*The ideas expressed here do not represent the opinions of the Board of Governors of the Federal System, or its staff. Part of this project was developed, and much of the early data collected, with Mikari Kashima at the Bank of Japan.

This paper studies TRAIL, a variation on traditional microfinance, where a microfinance institution appoints local intermediaries (traders or informal moneylenders) as agents to recommend borrowers for individual liability loans. Agents earn commissions that depend on loan repayments. There are no peer monitoring, group meetings or savings requirements. The loans are designed to finance agricul...

In the performing arts, including music, theater, dance and so on, theoretical issues both about artworks and about performances of them must be dealt with, so that their theoretical analysis is inherently more complex and troublesome than that of nonperforming arts such as painting or film, in which primarily only artworks need to be discussed. Thus it is especially desirable in the case of th...

The paper examines a wide range of issues relating to the mix between loans and grants as well as the degree of concessionality of loans. A number of empirical tests are carried out based on annual panel data over 1970 to 1999 for 22 donor countries and 72 recipient countries. Based on the tests, we are able to identify a number of economic and political factors that have influenced donors’ pas...

In Hong Kong, 35% of residential mortgage loans are adjustable rate mortgages with variable tenor (VRT). That is, with a change in interest rates, the loan adjusts its maturity and principal payment such that the monthly installment remains the same. In other words, instead of bearing a volatility on monthly payments as in a ®xed-tenor variable payment (VRP) mortgage, VRT mortgagors bear intere...

One promising strategy to stem the flood of home foreclosures is to modify mortgage loans so that borrowers can remain in their homes. A primary concern of loan modification efforts, however, is the seemingly high rate of recidivism. In this article, we examine the relationship between redefault rates and different types of loan modifications based on a large sample of recently modified loans. ...

The paper focuses on the effects of three different internal bank ratings – Risk-, Propertyand Creditworthiness-Rating – on the loan maturity. We use a sample of about 5,000 loans given to sole proprietors and corporate borrowers by two German banks from January 2003 till July 2005. The estimation results for corporate borrowers are consistent with Diamond’s (1991) predictions of non-monotonic ...

one of the most important questions in islamic banking system is about the best method for calculating the interest rate of loans and deposits. this paper compares two methods : time- value method and economic value- added method and tries to answer this question that, based on the information gathered from the financial statements of a sample of the accepted firms in the iranian exchange marke...