem. Nonetheless, the homage to virtue raises contemporary question and issues. The money committed to ethical funds is far from trivial. In the USA, every tenth dollar is invested in "ethical" financial instruments. They are rapidly developing in Europe. As for micro-credit experiments, they have been shown, from Bangladesh to Bolivia, to bring widely spread benefits to all. As this article stresses, the experience of ethical funds and micro-credit, while it does not fill the gap between past and future, nonetheless bears the promise of a future. It gives a time horizon, a view of what is to come, in which what has come to be known as international civil society participates. | 
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