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Das sogenannte Skimming ist in den letzten zehn Jahren ebenso wie andere Formen von Kriminalität im modernen Zahlungsverkehr vermehrt in den Fokus der Öffentlichkeit geraten. Hierbei werden durch gezielte Manipulationen an Geldautomaten Daten von Bankkarten ausgespäht, um mit den so erlangten Informationen Dubletten zur späteren Geldabhebung herzustellen. Bisher ist das Skimming vor allem unter strafrechtsdogmatischen Gesichtspunkten erörtert worden. Kriminologische Aspekte spielten dabei allenfalls am Rande eine Rolle. Nach einer kurzen Darstellung der technischen Vorgehensweise wird eine strafrechtliche Einordnung des Phänomens in den Blick genommen. Im Anschluss daran erfolgt eine Interpretation der statistischen Befunde, bevor schließlich nach Präventionsansätzen gefragt wird. Es wird argumentiert, dass das Phänomen des Skimmings weiterhin relevant bleiben wird, solange Zahlungskarten mit Magnetstreifen im Umlauf sind. Es findet ein Wettlauf zwischen technischen Präventionsmaßnahmen auf der einen sowie deren Umgehung auf der anderen Seite statt. Zudem ist das Potenzial an lukrativen Angriffsobjekten - etwa im ländlichen Bereich - aus Sicht der Täter noch längst nicht ausgeschöpft. (ICF2)

"We propose an equilibrium occupational choice model, where agents can choose to work in the real sector (become entrepreneurs) or to become informed dealers in financial markets. Agents incur costs to become informed dealers and develop skills for valuing assets up for trade. The financial sector comprises a transparent competitive exchange, where uninformed agents trade and an opaque over-the-counter (OTC) market, where informed dealers offer attractive terms for the most valuable assets entrepreneurs put up for sale. Thanks to their information advantage and valuation skills, dealers are able to provide incentives to entrepreneurs to originate good assets. However, the opaqueness of the OTC market allows dealers to extract informational rents from entrepreneurs. Trade in the OTC market imposes a negative externality on the organized exchange, where only the less valuable assets end up for trade. We show that in equilibrium the dealers' informational rents in the OTC market are too large and attract too much talent to the financial industry"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Can enrolment incentives reduce the incidence of cream-skimming in the delivery of public sector services (e.g. education, health, job training)? In the context of a large government job training program, we investigate whether the use of enrolment incentives that set different 'shadow prices' for serving different demographic subgroups of clients, influence case workers' choice of intake population. Exploiting exogenous variation in these shadow prices, we show that training agencies change the composition of their enrollee populations in response to changes in the incentives, increasing the relative fraction of subgroups whose shadow prices increase. We also show that the increase is due to training agencies enrolling at the margin weaker members, in terms of performance, of that subgroup.

Tremendous efforts have been put in place by the relevant government bodies and partners in enhancing financial inclusion in Kenya. An analysis of the data from the Fin Access National Survey of the year 2013 shows that mobile financial services has been the main driver of these positive trends in financial inclusion. However, there is a marginal decline in usage of banks, savings and credit organizations (SCOs) and informal groups for financial services with the Micro-Finance institutions (MFIs) showing the highest decline in usage of its services. We found Cream skimming practices are evident in the market based on income levels and access to certain type of financial services. The verdict, financial inclusion has increased in Kenya due to the penetration of mobile phone financial services and concerted government efforts and minimal cases of Cream skimming are observed.