A Baseline Study of Ghanian Microfinance Institutions

We conducted a baseline study of the historical performance of 34 rural and community banks (RCBs), 27 credit unions (CUs), and 2 savings and loans companies (S&Ls), which are licensed microfinance institutions in Ghana, for future comparisons. The study also investigated their potential for long-term survival. The RCBs and CUs were drawn from five political administrative regions. We found that RCBs and CUs have done reasonably well. Regional differences, however, exist in the performance of both RCBs and CUs, and there are significant differences in performance of RCBs vis-à-vis CUs. Both have good potential for long-term survival, but CU appears to be better positioned. We identified disparate levels of performance and future potential between the two S&Ls studied.     

Rules for the disposition of tariff revenues and the determination of common external tariffs in customs unions

This paper is about the determination of common external tariffs (CETs) in customs unions (CUs). We first examine how the relationship between preferences over CET levels, technology and the distribution of factor ownership in a CU is conditioned by the rule that determines the disposition of tariff revenues. We then explore how majority voting at the country level translates these preferences into an equilibrium CET. Among other things, we find that, when revenues are partitioned in proportion to members’ imports, tariff preferences may be polarized, the trade patterns of some CU members may be endogenous, and, as a result, their payoff functions may not be single-peaked. This leads to voting outcomes that dramatically differ from those arising under other sharing rules (e.g., the ‘population’ and ‘consumption’ rules) and raises the possibility of a Condorcet paradox.     

Infrastructure,returns to scale and sovereign debt

This paper explores the nexus between the issue of sovereign debt and investment in infrastructure, emphasizing the case of economies of scale. The focus is on debt contracts that are incentive compatible. It is shown that public and private financial institutions may need to lend amounts above some threshold to force the borrowing sovereign to take full advantage of any economies of scale that may be present. Low levels of lending may or may not result in default. Sufficiently high amounts of lending may be needed to ensure repayment and may prove to be mutually beneficial.     

西部农户小额信贷还款率影响因素分析

利用主成分分析方法和logistic回归模型,对西部地区小额信贷还款率影响因素进行实证分析。研究表明农户专业技能、信用等级、农户收入、贷款利率、贷款期限、贷款用途等因素与小额信贷还款率显著相关,农户年龄、受教育程度、贷款金额等因素对小额信贷还款率的影响不显著,不同因素在影响小额信贷还款率时具有重要次序性,农户专业技能、信用等级、农户收入、贷款利率、贷款期限、贷款用途、是否贴息、经营能力对小额信贷还款率的影响最为重要,其次为劳动力人数和耕地面积因素。     

Gunboats, reputation, and sovereign repayment: lessons from the Southern Confederacy

Many states that formed the Southern Confederacy defaulted on sovereign debt sold in international capital markets during the 1840s. The Confederacy also elected President Jefferson Davis, who openly advocated the repudiation of U.S. states' debts while a member of Congress. Despite its poor credit record, the Confederate government managed to float cotton bonds in England that constituted under 2% of its expenditures. The bonds were largely issued to settle overdue debts with gun contractors who had cut off trade credit. The South serviced the bonds as late as March 1865, a time of domestic hyperinflation and weeks before the fall of Richmond. Although the Confederate experience shows that trade sanctions can promote debt repayment, the gunboat model can only account for a small amount of lending. A reputation or another type of sanction would be necessary to support higher levels of lending in international capital markets.     

国际小额信贷模式运作机制比较研究

国际上公认有成效的四种小额信贷模式在贷款抵押、利率形式及目标客户的选择等运作机制设计上存在差异.通过比较发现以连带责任替代抵押担保、以市场化利率取代贴息利率及采用动态贷款激励是这些模式取得高还款率和绩效的关键.为使小额信贷能在新农村建设中发挥作用,我国应建立以农村信用社为基础、市场化运作的小额信贷模式,把联保机制引入农村经济组织及实施差别利率,实现小额信贷财务持续性、服务穷人与社会效益的平衡发展,最终缓解或消除贫困.     

Determinants of Loan Repayment Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana: The Case of Asante Akyem Rural Bank

We examine the role of a typical set of determinants of loan repayment performance of SMEs in the context of a rural bank’s setting in Ghana. Our analysis using survey data suggests that, while higher application cost, loan size and interest rate exert significantly negative influence on loan repayment, higher educational background of the SME operators is associated with significantly better repayment performance. Interestingly, in comparison with those with only primary-level education, SME operators with tertiary education register the best repayment performance followed by those with secondary education. We provide detailed discussion and managerial implications of these findings.     

