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Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

Front Matter, Journal Of Microfinance Dec 2003

Front Matter, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.


Balancing Supply And Demand: The Emerging Agenda For Microfinance Institutions, Thankom Arun, David Hulme Dec 2003

Balancing Supply And Demand: The Emerging Agenda For Microfinance Institutions, Thankom Arun, David Hulme

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.


Beyond Micro-Credit: Putting Development Back Into Micro-Finance By Thomas Fisher And M. S. Sriram, James R. Bradshaw Dec 2003

Beyond Micro-Credit: Putting Development Back Into Micro-Finance By Thomas Fisher And M. S. Sriram, James R. Bradshaw

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.


Rural Finance, Poverty Alleviation, And Sustainable Land Use: The Role Of Credit For The Adoption Of Agroforestry Systems In Occidental Honduras, Ruerd Ruben, Luud Clercx Dec 2003

Rural Finance, Poverty Alleviation, And Sustainable Land Use: The Role Of Credit For The Adoption Of Agroforestry Systems In Occidental Honduras, Ruerd Ruben, Luud Clercx

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

This paper analyzes the relationship between financial services provided by different agents, the adoption of agroforestry systems, and the implications for food security and sustainable soil management. Attention is focussed on the role of rural finance in reducing risk and stabilizing household income and yields. We conclude that credit provision performs critical functions for reinforcing the resilience of rural livelihoods in less-favored areas. Rural development programs in the Occidental region of Honduras have been rather reluctant to provide rural financial services. Unfavorable agroclimatic conditions and the scarcity of infrastructure lead to extreme poverty. The local economy is fairly dynamic due …


Money Talks: Conversations With Poor Households In Bangladesh About Managing Money, Stuart Rutherford Dec 2003

Money Talks: Conversations With Poor Households In Bangladesh About Managing Money, Stuart Rutherford

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

This paper describes the money management behavior of 42 low-income Bangladeshi households, half of them rural and half living in urban slums. They were found to be active managers of their financial resources. Thirty-three varieties of financial instrument were found to be in use by the sample households during the research year. As well as using a wide variety of instruments, most households engaged in multiple uses of the instruments: on average each household initiated a new money management arrangement every two weeks. The sums of money involved are large, both absolutely and relative to incomes. The average “turnover” (the …


Announcements, Journal Of Microfinance Dec 2003

Announcements, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.


Implications Of Financial Innovations For The Poorest Of The Poor In The Rural Area: Experience From Northern Bangladesh, Mohammed Emrul Hasan Dec 2003

Implications Of Financial Innovations For The Poorest Of The Poor In The Rural Area: Experience From Northern Bangladesh, Mohammed Emrul Hasan

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Providing microfinance to the poorest of the poor in rural areas remains a challenge. Grameen demonstrated that the poor are viable clients for loans and reached them on a massive scale. However, they reach only the upper level of the poor and provide narrow and limited financial services with rigid systems and procedures, which in many ways do not address the needs of the poorest. Despite earning signs of success with their SafeSave innovative approach to serving the poorest in the urban area, this rural adaptation and experiment has faced challenges because of the different social and economical structures of …


A Challenge To The Orthodoxy Concerning Microfinance And Poverty Reduction, Ana Marr Dec 2003

A Challenge To The Orthodoxy Concerning Microfinance And Poverty Reduction, Ana Marr

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

As a response to many partial and simplistic theoretical and empirical studies, this paper presents a more comprehensive analytical framework to assess the success of microfinance in achieving its dual objectives of financial sustainability and poverty reduction. By giving center stage to the study of group dynamics and using principles of imperfect information and social psychology, the paper argues that microfinance not only has failed to solve the original problems of information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders but also, in its pursuit of financial sustainability, is destroying the very foundations of these schemes by disrupting the social fabric of communities, …


Attitudes Of Rural Branch Manages In Madhya Pradesh, India, Toward Their Role As Providers Of Financial Services To The Poor, Howard Jones, Marylin Williams, Yashwant Thorat, Abba Thorat Dec 2003

Attitudes Of Rural Branch Manages In Madhya Pradesh, India, Toward Their Role As Providers Of Financial Services To The Poor, Howard Jones, Marylin Williams, Yashwant Thorat, Abba Thorat

