The role of self-accounting and financial capability in consumer credit decisions

The role of financial capability in the consumers＇ financial behaviour has been widely analyzed by the literature. The same happened for the relationship between debt and financial capability. The consensus about the benefits of an increase in the levels of financial literacy collides with a diversity of opinions on what the best solutions to increase financial capability. While methods based on traditional teaching may not be an effective solutions and they could not provide results in the short term, solutions oriented to support consumers in important financial decisions （requests for funding, choice of retirement solutions, etc.） may show greater effectiveness. Studies in literature have shown the tendency of subjects with high levels of financial capability to adopt a long term view and to upgrade their daily financial behaviour with attitudes and practices related to self-finance （budget, financial check-up, saving for goals, etc.） The paper focuses on the relationship between financial capability and self-accounting practices, interpreting the latter as evidence of conduct financially aware. After a review of the literature designed to emphasize the role of self-accounting in the context of personal finance, a financial check-up based tool is proposed, pointing out how the financial accounts＇ schemes and logics （regular budget, estimates and forecasts checking targets） may find useful application in the context of personal finance.     

Country-of-Origin Effects on Russian Wine Consumers

In recent years, Russia has experienced significant economic growth. The wine industry is among those most affected by increases in disposable income. As a consequence, Russian wine importers have widened the range at the upper end of the quality spectrum. In the current scenario, some key questions arise concerning consumer attitudes toward wine and the way it is perceived in this evolving market. This article attempts to investigate such concerns through a choice experiment approach conducted by means of a questionnaire-based survey submitted to 388 Russian households located in the country's three largest cities (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Novosibirsk). In the experiment, respondents were asked to choose their favorite wine among seven dry red wines. The stated choices are analyzed using a random utility model to obtain an estimation of the price effect through a triangular distribution. Our results indicate the presence of three distinct market segments in the Russian wine market: a segment with only high-quality, highly priced Italian and French wines, a medium-quality segment currently limited to Spanish wines, and a much lower quality segment of wines in which demand for alcohol is essentially satisfied.     

Financial literacy: A comparative study across four countries

This study analysed differences in financial literacy across four countries: Canada, Italy, the UK and the US. The purpose was to understand whether factors associated with financial literacy in one country can be generalized to other countries as well or whether unique national characteristics make it necessary to examine financial literacy in each country individually. A financial literacy index, based on the number of correct answers to four multiple‐choice questions, was used to test the relevance of country of origin to financial literacy. Results suggest significant differences among countries indicating that there are national and cultural differences in what households know and need to know about their personal finances. Policy makers should consider these differences when developing financial literacy assessment tools for their respective countries.     

Assessment of social–ecological transitions in a peri-urban Ethiopian farming community

In a peri-urban poverty-stricken community in the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 15 years of development efforts were undertaken by establishing an enterprise, which initially consisted of a horticultural farm and finally was composed of a multifunctional farm and a restaurant with a shop. The enterprise collaborated with BioEconomy Africa, which was charged with administrative, monitoring and facilitation tasks, and provided a training, demonstration and research facility. In the innovation process, the enterprise selected technologies and implemented them within the context of local economic and market conditions. The project benefitted from a flexible allocation of modest funds. This paper assesses the sustainability of the enterprise and the community on the basis of social–ecological system transformability and resilience. The scheme of the Food and Agriculture Organization is used to evaluate the transformability, while resilience is evaluated through self-organization capacity, disturbance absorption capacity, and learning and adaptability. The project period was divided into five Macro-phases. The transformability assessment of the enterprise revealed nonlinear and asynchronous dynamics of environmental sustainability, economic resilience, social well-being and governance that after reaching a minimum attained a maximum at the end of the period under observation. The resilience assessments showed that the self-organization capacity, the disturbance absorption capacity, and learning and adaptability slowly changed to reach a satisfactory level at the end of the observation period. The changes in transformability and resilience profoundly affected the livelihood of the community. The paper demonstrates the important role of agricultural in the development of poverty-stricken peri-urban communities and indicates that innovation processes and the efficiency of facilitation extension model implementation can be enhanced by applying adaptive project execution procedures. It can be concluded that the continuous monitoring and assessments of transformability and resilience are a prerequisite for efficiently moving the socio-ecological system on a smooth road towards a socially acceptable standard of living.     

REVERSE DISCRIMINATION AND EFFICIENCY IN EDUCATION*

This article shows that reverse discrimination policies can find a justification purely on efficiency grounds. We study the optimal provision of education when households belong to different groups, differing in the distribution of the potential to benefit from education among individuals, which is private information. The main result is that high‐potential individuals from groups with relatively few high‐potential individuals should receive more education than otherwise identical individuals from groups with a more favorable distribution of these benefits.     

Bank Consolidation, Internationalization, and Conglomeration: Trends and Implications for Financial Risk

This paper documents trends in bank activity, consolidation, internationalization, and financial firm conglomeration with data on more than 100 countries, and explores the extent to which financial firm risk and systemic risk potential in banking are related to consolidation and conglomeration. The relationship between consolidation, conglomeration and financial risk is documented using financial data on the largest 500 financial firms worldwide and on large banks in about 90 countries. We find that (a) large conglomerate firms did not exhibit levels of risk‐taking lower than smaller and specialized firms in 1995, while they exhibited higher levels of risk‐taking in 2000; (b) highly concentrated banking systems exhibited levels of systemic risk potential higher than less concentrated systems during the 1993–2000 period, and this relationship has strengthened during the 1997–2000 period. We outline research directions aimed at explaining why bank consolidation and conglomeration may not necessarily yield either safer financial firms or more resilient banking systems.     

Product market competition, R&D, and welfare

We compare the subgame perfect equilibrium emerging in four regimes of research and development (R&D) competition between duopolists: (i) full competition, (ii) coordination of research strategies, (iii) joint venture with cross licensing of patents, and (iv) full collusion in R&D and the product market. The outcome of the firms' interaction depends on the interplay of the degree of product market competition, the similarity of the research strategies, and the cost of R&D, relatively to market size. Our main result is that each of the four regimes can, for plausible parameter combinations, yield the highest level of welfare. Therefore it is problematic to draw general rules applicable to all proposed research joint ventures.     

Product Differentiation and the Location of International Production

We analyze how product differentiation influences firms' choice between exporting and foreign direct investment. When product specifications are determined endogenously, we show that there is no symmetric solution to the product specification subgame. The cost disadvantage of an exporting firm translates into a disadvantage in product specification. Overseas production is favored if this allows the investing firm to adopt a more aggressive product specification. Our analysis suggests an ambiguous relationship among location, product differentiation, and cost and demand functions, confirmed by the existence of a parameter range for which there is no pure strategy equilibrium in location choice.     

Forecasting Tail Risks

This paper presents an early warning system as a set of multi‐period forecasts of indicators of tail real and financial risks obtained using a large database of monthly US data for the period 1972:1–2014:12. Pseudo‐real‐time forecasts are generated from: (a) sets of autoregressive and factor‐augmented vector autoregressions (VARs), and (b) sets of autoregressive and factor‐augmented quantile projections. Our key finding is that forecasts obtained with AR and factor‐augmented VAR forecasts significantly underestimate tail risks, while quantile projections deliver fairly accurate forecasts and reliable early warning signals for tail real and financial risks up to a 1‐year horizon. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.