Federal Home Loan Bank Advances and Commercial Bank Portfolio Composition

Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances are a source of government‐sponsored liquidity intended to encourage housing finance, although “community financial institutions” may use such funds more generally. Because money is fungible, it is an empirical question as to how advances are actually employed. Using panel‐vector autoregression techniques, we estimate dynamic responses of U.S. commercial bank portfolios to: FHLB advance shocks, bank lending shocks, and macroeconomic shocks. We find that FHLB advances: (i) are used as a general source of liquidity by U.S. commercial banks of all sizes and (ii) dampen the sensitivity of mortgage lending to macroeconomic shocks at small banks.     

The Changing Nature of Contracting and Trust in Public‐Private Partnerships: The Case of Victorian PPP Prisons

This paper examines shifting constructions of contracting and trust that are manifest between pre‐2000 and post‐2000 public‐private partnerships (PPPs) providing prison facilities and/or services in the Australian State of Victoria. As such, this paper is significant because it outlines longitudinal insights into the nature of changing practices sustaining these PPPs. The post‐2000 period examined reflects a change of government and the policy context. Our examination is based on a range of primary and secondary documents. The primary documents comprise three pre‐2000 Prison Services Agreements and two post‐2000 Facilities Services Agreements. A number of government and other reports constitute the secondary documents consulted. While there are many substantive similarities between the contracts, we find five main areas of changed contracting practices over the period examined. These relate to: first, the objectives of the PPP prisons; second, risk management practices; third, the approach to performance measurement and reporting; fourth, the structuring of incentive and payment mechanisms; and fifth, the emphasis on collaboration. Overall, we find that the post‐2000 contracts promote a more overt development of goodwill trust and relational contracting, building on presumptions of contractual and competence forms of trust. However, quite different outcomes have been achieved from particular contractual contexts. Our study suggests that in complex PPP contracts, the influences of both the transacting parties and the transaction environment have been insufficiently recognized in the literature on PPPs.     

Major Changes for Super, but Women are Still Ms … ing Out

Recent major legislative and regulatory changes to superannuation have brought improved equity to Australia's superannuation system, but women are still missing out when it comes to the adequacy of their retirement savings. The reasons are women's continuing marginal attachment to the labour force and their attendant low level of lifetime income in the paid workforce, which translates to low levels of accumulated occupation-linked superannuation savings. This paper argues that gender-based disparities in adequacy of superannuation persist, and that the prospects for retirement lifestyles for most older women continue to be dismal.     

Financial management attitudes and behaviour of husbands and wives

In spite of recent economic events which suggest that families are having much difficulty managing their financial resources, little research has focused on spouses' attitudes and behaviour regarding family financial management. This study addressed three questions: (1) What are spouses' attitudes toward and behaviour regarding family financial management? (2) To what degree do husbands and wives agree in their attitudes and report similar behaviour regarding financial management? and (3) What factors effect the attitudes and behaviour of spouses regarding management of their financial resources? While spouses' attitudes were generally supportive of family resource management principles and philosophy regarding financial management, their reported behaviour indicated relatively few families acted on their beliefs. Correlations between husbands' and wives' attitudinal and behavioural scores were positive and statistically significant; however, the modest coefficients indicated much room for disagreement between spouses regarding family management. The family characteristics which were the best predictors of positive financial management attitudes and effective behaviour included: number of years married; completion of a course in consumer education by a spouse; and occupational status of wives.