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Discussions on banking reforms to reduce financial exclusion have referred little to possible attitudinal constraints, on the part of staff at both branch and institutional levels, inhibiting the provision of financial services to the poor. The research project, funded by the ESCOR (now Social Science Research) Small Grants Committee, has focused on this aspect of financial exclusion. The research commenced in May 2001 and was completed in April 2002. Profiles of the rural bank branch managers, including personal background, professional background and workplace, are presented. Attitudes of managers toward aspects of their work environment and the rural poor are examined, …


Vol. 05 No. 2 Journal Of Microfinance, Journal Of Microfinance Dec 2003

Vol. 05 No. 2 Journal Of Microfinance, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.


Political Barriers And The Transmission Of Monetary Policy Across States: The New England Antebellum Banking Market, Andrew J. Economopoulos Oct 2003

Political Barriers And The Transmission Of Monetary Policy Across States: The New England Antebellum Banking Market, Andrew J. Economopoulos

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

The New England antebellum banking market was examined to understand the interaction of political ideology and economic forces. With each state controlling bank entry, hence the money supply, political ideology could impede the supply of money within a state. However, the monetary forces from neighboring states may have influenced the degree to which parties held true to their political ideology. The results indicate that political ideology was an effective barrier in two of the six states, while three states were responsive to neighbor states' monetary policy regardless of political ideology. These states responded by creating new banks, raising existing capital …


A Comparative Analysis Of The Rationality Of Consensus Forecasts Of U. S. Economic Indicators, David C. Schirm Oct 2003

A Comparative Analysis Of The Rationality Of Consensus Forecasts Of U. S. Economic Indicators, David C. Schirm

Economics & Finance

The purpose of this article is to investigate the rationality of two survey forecasts of selective U. S. macroeconomic performance measures that were widely followed in the financial markets during the 1990-2000 period. The research compares the rationality of survey forecast data from Money Market Services, Inc., and Thomson Financial. This article extends prior research that has evaluated the rationality of Money Market Services data for earlier time periods while also evaluating similar consensus forecast data from Thomson Financial that were widely reported in both Barron's and the Wall Street Journal during the 1990s.


Does Underwriter Reputation Affect The Performance Of Ipo Stocks?, Chunchi Wu, Sheen Liu, Junbo Wang Sep 2003

Does Underwriter Reputation Affect The Performance Of Ipo Stocks?, Chunchi Wu, Sheen Liu, Junbo Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we examine the relationship between performance of the Chinese IPO firms and the reputation of investment bankers underwriting their stocks. Similar to previous studies on well-developed stock markets, we find that the initial return on the first day of trading is strongly positive for Chinese IPO stocks due to underpricing. This initial return is negatively related to the underwriter's reputation, suggesting that the better the reputation of the underwriter, the less underpricing and hence, the lower the initial return of the IPO stock. Extending the analysis to a ten-day window after the first trading day, we find …


Model State Land Use Legislation For New England, New England Environmental Finance Center, Muskie School Of Public Service Jul 2003

Model State Land Use Legislation For New England, New England Environmental Finance Center, Muskie School Of Public Service

Legislation

Sprawl is neither the ordained nor the inevitable outcome upon the New England landscape. A coordinated response to sprawl by the public and private sectors is possible, and could dramatically improve land use patterns and reduce the cost of local government. For the New England states, such a response would include, among other elements, legislation to eliminate existing gaps in the land use laws of each state – gaps that presently encourage or sanction sprawling development. It would also include incentives for municipalities to think beyond their borders and to act with greater efficiency and effect. It is the purpose …


Asian Hedge Funds: Return Persistence, Style, And Fund Characteristics, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, Melvyn Teo Jun 2003

Asian Hedge Funds: Return Persistence, Style, And Fund Characteristics, Francis Koh, Winston T. H. Koh, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study explores the return persistence properties, styles, and fund characteristics of hedge funds that mainly invest in Asia. We examine, for the first time, a high resolution hedge fund dataset which includes monthly return information as well as detailed fund characteristics data. We find that the returns of Asian hedge funds persist most strongly at monthly horizons to quarterly horizons. This persistence weakens considerably when we lengthen the measurement period beyond a quarter, and does not appear to be due to the imputation of fees or to systematic risk as measured by a simple factor model. Further, we show …


