Do SMEs in deprived areas find it harder to access finance? Evidence from the UK Small Business Survey

Encouraging enterprise in deprived places is an important objective of the UK government policy. Evidence on the perceptions of entrepreneurs suggests that access to finance may be harder for firms in deprived areas, who may have fewer contacts, less collateral or worse access to mainstream banks. Yet there is little empirical evidence on whether this is actually the case. This paper investigates whether firms in deprived areas are more likely to find it hard to access finance than other firms, using a sample of around 3500 UK small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We find that firms in deprived areas are more likely to perceive access to finance is a problem. However, controlling for SME characteristics, firm growth, credit scores and selection effects, we find no evidence that they actually do find it harder to obtain. The results suggest that geographical disparities in access to finance are unimportant for the average firm.     

Income and Price Elasticities of Demand in South Africa: An Application of the Linear Expenditure System

This paper investigates the expenditure patterns of South African households using detailed cross‐sectional expenditure and price data that varies across region and time. Linear expenditure system parameter estimates are used to calculate income and price elasticities for a number of product categories at different points of the income distribution. We find substantial variation in the price and income elasticities of demand for items across the income distribution, with the bottom quartile being extremely sensitive to increases in the price of food and clothing items, and the top quartile being as sensitive as households in developed countries.     

Duration and the price behavior of fixed-rate level payment mortgages: An analytical investigation

In this research we use a continuous payment formula for duration to examine the price behavior of a fixed-rate level payment mortgage. In the case where the mortgage is held to maturity, duration increases monotonically as term-to-maturity increases, regardless of changes in the market rate of interest. In the case where the mortgage is prepaid prior to maturity, there exists a unique market interest rate below which duration is a monotonically increasing function of time of prepayment, but above which duration has a global maximum at some time of prepayment prior to the term-to-maturity.     

Responses by Australian auditors to the global financial crisis

We examine the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on auditor behaviour in Australia. Using a sample of listed companies, we examine whether the GFC impacted the propensity of auditors to issue going concern modifications and increased audit effort as reflected in audit fees and audit reporting lag. Controlling for client characteristics, we find an increase in the propensity to issue going concern opinions during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007 and that Big N auditors responded to the GFC earlier than non‐Big N auditors. In relation to audit effort, we find evidence of increased audit fees during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007. There is, however, no evidence of increased audit reporting lags during the GFC.     

Dynamical clustering of exchange rates

We use techniques from network science to study correlations in the foreign exchange (FX) market during the period 1991–2008. We consider an FX market network in which each node represents an exchange rate and each weighted edge represents a time-dependent correlation between the rates. To provide insights into the clustering of the exchange-rate time series, we investigate dynamic communities in the network. We show that there is a relationship between an exchange rate's functional role within the market and its position within its community and use a node-centric community analysis to track the temporal dynamics of such roles. This reveals which exchange rates dominate the market at particular times and also identifies exchange rates that experienced significant changes in market role. We also use the community dynamics to uncover major structural changes that occurred in the FX market. Our techniques are general and will be similarly useful for investigating correlations in other markets.     

Offshoring and the Elasticity of Labour Demand

This paper examines the impact of offshoring on labour demand and labour demand elasticities for a sample of 40 countries over the period 1995–2009 using the World Input–output Database (WIOD). Estimating the conditional labour demand model we find that offshoring impacts negatively labour demand, and in particular the demand for low- and medium-educated labour, with some evidence indicating that offshoring has tended to increase labour demand elasticities. Of particular interest are results for the subsamples of developed and developing countries. Most notably, we find that the negative effects of offshoring in developed countries are largest for high-educated labour, an outcome which we show is due to the offshoring of developed countries with other developed countries.     

Dimensions of quality upgrading

The impact of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies’ trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading: upgrading across industries, upgrading across different quality segments within industries and, finally, product upgrading within quality segments inside industries. For the analysis we partition industries into quality segments based on EU‐15 import unit values. The results for ten CEE countries (comprising the CEE‐5, the Baltics and South East Europe) and thirteen industries suggest fundamental differences, both across country groups and across the three different notions of quality upgrading. The CEE‐5 show no evidence of entering a ‘low‐quality trap’ in all three dimensions. By contrast, while there is a general catching‐up process across industries and inside quality segments, the second notion of low‐quality specialization may be applicable within the high‐tech industries to the performance for the Baltics and South East Europe as a group.     

全球股市低迷 亚洲首当其冲

一年前,当信贷危机在美国和欧洲刚刚崭露头角时,许多投资者都将亚洲股票视为了天堂。时至今日,全球股市经历了6个多月的下跌,而亚洲市场的跌幅位居前列。     

A community-based impact assessment of the Wild Coast spatial development initiative, 1997–2004

Much of the debate around the spatial development initiatives (SDIs) in South Africa is based on economic theory. To add the community perspective, an evaluation of local economic development on the Wild Coast followed a baseline in 1997 with comparable surveys in 2000 and 2004. Apart from an increase in access to piped water and a reduction in unofficial payments for health services, there was little community evidence of development over this period. Residents reported decreasing knowledge of the SDI and there was no increase in numbers considering small business ownership. In the investment-intensive ‘anchor’ areas, as in the SDI as a whole, there was no significant increase in employment and more households received remitted incomes from migrant workers. In an SDI for small businesses in tourism and agriculture, there was a dramatic fall-off in food production. No more households had loans in 2004 than in 1997, but more were taking loans from loan sharks. Other spatial planning initiatives might learn from the Wild Coast, not least through the perspectives gained from community-based impact assessments.