Policy Support for Women Entrepreneurs’ Access to Financial Capital: Evidence from Canada,Germany, Ireland,Norway, and the United States

This cross‐country study documents policies and practices designed to increase women entrepreneurs’ access to financial capital in Canada, Germany, Ireland, Norway, and the United States. Drawing on feminist theory, we examine assumptions of policy alongside the eligibility criteria, rules and regulations of practices. Our findings reveal that four of the five country policies examined were predicated on a neo‐liberal perspective that positions women entrepreneurs as economic assets. We offer insights into opportunities for modernizing policies and practices in ways that will enhance the legitimacy of a more diverse array of women entrepreneurs and increase their access to financial capital.     

Fiskalpolitik nach der Krise

Die ?ffentlichen Haushalte sind durch die Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise stark in Anspruch genommen. Au?erdem wurde, noch bevor der Ausgang der Krise absehbar war, in Deutschland die Schuldenbremse beschlossen. Bei den Autoren besteht Einigkeit darüber, dass die Nachkrisenzeit einer sensiblen Fiskalpolitik bedarf. über deren Ausgestaltung gehen die Auffassungen jedoch auseinander.     

Trust,Social Networks and Enterprise Development: Exploring Evidence from East and West Germany

This paper examines the role of social networks in enterprise development by comparing personal trust (as inherent in social relationships) to collective and institutional trust (derived from the wider cultural, political and legal environment). The findings indicate that there is a shift from personal towards institutional trust as the firm develops and grows, but they also confirm enterprise behaviour being based on a mixture of different trust forms. Moreover, the findings underline the difficulty of studying trust empirically, recommending longitudinal qualitative approaches for further research.     

The effect of US stress tests on monetary policy spillovers to emerging markets

This paper explores the transmission of US monetary policy through US banks to emerging market economies (EMEs) and the role that stress tests play in this transmission. Data on US banks’ monthly commercial and industrial loan originations shows that: (a) US bank lending to EMEs was sensitive to domestic monetary policy changes during the zero‐lower bound period. (b) Effects of monetary easing were heterogeneous across banks and depended on banks’ stress test results, a proxy for their capital strength. Only banks that comfortably passed the stress tests issued more loans to EME borrowers. (c) Effects of monetary tightening were more similar across banks. (d) Banks shifted their lending to safer borrowers within EMEs in response to monetary easing, leaving the risk of their overall loan books unchanged. These results support the hypothesis that bank capital affects the transmission of easier monetary policy, including across borders. We conjecture that bank lending to EMEs during the zero‐lower bound period would have been even higher had the United States not introduced stress tests for their banks.