Analysis of the adoption of customer facing InStore technologies in retail SMEs

Brick and mortar stores are suffering the dramatic revolution of the retail sector. Customer facing in-store technologies (CFIST) are a key component of the inevitable transformation of retail stores; yet the reasons to adopt such technologies by business owners may be little known. Based on a TOE and TAM inspired framework, this study analyses the drivers of such decision by small and medium size enterprises using a survey methodology. The results show that the attitude towards technology is the strongest predictor of the intention to adopt CFIST, highlighting the role of the top management in technology decisions. This conclusion has important implications for practitioners. This research is the first to address the adoption of CFIST by SMEs and therefore set the path for further studies about the impact and adoption of in-store technology in SMEs.     

Was the expansion of housing credit in Japan good or bad?

This paper shows, using data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey, that housing credit has become increasingly available over time in Japan, especially since 2000, and that this has made it easier for Japanese households to purchase housing and enabled them to do so at an earlier age. However, it also shows that the greater availability of housing credit has increased households’ housing loan repayment burden, which has resulted in their cutting back on their other consumption expenditures and created the potential for retirement insecurity. Another concern is that the increasing availability of housing credit has been accompanied by a pronounced shift from fixed-rate to variable-rate housing loans. This is cause for concern given the low level of financial literacy that prevails among the Japanese population and the likelihood that interest rates on variable-rate housing loans will be raised sooner or later as monetary policy is tightened.     

民生银行不良贷款问题探讨

不良贷款率的增长加大了商业银行的经营风险。以在A股上市的中国股份制商业银行中不良贷款情况比较典型的中国民生银行为研究对象,分析其不良贷款现状及成因,提出了加大处置力度,强化队伍建设;业务重点管理,质量实时监控;完善地区评级系统,合理调整信贷投入等改进建议。     

ECONOMIC POLICY UNCERTAINTY EFFECTS ON CREDIT AND STABILITY OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

We examine policy‐related economic uncertainty effects on the availability of credit, non‐performing loans and loan loss provisions using a panel of 18 countries. We provide significant evidence that uncertainty reduces the availability of credit while leading to increases in banks' non‐performing loans and loan loss provisions, distorting sectoral stability. Our findings are economically meaningful.     

Forecasting corporate financial distress in the Southeast Asian countries: A market-based approach

This study is conducted to investigate the prediction of corporate financial distress based on the Merton (1974) market-based Distance to Default (DD) model over the period from 1997 to 2016 which covers a range of economic financial circumstances, including the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) and Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The study focusses on the six largest countries in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), comprising of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Unlike previous studies which focus mainly on bankruptcy, this paper focusses on early warning distress indicators that signal distress well before bankruptcy. This is when firms experience difficulty in servicing debt as measured by interest coverage ratio (ICR) at a firm level and non-performing loans (NPLs) at a country level. Key empirical findings from this paper indicate that the market-based distance-to-default (DD) model is generally a good early warning indicator of financial distress in the following year, particularly for ICR, but that prediction accuracy varies between individual countries in the Southeast Asian region.     

Customer concentration and loan contract terms

We study pricing and non-pricing features of loan contracts to gauge how the credit market evaluates a firm’s customer-base profile and supply-chain relations. Higher customer concentration increases interest rate spreads and the number of restrictive covenants featured in newly initiated as well as renegotiated bank loans. Customer concentration also abbreviates the maturity of those loans as well as the relationship between firms and their banks. These effects are intensified by customers’ financial distress, the level of relationship-specific investments, and the use of trade credit in customer–supplier relations. Our evidence shows that a deeper exposure to a small set of large customers bears negative consequences for a firm’s relations with its creditors, revealing limits to integration along the supply chain.     

Stuck outside the single market; Evidence from firms in central and eastern Europe

Border effects on firms’ performance are typically estimated following reduced barriers to trade, for instance due to new trade agreements. This paper estimates a border effect on increasing barriers for firms located outside of a new external EU border following the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargement. In a repeated cross-section of three flows of EBRD-World Bank survey data, the study encompasses 23 border regions in 10 countries, four of which bordered new EU/Schengen countries. Taking border transformations as exogenous changes to firms’ environments, and focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises near borders, the results indicate that five years after enlargement, firms in non-EU member states near a new external EU border experienced a fall in sales of 40% and exports of 70% relative to firms near borders that did not change. Firms on the EU side of the same border experienced no such negative effect. Ten years after enlargement, the negative effects effectively disappeared.     

资本约束背景下定向降准对企业信贷的定向引导效果

2017年,央行将普惠金融和定向降准相结合,定向降准能否精准引流决定着政策的成败。基于上市公司2011年至2019年的面板数据,采用双重差分法检验定向降准是否能够实现其政策目标,定向向三农和小微企业引导信贷资源,并用三重差分法引入资本约束这一调节变量,检验资本约束的增强是否对定向降准的实施效果有影响。结果表明:定向降准能够达到政策目标,增加三农和小微企业可获得的信贷资源,此外资本约束对定向降准的实施效果无显著影响。     

乡村振兴金融服务中涉农贷款增长放缓问题调查与思考——以安徽为例

在当前乡村振兴金融服务中涉农贷款增长放缓问题突出。通过对安徽省数据进行分析和重点调研省内8个地市有关情况,我们认为导致涉农贷款增长放缓的原因是多方面的,既有需求下降的原因,也有供给不足的问题,此外统计范围变化和不良贷款处置也对涉农贷款增长产生了影响。针对涉农信贷中存在的问题,本文提出了加强涉农金融产品创新、加大不良贷款处置、强化风险分担、避免政策"一刀切"和完善统计制度等相关政策建议。     

中小企业被并购过程中的价值综合评估

并购是企业为了扩大生产规模、提高经营效益所做出的重大战略调整。本文运用账面价值法,将企业各种因素赋予不同的权重,结合账面价值倍数参数(支付者愿意支付的净资产价值的倍数)评估企业的价值,得到了更为客观的企业价值参数,为并购决策提供了可靠的参考依据。