Recent finance advances in information technology for inclusive development: a systematic review

The overarching question tackled in this paper is: to what degree has financial development contributed to providing opportunities of human development for those on low-incomes and by which information technology mechanisms? We systematically review about 180 recently published papers to provide recent information technology advances in finance for inclusive development. Retained financial innovations are structured along three themes. They are: (i) the rural-urban divide, (ii) women empowerment and (iii) human capital in terms of skills and training. The financial instruments are articulated with case studies, innovations and investment strategies with particular emphasis, inter alia on: informal finance, microfinance, mobile banking, crowdfunding, microinsurance, Islamic finance, remittances, Payment for Environmental Services (PES) and the Diaspora Investment in Agriculture (DIA) initiative.     

Deep learning in finance and banking: A literature review and classification

Deep learning has been widely applied in computer vision, natural language processing, and audio-visual recognition. The overwhelming success of deep learning as a data processing technique has sparked the interest of the research community. Given the proliferation of Fintech in recent years, the use of deep learning in finance and banking services has become prevalent. However, a detailed survey of the applications of deep learning in finance and banking is lacking in the existing literature. This study surveys and analyzes the literature on the application of deep learning models in the key finance and banking domains to provide a systematic evaluation of the model preprocessing, input data, and model evaluation. Finally, we discuss three aspects that could affect the outcomes of financial deep learning models. This study provides academics and practitioners with insight and direction on the state-of-the-art of the application of deep learning models in finance and banking.     

Language use in services: Recent advances and directions for future research

While many service management and marketing concepts stress the importance of the interaction between a customer and a service provider, prior research devotes relatively little attention to the role of language use in services. This article describes the importance of broadening understanding of this issue and reviews prior research in this area. Next, this article introduces the articles in this special section. Although these articles individually and collectively contribute to a better understanding of the role of language use in services, we contend that much still needs to be learned. In order to assist researchers in their exploration of this topic, this article ends with a future research agenda that might inspire researchers to expand on the boundaries of knowledge on language use in services.     

Experiential learning through STEM: Recent initiatives in the United States

This paper reviews recent educational initiatives in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in the United States, asking to what extent experiential learning methods are being incorporated into STEM education. We draw on a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence. The quantitative evidence is from an analysis of the proposal abstracts for all 11,406 of the STEM education and workforce development-related projects funded by NSF grants from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2022. The qualitative portion of the paper analyzes results from a number of scholarly studies of local initiatives from the last 10 years drawn from a range of published and conference papers, reports and media stories, and project websites, drawn from education research databases, secondary literature, and websites of specific organizations. We seek to classify and describe patterns observed among the projects examined, identifying common patterns and combinations of features. We believe that the paper represents the first comprehensive study of efforts to employ experiential learning methods in STEM education to link formal and informal aspects of learning.     

Small firms finance in France

The data concerning interest rates paid by small and medium sized firms on credit and financial markets as well as the available balance-sheets confirm the idea that firms have difficulties to get financial resources. This paper tries to put in light the financial disparities among firms when a discrimination resting on size characterises the functioning of credit market. The first section presents the main financial characteristics of French SMEs: the low level of equities, the heaviness of short term debts and the over use of payment delays. Section 2 shows how French and European authorities reacted in order to improve the financial situation of SME's and to reduce their liquidity constraint, changing tax policy and promoting the creation of new means of financing.     

Continuous‐time mean–variance portfolio selection: A reinforcement learning framework

We approach the continuous‐time mean–variance portfolio selection with reinforcement learning (RL). The problem is to achieve the best trade‐off between exploration and exploitation, and is formulated as an entropy‐regularized, relaxed stochastic control problem. We prove that the optimal feedback policy for this problem must be Gaussian, with time‐decaying variance. We then prove a policy improvement theorem, based on which we devise an implementable RL algorithm. We find that our algorithm and its variant outperform both traditional and deep neural network based algorithms in our simulation and empirical studies.     

Trustee decisions in investment and finance

When a trustee makes a decision for a client, a standard objective is to decide as the client would if he had the trustee's information. How can this objective be attained when, given the trustee's information, there is still uncertainty about the consequences of alternative courses of action? A promising approach is to apply the rule to maximize expected utility using the client's utilities for consequences and the trustee's probabilities for states. But taking utilities and probabilities from different sources causes a problem that has to be resolved. Briefly, the problem is that the client's utilities for consequences involve assessments of risks that are uninformed because he does not have informed probabilities. And the resolution of the problem is to reconstruct his utilities for consequences using a component due to risk that the trustee supplies for the client, and a component due to other consequences that the client supplies for himself.     

Dynamic openness and finance in Africa

This study assesses dynamics of openness and finance in Africa by integrating financial development dynamics of depth, activity and size in the assessment of how financial, trade, institutional, political and other openness policies (of second generation structural and institutional reforms) have affected financial development. The empirical evidence is based on Generalized Method of Moments with data from 28 African countries for the period 1996–2010. The following findings are established. (1) While the de jure (KAOPEN) indicator of financial openness improves financial depth, the de facto (FDI) measurement decreases it, with the effect of the latter measure positive on financial size. (2) Whereas trade openness improves financial depth, its effect on financial activity and size is negative. (3) Institutional openness has a positive effect on financial dynamics of depth and activity, while its effect on financial size is negative. (4) Political openness and economic freedom are detrimental to financial depth and activity. Justifications for these nexuses are discussed.     

Multilateral finance and development

This article presents an outline of major international financial institutions, i.e. the Bretton Woods organisations. The focus of analysis is on the conceptions that have shaped the posture of these institutions on development issues and on their corresponding activities and problems.     

Sources of finance for development

The foreign capital requirements of less developed countries (LDCs) are basically the result of their huge volume of investment which far exceeds their actual saving potential. In addition, their capital needs are steadily rising owing to inflation and—not least—to the higher cost of energy. As there is no standard recipe for development finance, the following article gives a survey of the major sources of capital.     

金融品牌的战略思考

2007年11月2日,受第一财经邀请,为金融品牌价值榜颁奖典礼做点评。看到国内金融业蓬勃发展,但各个公司似乎都在中国市场这片大蓝海中,随心所欲地航行,所以觉得应该要在公司战略规划角度上说说,为日后金融产业全面开放的竞争做准备。     

Global aging and public finance

The world is getting older, and the rate of aging, as well as the composition of aging, has important global policy implications for public finance. We’re witnessing a speeding-up of the share of elderly in developing countries. It’s important to think about fiscal stress from aging in two ways. Aging from above results in changes in social expenditures. This is going to lead to increases in health expenditures, increases in pension expenditures, and decreases in education expenditures. Aging from below leads to changes in revenues as workers decline relative to the total population. I want to “right-size” spending on health care, pensions, and welfare. Let’s talk about our public policy values and goals and figure out what we can afford, and what that means, and who needs it.