基于ProCAST数值模拟的高铬钢复合轧辊结合层夹渣成因分析

为解决高铬钢复合轧辊离心复合铸造生产中的结合层夹渣问题,以复合铸造过程数值模拟与夹渣物XRD分析相结合,分析了该夹渣成分及分布原因。首先,通过宏观检查并利用XRD实验定性分析了夹渣物的组成,初步确定了夹渣物为生产中高温反应生成的非金属夹渣,且集中分布于辊身冒口端。其次,采用数值模拟的方法分析了高铬钢轧辊复合铸造的生产过程,对比研究了离心铸造和重力铸造2个阶段辊身冒口端与底端的高温金属流动与温度场演变差异。模拟结果表明:芯部重力铸造时,芯部高温金属液对轧辊外层冲刷作用的差异是夹渣物主要分布于辊身冒口端的重要原因。通过复合铸造过程流场与温度场的模拟结果,对高铬钢复合轧辊结合层夹渣物的产生和分布原因进行分析,对于改善离心铸造轧辊缺陷的产生具有借鉴意义。     

Friends or Foes? Mobile money interaction with formal and informal finance

Access to formal financial services is a key determinant of financial inclusion and yet, informal mechanisms still dominate the financial system in developing countries. In this context, the purpose of our article is to investigate how the growing effort to harness mobile money designed for unbanked individuals may help to overcome barriers to access formal financial services. Using a unique dataset obtained from an individual-level survey conducted in Burkina Faso, we explore the interplay between mobile money innovation and pre-existing formal and informal financial instruments. Our main findings show that, overall there are no differences in the inclination of mobile money users and non-users to make deposits in formal or informal deposit instruments. However, a closer investigation reveals suggestive evidence that it may increase the probability of participants in informal mechanisms to make deposits in formal financial instruments, especially using a bank account. Moreover, considering disadvantaged groups, we find for women, irregular income and less educated individuals that mobile money may increase their probability to make deposits in a bank and/or credit union accounts. Our results are robust to using instrumental variables and propensity score matching techniques that mitigate the endogeneity problem. They also pass a number of robustness checks as well as considering an alternative dataset. Given the low access to formal financial services in developing countries, our findings taken together indicate how the increasing adoption of mobile money may act as a stepping-stone towards financial inclusion. (JEL Classification C83, D14, G21)     

Regional foreign banks and financial inclusion: Evidence from Africa

Regional foreign banks expanded quickly over the past decade in developing and emerging countries and have a growing influence in banking systems. We question whether the development of African regional foreign banks, also called Pan-African banks, influences financial inclusion of firms and households. To this end, we combine the World Bank Global Findex database and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys with a hand-collected database on the presence of regional foreign banks. We find that Pan-African banks presence increases firms’ access to credit and limited evidence that they favor financial access of the middle class by restoring confidence in banks. We suggest that this impact is related to the adoption of an aggressive strategy aiming at gaining market shares rather than through the exploitation of informational and technological advantages.     

Is better banking performance associated with financial inclusion and mandated CSR expenditure in a developing country?

Motivated by legislation mandating CSR expenditure to improve social equality and economic development in India, we examine the association of CSR expenditure and financial inclusion with the performance of banking firms in the period after introduction of the legislation. We study whether mandated CSR expenditure and/or financial inclusion measures are associated with better financial performance, using both accounting and stock market measures of performance, for Indian banks during 2015–2017. Our results demonstrate that level of CSR expenditure and degree of financial inclusion is not associated with banks’ financial performance when performance is measured in accounting terms. However, a significant negative association is found when performance is measured by stock market return. These results suggest that the current design of the legislation is unlikely to achieve its purpose. This is the first study to present clear evidence on the associations of mandatory CSR spending and firm‐level financial inclusion with accounting‐based and market‐based bank performance.     

The distributional impact of access to finance on poverty: evidence from selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper uses pooled household-level data from thirteen Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries conducted between 2014 and 2018 to examine the impact of access to finance on household wealth. The few studies that investigated this relationship in the past apply a linear estimation, and thus inadvertently assume a uniformly distributed effect across all levels of poverty. This study examines the heterogeneous impact of access to finance along the entire wealth distribution line using a Re-centered Influence Function (RIF) regression model. We adopt a unique approach to this research problem by constructing an asset-based wealth-index for each country, and use it as a proxy for poverty, and thus get around the problem of non-reported and bracket income. Further, to eliminate potential endogeneity, an instrumental variable quantile approach is implemented. Results indicate that the unconditional effect of access to finance on poverty is non-homogenous. The effect is higher at higher quantiles of wealth and very low at the bottom of the wealth index, suggesting that the extension of formal financial services disproportionately benefits wealthier households more than the very-poor categories.     

