Does bank ownership affect lending behavior? Evidence from the Euro area

We analyze the differences in lending policies across banks characterized by different types of ownership, using micro-level data on Euro area banks during the period 1999–2011 to detect possible variations in bank lending supply responses to changes in monetary policy. Our results identify a general difference between stakeholder and shareholder banks: following a monetary policy contraction, stakeholder banks decrease their loan supply to a lesser extent than shareholder banks. A detailed analysis of the effect among stakeholder banks reveals that cooperative banks continued to smooth the impact of tighter monetary policy on their lending during the crisis period (2008–2011), whereas savings banks did not. Stakeholder banks’ propensity to smooth their lending cycles suggests that their presence in the economy has the potential to reduce credit supply volatility.     

A Different Perspective on the Evolution of UK Income Inequality

This paper scrutinizes the conventional wisdom about trends in UK income inequality and also places contemporary inequality in a much longer historical perspective. We combine household survey and income tax data to provide better coverage of all income ranges from the bottom to the very top (and make our estimates available to other researchers). We make a case for studying distributions of income between tax units (i.e. not assuming the full income sharing that goes with the use of the household as the unit of analysis) for reasons of principle as well as data harmonization. We present evidence that income inequality in the UK is as least as high today as it was just before the start of World War 2.     

Impact of commuting by workers on household dietary diversity in rural India

Drawing insights from the literature on transformation of rural non-farm employment, pathways from agriculture to nutrition, and linkages between migration and nutritional status of household, we seek to understand differences in dietary diversity across three mutually exclusive types of rural Indian households: where all members work in rural areas, at least one member commutes to urban areas, at least one member has no fixed place of work. Our analysis is based on a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2009–10 and we use propensity score matching methods. We find that as compared to households with no commuters, households with rural–urban commuters have higher dietary diversity; whereas households with no fixed place workers have lower dietary diversity. We also find differences in dietary diversity across households which differ by their primary source of income.     

Bringing back Thrift Week: Neo-liberalism and the rediscovery of thrift

The paper examines and compares the movements for promoting working-class savings in the modern USA and in Great Britain in the 19th century. It explores the use of savings as a technology for managing individuals’ behaviour and motives and the nature of the government objectives which are served by these parallel projects.     

Was the expansion of housing credit in Japan good or bad?

This paper shows, using data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey, that housing credit has become increasingly available over time in Japan, especially since 2000, and that this has made it easier for Japanese households to purchase housing and enabled them to do so at an earlier age. However, it also shows that the greater availability of housing credit has increased households’ housing loan repayment burden, which has resulted in their cutting back on their other consumption expenditures and created the potential for retirement insecurity. Another concern is that the increasing availability of housing credit has been accompanied by a pronounced shift from fixed-rate to variable-rate housing loans. This is cause for concern given the low level of financial literacy that prevails among the Japanese population and the likelihood that interest rates on variable-rate housing loans will be raised sooner or later as monetary policy is tightened.     

Household responsibility system and China's agricultural Growth revisited: Addressing endogenous institutional change

The rise of the Household Responsibility System has been widely viewed as a significant contribution to China's agricultural growth. However, this empirical conclusion is rested upon a convenient but doubtful presumption that the process of institutional change, also known as decollectivization, is exogenous. We contribute to this literature by explicitly recognizing the endogeneity of institutional changes, and exploit exogenous variations in lagged weather shocks and initial fixed assets for consistent estimation. With improved data on irrigation, mechanization, weather and institutional changes in a provincial panel data during 1970–1987, the results of panel instrumental estimations reveal that the Household Responsibility System had a significantly positive effect on China's agricultural growth, which was larger than indicated by OLS estimates that suffer from adverse selection and attenuation biases.     

中国邮储银行大连分行网点转型下客户服务模式创新研究

随着社会大众对金融服务的要求不断增多,银行网点转型已经成为一个必然趋势。信息时代背景下,银行网点的转型大多向智能化的方向转变,而随着网点转型,其客户服务模式也在不断创新。论文以邮储银行大连分行为例,对银行网点智能化转型的影响进行了分析,探究了邮储银行大连分行网点智能化转型存在的问题,并且提出了相关的转型建议,最后对邮储银行大连分行智能化网点转型下客户服务模式的创新情况进行了研究,希望能够在银行网点智能化转型的背景下,促进其客户服务水平的不断提升。     

Drivers of cropland abandonment in mountainous areas: A household decision model on farming scale in Southwest China

Cropland abandonment has emerged as a prevalent phenomenon in the mountainous areas of China. While there is a general understanding that this new trend is driven by the rising opportunity cost of rural labor, rigorous theoretical and empirical analyses are largely absent. This paper first develops a theoretical model to investigate household decisions on farming scale when off-farm labor market is accessible and there is heterogeneity of farmland productivity and distribution. The model is capable of explaining the hidden reasons of cropland abandonment in sloping and agriculturally less-favored locations. The model also unveils the impacts of heterogeneity of household labor on fallow decisions and the efficiency loss due to an imperfect labor market. The model is empirically tested by applying the Probit and Logit estimators to a unique household and land-plot survey dataset which contains 5258 plots of 599 rural households in Chongqing, a provincial level municipality, in Southwest China. The survey shows that more than 30% of the sample plots have been abandoned, mainly since 1992. The econometric results are consistent with our theoretical expectations. This work would help policy-makers and stakeholders to identify areas with a high probability of land abandonment and farming practice which is less sustainable in the mountainous areas.     

Assessment of mobility inequalities and income data collection. Methodological issues and a case study (Douala,Cameroon)

In order to understand the scale and nature of inequalities in intra-urban mobility we need reliable income data, but this is generally difficult to collect in household surveys. The methodological approaches that are employed to overcome difficulties in income data collection may affect the relative position of individuals and households within the income distribution and our estimates of mobility inequalities. In the context of a case study of Douala, this paper evaluates how the way income data is collected affects its accuracy and therefore the measurement of daily mobility inequalities. Simplified data collection tends to minimise the scale of inequalities as it misrepresents the income distribution. The error is greater in remote zones. Shortcomings in the statistical apparatus with regard to income data thus blur our perception of mobility inequalities and impede investigation of the links between daily travel, poverty and social exclusion.     

HOW COOPERATIVE ARE SAVINGS AND CREDIT COOPERATIVES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?: AN ANALYSIS OF DATASETS FROM UGANDA

Building successful savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) that actually embody the cooperative principles is a challenge to development agencies. Although SACCOs form the majority of microfinance providers in many developing countries, the most recent literature on microfinance governance and performance has given little reference to the longstanding body of relevant cooperative literature. SACCO representation in microfinance datasets is biased. Drawing on so‐far unexploited datasets of Ugandan SACCOs and savings groups, this paper empirically analyses policy debate regarding SACCO‐ and savings group regulation. The findings point to the relevance of practically implementing the principle of ‘cooperation between cooperatives’ to ensure effective governance at SACCO level. Moreover, the paper introduces two new measures, based on members' savings and shares, which could become useful tools to track the application of cooperative principles in developing countries, and hence improve evidence‐based policy‐making for SACCOs.