Sovereign defaults: Information, investment and credit

Why would a sovereign government, immune from bankruptcy procedures and with few assets that could be seized in the event of a default, ever repay foreign creditors? And, correspondingly, why do foreign creditors lend to sovereigns? This paper finds general conditions under which, even in the absence of sanctions, lending to sovereigns can emerge in a single shot game. Furthermore, it shows that positive borrowing can be sustained both in pooling and separating equilibria. In this way, it makes clear that neither sanctions nor reputation considerations, the two classical explanations, are necessary to enforce repayment. Information revelation is the crucial mechanism for these results. The repayment/default decision is interpreted as a signal used by the government to communicate information to domestic and foreign agents about the fundamentals of the economy. Governments repay to affect agents' expectations about them. A default, through its effect on expectations about fundamentals, can generate a decline in foreign and domestic investment and a credit crunch in domestic credit markets. Governments repay to avoid these costs, but may default (in equilibrium) when hit by a negative shock.     

Modeling strategic group dynamics: A hidden Markov approach

With competition playing a critical role in market-based strategic planning and implementation, identifying and understanding competiton and competitive dynamics has become critical. In this vein, the strategic groups perspective has emerged as a powerful means to understand such competitive phenomena. Empirical approaches to model competitive dynamics within the strategic groups framework, however, have been piece meal as researchers typically resort to distinct sequential analysis by time period. To overcome the limitations of these simplistic approaches, we develop a hidden Markov model to study strategic group (competitive) dynamics. In this approach, we explicitly account for competitive dynamics over time by modeling strategic group memberships as latent states that follow a first-order Markov process. Thus, we explictly model the notion that firms adopt their strategy for the next time period based on their current strategy and respective outcomes. We illustrate the model with longitudinal data from COMPUSTAT on 63 public banks from the tri-state region of NY-OH-PA. The results show the proposed model to be superior to a number of viable alternative approaches that have been suggested in the literature. We find the existence of three strategic groups: the leveraged group has low current assets compared to current liabilities, high debt to equity, and high total borrowing to assets. The lending group consists of the largest banks that focus on lending with high ratios of gross loans to securities and gross loans to deposits. The balanced group has the largest number of banks where the values of the financial and product ratios are intermediate compared to the leveraged and lending groups. The asymmetries in the switching probabilites are also evident as there seems to be a higher probability of switching into the balanced group than switching out of this group. The switching probabilites are symmetric between the the leveraged and lending groups.     

Bank lending,misleading signals,and the latin american debt crisis

This article explores the microfoundations of bank and borrower behavior in the Latin American debt crisis. In the model developed, less developed countries attract loans by signaling their ability and willingness to pay. Some of the signals are “coercive” because they indicate that if income targets are not met, income will be redistributed in order to honor debt obligations. Implicit in such coercive signaling is the borrower's expectation that redistribution will not damage economic productivity. A coercive signal is misleading when feedback effects on social stability and work effort—and thus on the ability to pay—are underestimated or ignored; in this case, it inaccurately predicts repayment prospects. We estimate two equations: (1) private lending to Latin borrowers as a function of our specified signals, and (2) the probability of payments problem as a function of the same set of signals. The results support our borrowing model: coercive signals do enhance lending, and at least one of these signals is misleading.     

Loan Repayment Performance in Community Development Finance Institutions in the UK

This paper identifies the key institutional factors that influence loan loss rates in Community Development Finance Institutions in the UK. Traditional bank credit assessment puts the blame of poor loan performance largely on the borrower. This is the first study of its kind to examine institutional characteristics of 16 CDFIs in the UK and assess their influence on the loan loss rates. The results show that 8 out of the 13 institutional characteristics examined significantly influence loan repayment performance. Although a vast body of literature supports the view that borrower characteristics are highly influential, our results provide strong evidence to show that institutional characteristics are equally important and both factors need to be taken into account if loan repayment performance is to be improved.     

Tunisia's Lending Program to SMEs: Anatomy of an Institutional Failure?

This paper studies a case of what in many respects is an institutional failure. It is the popular lending program in Tunisia known as FOPRODI, created in 1974 for the promotion of small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) and for the decentralization of industry. FOPRODI's announced aim was to help new entrepreneurs with insufficient capital to start their businesses and thereby to create new jobs. Because of an extremely low repayment rate, the program has failed in the sense that it became unsustainable and indeed finally collapsed in 1997. While there are some bases for believing that FOPRODI may have been more successful than it might seem in social terms, at this point it seems to have been a failure. The sources of its institutional failure are traced to inappropriate incentives attributable both to the institutional structure surrounding FOPRODI and its own rules. The findings are then used to generate policy recommendations on ways in which similar programs could be better designed, transaction costs reduced and the outcomes obtained more satisfactory.     

