Improving access to capital for low wealth households is a vital part of any rural development strategy, especially one designed to rectify long standing rural inequality and to generate broadly-based growth. In addition, there may be further benefits from specifically targeting the capital needs of rural and low-income women. Most credit programs oriented to increase access to credit for poor ...

We propose a methodology for forecasting the systemic impact of financial institutions in interconnected systems. Utilizing a five-year sample including the 2008/9 financial crisis, we demonstrate how the approach can be used for timely systemic risk monitoring of large European banks and insurance companies. We predict firms’ systemic relevance as the marginal impact of individual downside ris...

Financial economic models often assume that investors know (or agree on) the fundamental value of the shares of the firm, easing the passage from the individual to the collective dimension of the financial system generated by the Share Exchange over time. Our model relaxes that heroic assumption of one unique ”true value” and deals with the formation of share market prices through the dynamic f...

The paper proposes a model where heterogeneous firms choose whether to undertake R&D or not. Depending on R&D choice, innovative firms are more productive, have larger investment opportunities and lower own funds than non-innovating firms. As a result, innovative firms are financially constrained while standard firms are not. The efficiency of the financial sector and a coun-try's institutional...

1 Hedging is an important topic for both financial practice and theory. The rational of hedging and the optimal hedging ratio is examined by many papers, but the choice of hedging instrument is much less investigated, or restricted to options and futures. In this paper we analyze different hedging strategies from the aspect of Hungarian exporters with a long euro position. We evaluate each stra...

This paper provides technical details and user guidance on the Research Infrastructure of Chinese Foundations (RICF), a database of Chinese foundations, civil society, and social development in general. The structure of the RICF is deliberately designed and normalized according to the Three Normal Forms. The database schema consists of three major themes: foundations' basic organizational profi...

Microfinance is defined as the provision of financial services to poor, disadvantaged and under-privileged members of society, particularly in developing countries. Since the success of the Grameen Bank in the late 1970s, microfinance has emerged as a sustainable and effective method of poverty alleviation and local financial development. Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented growth in t...

Since 80s, along with the heating-up competition in finance industry and the liberalization trend of financial supervision, a tendency of integration appears in world three financial service fields, namely banking, insurance, and security. It threats the banking business. The banking industry that always possesses the core position in financial system faces enormous challenges. On the other han...

This paper uses a laboratory experiment and real world data to explore individuals' motivations for redistribution. The laboratory results show that as income uncertainty diminishes, participants become more extreme in their preferences for redistribution. The findings suggest that for most people, the motivation for redistribution is financial self-interest---namely as insurance against future...