Green Microfinance in Europe

As global warming continues to attract growing levels of attention, various stakeholders (states, general public, investors, and lobbyists) have put climate change on corporate agendas and expect firms to disclose relevant greenhouse gas (GHG) information. In this paper, we investigate the consistency of the GHG information voluntarily disclosed by French listed firms through two different communication channels: corporate reports (CR) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). More precisely, we contrast the amounts of GHG emissions reported and the methodological explanations provided (named ‘traceability’) in each channel. Consistent with a stakeholder theory perspective, we find that GHG amounts are significantly lower in the CR than in the CDP. We also find that firms increase the CR figures’ traceability when there is a discrepancy between disclosures in the two channels. We suggest that the aim of this greater traceability is to enhance information credibility across the different channels used.     

Outsourcing and Innovative Activity of the Companies From the Visegrad Group

Outsourcing is a change from horizontal cooperation （coopetition） to a vertical one. That is, the company, which up to now could be considered as a competitor, changes into a supplier. It is worth remembering that the company that is to become a supplier can either create a new one or be an already existing one. This article is based on empirical data coming from the companies from the Visegrad Group that is Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. The results presented here imply that outsourcing has a stimulating effect on innovative activity of a company both in terms of investment and implementation aspects. Also, innovative activity, in its investment and implementation aspects, positively influences the occurrence of outsourcing. This confirms the existence of feedback among these variables. It is worth noting however, that the probability of innovative activity among the companies using outsourcing is higher than the probability of outsourcing among the companies that are irmovatively active. It seems that the influence of outsourcing on innovative activity is stronger than the influence o f innovative activity on outsourcing.     

Hedging of a credit default swaption in the CIR default intensity model

An important issue arising in the context of credit default swap (CDS) rates is the construction of an appropriate model in which a family of options written on credit default swaps, referred to hereafter as credit default swaptions, can be valued and hedged. The goal of this work is to exemplify the usefulness of some abstract hedging results, which were obtained previously by the authors, for the valuation and hedging of the credit default swaption in a particular hazard process setup, namely, the CIR default intensity model.     

Business or Basic Needs? The Impact of Loan Purpose on Social Crowdfunding Platforms

Journal of Business Ethics - Crowdfunding has created new opportunities for poor microentrepreneurs. One crucial question is the impact that the purpose of a loan—either business investment...     

The Market Model of Interest Rate Dynamics

A class of term structure models with volatility of lognormal type is analyzed in the general HJM framework. The corresponding market forward rates do not explode, and are positive and mean reverting. Pricing of caps and floors is consistent with the Black formulas used in the market. Swaptions are priced with closed formulas that reduce (with an extra assumption) to exactly the Black swaption formulas when yield and volatility are flat. A two–factor version of the model is calibrated to the U.K. market price of caps and swaptions and to the historically estimated correlation between the forward rates.     

A choice modelling case study on climate change involving two-way interactions

Choice Modelling applications can be designed to estimate main effects only or multiple-way interactions between attributes. It has been reported that higher order effects generally account for less than 10% of the choice explanation. Nevertheless, the amount of applications testing for interactions among attributes in environmental valuation is very limited. This paper reports a Choice Modelling exercise valuing climate change impacts on plant cover, land erosion and fire risk in Spanish shrublands. Two out of three two-way interactions were found significant and to account for more than 20% of the choice model explanation. Their contribution to the log-likelihood value was comparable to the one of the main effects variables. Moreover, accounting for second order interactions significantly altered the estimates of the implicit prices of attributes compared to the main effects specifications.     

The Limits of Discipline: Ownership and Hard Budget Constraints in the Transition Economies

The existing literature on soft budget constraints suggests that firms may be subsidized for political reasons or because of the creditors' desire to recover a part of the sunk cost invested in an earlier period. In all these models hard budget constraints are viewed as being, in principle, capable of inducing the necessary restructuring behaviour on the level of the firm. This paper argues that the imposition of financial discipline is not sufficient to remedy ownership and governance-related deficiencies of corporate performance. Using evidence from the post-communist transition economies, the paper shows that a policy of hard budget constraints cannot induce successful revenue restructuring, which requires entrepreneurial incentives inherent in certain ownership types (most notably, outside investors). The paper also shows that the policy of hard budget constraints falters when state firms, because of inferior revenue performance and less willingness to meet payment obligations, continue to pose a higher credit risk than privatized firms. The brunt of state firms' lower creditworthiness falls on state creditors. But the 'softness' of these creditors, while harmful in many ways, is not necessarily irrational, if it prevents the demise of firms that are in principle capable of successful restructuring through ownership changes.     

ETUDE DES FACTEURS CONTINGENTS DU TAUX DE REMBOURSEMENT AU SEIN D'UNE INSTITUTION DE, MICROFINANCE: LE CAS DU TOGO

RESUME ** :  Parmi les facteurs contingents du taux de remboursement des microcrédits, la responsabilité solidaire des emprunteurs est peu analysée dans les études empiriques. Grâce à la constitution d'une base de données originale, cet article s'attache à estimer l'impact des facteurs contingents du taux de remboursement, dont la forme du prêt. Les résultats dégagés font apparaître que, d'une part, dans la catégorie des prêts remboursés dans les délais, les prêts individuels offrent un meilleur taux de recouvrement mais aussi, d'autre part, que cet effet s'estompe dès lors que sont incorporés les remboursements tardifs. Parmi les autres facteurs contingents du taux de remboursement, on dénombre principalement la distance entre le lieu de résidence des clients et le siège de l'institution et l'objet du crédit.