Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Path To Financial Inclusion: The Success Of Self-Help Groups-Bank Linkage Program In India, Sivakumar Venkataramany, Balbir B. Bhasin

WCBT Faculty Publications

Financial inclusion has been a major theme in both industrialized and developing economies in the era of financial globalization. When microcredit institutions have received limited success in many countries, microfinance is being used in India for the purpose of accomplishing universal financial inclusion. This paper recognizes the overwhelming efforts of the Government of India and focuses on the success of the linkage between commercial banks and self-help groups (SHGs). The SHGs comprising predominantly women groups help in the social cause of alleviation of poverty, increase of sustainability, reduction of vulnerability, improvement of capacity building and help the weaker sections build …

Regulation Of The Otc Derivatives Market: A Regulatory Proposal Of Cds, Erik Welin

WCBT Undergraduate Publications

According to many commentators the credit derivatives and especially CDS have been a leading cause to the development of the current financial crisis. During the last year, policy makers, regulators, and other commentators around the world have therefore focused their attention on how to regulate OTC derivatives and especially CDS.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the proposed regulatory responses to OTC derivatives and especially CDS from an economic point of view. The paper proposes a twofold regulatory response. First it proposes that we return to the old common law rule of "rule against difference contracts". …

Stochastic Business Cycle Volatilities, Capital Accumulation And Economic Growth: Lessons From The Global Credit Market Crisis, Kwamie Dunbar

WCBT Faculty Publications

The recent global economic downturn in a number of economies was preceded by rising credit market risk brought on by a massive financial market failure. This paper develops a small open economy model that analyzes the interaction of business cycle volatilities with capital accumulation and the subsequent impacts on economic growth. We use a stochastic dynamic programming model to test the central hypothesis that rising volatility shocks is an inhibitor to capital accumulation and subsequently economic growth. The model illustrates that traditional capital-based growth models which assume a constant capital stock are not consistent with the business cycle variation in …

Finance Flies High: How Unilever Redesigned The Finance Function To Build Brand Value And Drive Growth, Barbara M. Tarasovich, Bridget Lyons

WCBT Faculty Publications

Unilever's finance team played a key role in the success of their brands. The company achieved its fourth consecutive year of accelerating organic sales growth from less than 0.5% in 2004 to more than 7% in 2008, according to Jim Lawrence, Unilever's CFO. Its strategy is to focus on volume growth and strengthening the competitive position of the company's brands. In this article, the authors examine how the finance function at Unilever was redesigned to deliver the firm's strategic goals, including an emphasis on volume growth and competitive position of its brands. Beginning in 2005, the finance team at Unilever …

How The Madoff Fraud Could Affect Your Cpa Practice, Stephen Scarpati

WCBT Faculty Publications

With an estimated $65 billion lost from trust funds, retirement plans, pensions, investment funds, inheritance monies, and nonprofit organizations, many people have been adversely affected by the Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard L. Madoff. When you combine a lot of lost money with a lot of angry people, the result is a lot of lawsuits. The breadth of those lawsuits will encompass all associated with the affected organizations--including CPAs. Those messages were loud and clear at the May 27, 2009, breakfast symposium "Are CPAs the Next Madoff Victims? The Accountant's Liability," sponsored by The CPA Journal.

Interest Rate Convergence In The Euro-Candidate Countries: Volatility Dynamics Of Sovereign Bond Yields, Hubert Gabrisch, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Working Papers

We advocate a dynamic approach to monetary convergence to a common currency that is based on the analysis of financial system stability. Accordingly, we test empirically volatility dynamics of the ten-year sovereign bond yields of the 2004 EU accession countries in relation to the eurozone yields during the January 2, 2001- January 22, 2009 sample period. Our results show a varied degree of bond yield co-movements, the most pronounced for the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland, and weaker for Hungary and Slovakia. However, since the EU accession, we find some divergence of relative bond yields. We argue that a ‘static’ …