Testing The Effectiveness Of Deregulation In The Electric Utility Industry: A Market-Based Approach, Manfen Wang Apr 2003

Testing The Effectiveness Of Deregulation In The Electric Utility Industry: A Market-Based Approach, Manfen Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

In this paper, I investigate one stated purpose of deregulation in the electric utility industry—to make utility operations more responsive to news releases, a proxy for market forces. My premise is that utilities providing electricity to highly deregulated states will be more responsive to market forces than those providing electricity to non-deregulated states. I employ intraday data from April to June 2001, the year after deregulation, and from 1994, the year before deregulation. I also employ the Brown-Forsythe-Modified Levene (BFL) test to determine the volatility differences between days with released news and days without released news. The results of BFL …


Down But Not Out: The Future Of The Financial Services Industry, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, Miranda Detzler, Mohsin Habib Jan 2003

Down But Not Out: The Future Of The Financial Services Industry, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, Miranda Detzler, Mohsin Habib

Financial Services Forum Publications

The financial services industry is a key sector of the U.S. economy. It is a noteworthy contributor to the overall gross domestic product and is an important component of the gross state product for many states. With the downturn in the economy at the beginning of this decade and the accompanying declines in stock market values, the industry has been hit hard. Asset management firms have experienced sharp decreases in their assets under management; banks and insurance companies have had to refocus their operations and have become increasingly vulnerable to acquisition. As evidence grows stronger that it is unlikely that …


Lodging Real Estate Finance: Securitization, A.J. Singh Jan 2003

Lodging Real Estate Finance: Securitization, A.J. Singh

Hospitality Review

Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBSs) introduced to the U.S. lodging industry in the early 1990’s were a panacea during a period of severe shortage of debt capital. These instruments changed commercial real estate capital markets by providing flexibility and liquidity to an otherwise illiquid investment As a relatively new form of financing to the lodging industry, the mechanics of securitization, the types of CMBS investments, and their structure are not well understood. The article illustrates the process of securitization and its importance as a significant source of debt financing to the lodging industry


An Application Of Unit Root Tests With A Structural Break To Risk-Based Capital And Bank Portfolio Composition, Kevin T. Jacques Jan 2003

An Application Of Unit Root Tests With A Structural Break To Risk-Based Capital And Bank Portfolio Composition, Kevin T. Jacques

Kevin T Jacques

No abstract provided.


Investor Skepticism V. Investor Confidence: Why The New Research Analyst Reforms Will Harm Investors, John L. Orcutt Jan 2003

Investor Skepticism V. Investor Confidence: Why The New Research Analyst Reforms Will Harm Investors, John L. Orcutt

Law Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this Article provides an overview of research analysts and their basic functions, including a discussion of sell-side analysts' role in the market's recent boom and bust. Part II examines the conflicts of interest that have plagued sell-side research, and Part III reviews the Regulatory Actions that are meant to address these conflicts. In Part IV, the author will make the case for encouraging, rather than lessening, investor skepticism in sell-side research and will explain why the Regulatory Actions are not likely to improve the performance of sell-side analysts. Finally, Part V will offer a simpler proposal to …


Getting Off The Dole: Why The Court Should Abandon Its Spending Doctrine And How A Too-Clever Congress Could Provoke It To Do So, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2003

Getting Off The Dole: Why The Court Should Abandon Its Spending Doctrine And How A Too-Clever Congress Could Provoke It To Do So, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Reconsidering Gender And Investment In The Intrahousehold Decision-Making Process, Lin Johnson Iii Jan 2003

Reconsidering Gender And Investment In The Intrahousehold Decision-Making Process, Lin Johnson Iii

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

In the very recent past, the economics of the household and the economics of development appear to be edging toward a new convergence of concern around the nature and use of assets. However, these two literatures of economics continue to exist in separate spheres. I draw from both bodies of literature in order to examine gender differences in asset portfolios. I find systematic differences in the way that certain assets held by husbands versus wives influence household decision outcomes. A clear understanding of the nature and functions of various types of assets in hands of husbands and wives is necessary …