Households' Decisions on Savings Accounts After Negative Experiences with Banks During the Financial Crisis

During the 2007–2008 financial crisis, consumers in many countries were suddenly confronted with the fact that their bank needed government support or had even failed. Using a detailed survey among households in the Netherlands, we show how these unexpected negative experiences have changed consumers' handling of their savings accounts. Our findings suggest that respondents who were customers of troubled banking institutions were subsequently more likely to spread their savings across accounts at several banks. They were also more likely to move funds across banks. Our results also suggest that the size of the shock is important as the strongest effects are found for respondents who experienced both a bank bailout and a bankruptcy.     

Service Satisfaction: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Satisfaction in Financial Services

Does the widely accepted espectancy-disconfirmation model apply to situations within a financial services context? Or could it be, due to specific characteristics of services, that a different model applies? This paper addresses these questions and tests the relationships between consumer expectations, performance, disconfirmation, .satisfaction and repeat purchase in a lisrel model. The results would suggest that the relevancy of disconfirmation is fairly apparent and that expectations have only an indirect influence on satisfaction where financial services are concerned. The performance level of financial services however has a strong positive direct effect on satisfaction.     

Economic Impacts of Supply Management: Review and Comparison of Alternative Measures of Consumer Welfare Loss

Previous measures of the welfare impacts of supply-restricting marketing boards in Canada were rather simplistic but, in this study, it is shown that the simple measures are a close approximation of the true welfare loss. The empirical results suggest that consumer surplus is a relatively good measure of equivalent or compensating variation – a measure of the true loss in welfare. It is estimated that consumers probably lose between $1.01 and $1.14 for every $1 transferred to producers as a result of marketing boards in poultry products and eggs. Les measures antérieures des incidences, sur le bien-être, des offices de gestion des approvisionnements au Canada étaient plutôt simplistes. Dans la préterite étude, nous démontrons cependant qu'elles représentaient tout de même une excellente approximation de ?effet négatif réel sur le bien-être. Nos résultats empiriques donnent à conclure que le surplus à la consommation est une mesure relativement exacte de la variation équivalente au compensatoire, une mesure de la perte réelle au chapitre du bien-être. On calcule que les consommateurs perdent probablement entre 1, 01 $ et 1, 14 $ pour chaque dollar transféré aux producteurs par suite de ?intervention des offices de commercialisation dans les secteurs des oeufs et de la volaille.     

CAPITAL MOBILITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: A PANEL DATA APPROACH

In this paper we are primarily concerned with assessing the degree of capital mobility in sub‐Saharan Africa. Using the methodology as proposed by Feldstein and Horioka (1980)—later termed the “Feldstein‐Horioka puzzle”—we test the hypothesis of perfect capital mobility against the alternative of imperfect capital mobility. Following Vamvakidis and Wacziarg (1998) and Isaksson (2000), provision is made in our model to show the dependency of the lesserdeveloped countries on international finance and aid and how a more open economy contributes towards improving the level of capital movement in these countries. We also assess the change in the degree of capital mobility over the time period in an effort to see whether institutional and political changes have been successful. We show that, compared to the region, South Africa is, to a large extent, more developed and should therefore play a leading role in the “African Renaissance”. Stationary panel data estimation techniques are applied to a sample of 36 sub‐Saharan African countries over the time period 1980–2000. The benefits of using one‐way error component models are derived from simultaneously employing time and cross‐section dimensions of the data, resulting in a substantial increase in the degrees of freedom. The fixed and random effects models enable us to acknowledge country heterogeneity within the panel, making provision for differences across countries like capital control policies, financial and capital market structures and exchange rate regimes.     

CREDIT DEMAND AND CREDIT RATIONING IN THE INFORMAL FINANCIAL SECTOR IN UGANDA1

This paper investigates the household and individual characteristics that influence the demand and supply of informal credit in Uganda, which credit is important for improving the welfare of the poor. Informal credit demand is positively and significantly influenced by age, sex, education level, dependency ratio, household expenditure, and regional location. On the supply side, informal lenders' credit rationing behaviour is negatively and significantly influenced by age, sex, asset values, and regional location. Government policies should focus on increasing both the productive capacity and wealth of households in order to enhance the poor's creditworthiness and make them less susceptible to credit rationing by lenders.     

Differential infant and child mortality in three Dutch regions, 1812–19091

New micro‐level data have recently become available for three provinces of The Netherlands for the period 1812–1912, which allow the study of the evolution of socio‐economic differentials in infant and childhood mortality. The authors found significant differences in the levels of infant mortality by social group between the three provinces, and a wide variety in the pattern of social inequality. This showed the importance of the regional environment for the level of infant mortality in the nineteenth century. Contrary to expectations, strong social differences were also observed in neonatal mortality. Being born in an urban environment did not have a strong effect on survival during the first year of birth.