Assisted Self-help Housing in Mexico: Advocacy, (Micro)Finance and the Making of Markets

This article examines forms of housing finance that offer poor households opportunities for sourcing resources for construction work through non-mortgage microloans. In Mexico, these housing microfinance schemes have recently been incorporated into national housing policies. On a global level, the past 10 to 15 years have seen the emergence of institutional investment in microfinance. I reflect on these processes in this article by bringing critical accounts of financial inclusion in development studies and the debate on financialization within urban studies and beyond into dialogue. I combine micro- and macro-scale perspectives to examine how households become financial clients and how finance gains influence by expanding capitalist markets into the informal housing sector. This discussion is based on policy review and document analyses and an empirically grounded account of an assisted self-help housing case study. In the article I draw on three focal concepts—risk, debt and marketization—to highlight the ambivalences of the expanded access to finance for poor households engaged in self-organized building practices. These ambivalences emerge from the multiplicity of operational logics and motivations in the field of housing provision for the poor, and the profoundly conflicting rationalities of financial- and social-sector actors.     

BARRIERS TO FORMAL SAVING: MICRO‐ AND MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS

This paper examines different barriers to formal saving, considering various interventions and their possible effects at microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. It presents a comprehensive review of the literature, based on a detailed classification of the barriers associated with supply‐side factors, related to access to financial products, and demand‐side barriers, related to the use and frequency of use of those products. The paper concludes that this classification and analysis contributes to a fuller understanding of the question of financial inclusion, and how to achieve it.     

Mobile money adoption and households’ vulnerability to shocks: Evidence from Togo

ABSTRACT

We investigate the determinants of mobile money adoption process and whether its use helps households in Togo to be resilient to predictable and unpredictable life events. Using ordered logit and sequential logit models, our results show that in the adoption process, households benefit from weak ties of social groups such as religious group and informal saving group for the adoption of mobile money. We equally find that being client of banks or microfinance institutions act as powerful channels from one step to another in the process. Besides, our findings reveal that households whoever use mobile money seem to be more resilient to climatic shocks such as drought, irregular rain, soil degradation, erosion and fertility reduction and to shock that affect households’ assets (non-climatic: high prices of agricultural inputs). However, the picture is more contrasted when the individuals are classified by disadvantaged groups such as rural people, women, less educated and people with low incomes.     

我国区域金融包容水平的俱乐部收敛研究——采用非线性时变因子模型的实证分析

金融包容旨在确保社会弱势群体和低收入群体能够以一个负担得起的成本、适时适地地获得金融服务。基于对我国30个省市区2006—2013年综合金融包容指数（IFI）的测度，运用非线性时变因子模型分析其区域敛散性，结果显示：我国区域金融包容水平存在着三个收敛俱乐部，大多数省份属于水平较低的俱乐部，且俱乐部的地理划分并非简单地服从于东、中、西部。进一步采用Ordered Probit模型的估计结果表明：经济规模越大、城市化水平越高、贸易开放程度越高、信息技术发展水平越高的地区，属于金融包容水平较高层次俱乐部的概率就越大；而政府干预程度越高、城乡收入差距越大的地区，属于金融包容水平低层次俱乐部的概率越大。较低层次俱乐部的地区要在改善环境质量的基础上进一步促进经济增长，处于同一个俱乐部的地区应加强经济合作和信息技术合作。     

Monetary analysis and the global financial cycle: An Asian central bank perspective

Emerging Asia has seen a transformation of its monetary policy environment over the past two decades. By far, the most relevant change has been the maturing of its financial systems and the growing relevance of the global financial cycle: financial inclusion has spread, financial markets have deepened and financial globalisation has linked domestic markets closer to international markets. One consequence of the maturing of the financial systems has been the weakening of the traditional case for the monetarist view of the roles of monetary aggregates in the conduct of monetary policy. In addition, the maturing of the financial systems has elevated concerns of financial stability, as both a source of shocks and a responsibility of central banks. These developments have been further complicated by monetary policy spillovers from the advanced economies. All this points to the need to consider alternatives to conventional inflation targeting frameworks. This paper lays out a policy framework based on a multi-pillar monetary policy approach as a potentially attractive alternative for EM Asia. The three pillars are based on economic, financial and exchange rate stability, respectively. This framework not only offers an alternative conceptual framework but also implies institutional reforms to ensure central banks take a longer term perspective when setting policy.