认知无线电网络子空间映射频谱共享

针对集中式多用户多天线认知无线电网络,分析了子空间映射能够为认知系统提供的通信机会以及理想信道条件下的空间子信道分配方案。在此基础上,提出了一种基于子空间映射的频谱共享策略。根据认知系统的感知结果,计算可以利用的空间子信道数,通过认知用户接入控制和子空间映射避免或抑制系统间干扰,从而在保证授权用户通信质量的前提下,为认知用户提供通信机会。仿真结果表明,与已有的子空间映射频谱共享方法相比,该策略不仅具有更高的认知系统可达和速率,而且能够为认知系统提供更多通信机会。     

Free trade networks

The paper examines the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs) as a network formation game. We consider an n-country model in which (possibly asymmetric) countries trade differentiated industrial commodities. We show that if all countries are symmetric, the complete FTA network is pairwise stable and it is the unique stable network if industrial commodities are not highly substitutable. We also compare FTAs and customs unions (CUs) as to which of these two regimes facilitates global trade liberalization, noticing that unlike CUs, each signatory of an FTA can have another FTA without consent of other member countries.     

Entrepreneurial motivation and business performance: evidence from a French Microfinance Institution

This article examines the link between entrepreneurial motivation and business performance in the French microfinance context. Using hand-collected data on business microcredits from a Microfinance Institution (MFI), we provide an indirect measure of entrepreneurial success through loan repayment performance. Controlling for the endogeneity of entrepreneurial motivation in a bivariate probit model, we find that “necessity entrepreneurs” are more likely to have difficulty repaying their microcredits than “opportunity entrepreneurs”. However, type of motivation does not appear to make a difference to business survival. We test for the robustness of our results using parametric duration models and show that necessity entrepreneurs experience difficulties in loan repayment earlier than their opportunity counterparts, corroborating our initial findings. Our results are also robust to a sharper analysis of motivation, focusing on unemployment (on the necessity side) and non-pecuniary benefits from success (on the opportunity side).     

The importance of heterogeneity in determining the effects of preferential trade agreements on Foreign Direct Investment

This paper investigates the importance of PTA formation in attracting inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). In particular, we examine the heterogeneous effects of different types of PTAs (FTAs or CUs) on the extensive and intensive margins of FDI and on how the interdependence among various PTAs may affect a country's ability to attract FDI inflows. We find that the larger the preferential markets to which a country has access, the larger the FDI inflows the country receives. Furthermore, we find that the type of PTA matters in determining FDI inflows. In this case, we find that the formation of CUs tends to promote more FDI inflows than the formation of FTAs. Our findings also indicate that the formation of PTAs significantly affects FDI through the intensive margin, rather than through the extensive margin. Importantly, notice that these effects are driven by the preferential markets to which a country has access and that have not established a PTA with the FDI-originating (home) country, confirming that PTA interdependence matters in determining FDI inflows.     

Gender Differences in Debt Repayment Problems after Divorce

Studies have shown that a growing number of divorced women were experiencing debt repayment problems during the 1980s. This study uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to (1) examine how debt repayment problems differ by marital status and gender and (2) investigate the role that supplemental income payments play in helping to mitigate repayment problems. The results show that divorced men and women are more likely to default on their debt obligations than married households. Further analysis reveals that increases in welfare payments significantly decrease the likelihood of default for divorced women but do not affect the probability of default for divorced men and married households. There is no evidence that payments related to child support and alimony affect default rates. The findings suggest that welfare benefits may help to mitigate the economic consequences of divorce for women.     

The changing role of U.S.-based MNCs: A financial perspective

An increasing number of US.-based multinational companies have adopted a strategy of “inward-oriented” diversification in the 1980s. This article focuses on the ensuing financial performance of these firms, especially as compared to that of a group of U.S.-based domestic corporations. Specifically, well-known performance and risk measures are applied to a sample of multinational and domestic firms based in the U.S. The data are analyzed over three five-year periods (1979-1983, 1980-1984, and 1981-1985). The overall results, while providing total support for a few of the major issues and lending partial support to the others, seem to indicate that U.S. multinationals may have adopted a successful strategy in response to a changing global economic environment.     

供应链管理视角下的企业预付款融资采纳研究

文章结合供应链管理理论及营运资金管理理论,从供应链管理运作管理的视角出发,深入分析影响企业采纳预付款融资的因素。基于来自全国717个企业的供应链金融调查数据,文章利用对二分类因变量进行回归建模的Logistic回归模型,对企业采纳预付款融资的发生概率进行拟合。研究结果表明,从融资企业资金需求的角度,供应商提供原材料的平均交付周期越长、企业所采购物料的价格波动越大,越倾向于采纳预付款融资来解决资金问题,维持企业正常运营。结合金融机构信用风险控制的考虑,相对于原材料价格波动小的企业,所在供应链信息化程度高对帮助原材料价格波动大的企业获得金融机构授信的作用更显著。同时,文章认为出于确保还款资金来源的考虑,金融机构更倾向于向原材料库存平均周转天数短的企业授信;由于融资企业引入外部金融机构资金带来了额外的融资成本,会激励企业更努力做好其原材料库存管理,缩短原材料库存平均周转天数,尽早预付款融资,降低融资成本。