The study, conducted assesses the current state of agricultural finance in the Republic of Kosovo (Kosovo) and determine ways to improve the provision of finance to Kosovo's growing agricultural economy. The study is aimed at informing the full range of stakeholders about the best options to scale up financial services for agriculture. The study relies on data from available statistics as well as on individual and group discussions with stakeholders. Kosovo's business environment is improving, despite slow advancement in the capacity and function of the public institutions responsible for providing guidance and direction to the industry. Government focus on the World Bank (WB) Doing Business indicators has produced encouraging results. According to the Doing Business 2018 report, Kosovo is currently ranked 40th in the world, up from 126th in 2012, a leap of 86 places. In ease of starting a business, Kosovo very substantially improved its ranking, by 160 places. A law on strategic investments is under consideration, and attention is being given to support public institutions that improve the business environment, such as the Business Registration Agency, which ultimately will support investors. These developments are taking place in an economy marked by high general unemployment (30.5 percent) and very high youth unemployment (52.7 percent). The public sector remains the dominant employer and pays higher wages on average than he private sector. The supply of skilled workers is insufficient to satisfy private sector demand. Small and medium enterprises dominate the economic landscape; while these are increasing in number, few grow into larger entities.
This thesis consists of three articles. The two first articles study information flows in the financial markets, and the third one studies how mutual fund families may use relatively discretionary income sources to channel profits to specific funds within the family. The first article, joint with Daniel Schmidt, studies price and liquidity spillovers in financial markets. Using a quasi-natural experiment, we show that investors look at stock prices to extract signals, and use these to trade. In the second article, I show that mutual fund acquire information through the securities lending market. I show that active mutual funds start selling the stocks that are borrowed from them by short sellers, whereas index funds — that are prohibited from trading — do not. One the other hand, index funds are able to charge higher stock lending fees from the borrowers. I attribute this to them being better lenders in the sense that they can not use the information they gain to trade, and thereby extract profits from the short sellers' information. The third article, also with Daniel Schmidt, studies fund family level policies in allocating securities loans and lending revenues between member funds. We show that fund families deviate from the claimed fair allocation, directing more securities loans and lending profits to index funds. The finding is in line with with funds substituting a lower expense ratio with higher securities lending income. ; Cette thèse se compose de trois articles. Les deux premiers articles étudient les flux d'informations sur les marchés financiers, et le troisième étudie comment les familles de fonds communs de placement peuvent utiliser des sources de revenus relativement discrétionnaires pour canaliser des bénéfices vers des fonds spécifiques au sein de la famille. Le premier article, rédigé en collaboration avec Daniel Schmidt, étudie les retombées de prix et de liquidité sur les marchés financiers. En utilisant une expérience quasi-naturelle, nous montrons que les investisseurs observent les prix des actions pour en extraire des signaux, et les utilisent pour effectuer des transactions. Dans le deuxième article, je montre que les fonds d'investissement acquièrent des informations par le marché des prêts de titres. Je montre que les fonds communs de placement actifs vendent les actions qui leur sont empruntées par des vendeurs à découvert, alors que les fonds indiciels - qui sont interdits de négociation - ne le font pas. D'un autre côté, les fonds indiciels sont en mesure de facturer des frais de prêt de titres plus élevés aux emprunteurs. Je leur attribue le fait qu'ils sont de meilleurs prêteurs dans le sens où ils ne peuvent pas utiliser les informations qu'ils obtiennent pour négocier, et donc tirer des bénéfices des informations des vendeurs à découvert. Le troisième article, également avec Daniel Schmidt, étudie les politiques des familles de fonds en matière de répartition des prêts de titres et des revenus de prêts entre les fonds membres. Nous montrons que les familles de fonds s'écartent de l'allocation équitable revendiquée, en dirigeant davantage de prêts de titres et de bénéfices de prêts vers les fonds indiciels. Cette conclusion est conforme à la substitution par les fonds des frais de gestion plus faibles par des revenus de prêts de titres plus élevés.
This paper begins by defining, and distinguishing between, money and finance, and addresses alternative ways of financing spending. We next examine the role played by financial institutions (e.g., banks) in the provision of finance. The role of government as both regulator of private institutions and provider of finance is also discussed, and related topics such as liquidity and saving are explored. We conclude with a look at some of the new innovations in finance, and at the global financial crisis, which could be blamed on excessive financialization of the economy.
An organization or economic system where goods and services are exchanged for one another or for money Finance: The term finance is understood in two ways such as resources and as a discipline. Resources refer to monetary means of financing assets of an entity. Discipline refers to describes how the individual, government and corporate, organization manage the flows of money through an organization. Business Finance: Is the term that bound a wide range of activity and disciplines revolving the capital funds in meeting the financial needs and objectives of business enterprises. In simple words, business finance applies to all financial activities of agriculture, industry, banking, transport insurance, etc.
The natural speed of the contemporary world demands large investment projects which require specialized financial techniques such as Project Finance, defined as a fund to finance investment projects of great magnitude. Every Project Finance involves a wide range of elements such as promoters, government, contractors andsuppliers, among others, that will ensure project success. ; La rapidez del mundo contemporáneo exige que los grandes proyectos de inversión requieran de técnicas financieras especializadas como el Project Finance, definido como un fondo para financiar proyectos de inversión de gran envergadura. Todo Project Finance involucra elementos como promotores, gobierno, contratistas, proveedores, entre otros, que garantizan el éxito del proyecto.
In this dissertation I present three theoretical papers, each as an individual chapter. The first paper is titled "The Economics of Discretion in Multi-Agent Decision Problems." It is premised on the idea that discretion is valuable when knowledge mismatches lead principals to delegate decisions to agents with specialized knowledge. In the paper, I consider a team setting, and I characterize the optimal delegated choice set that is offered to agents when an agency conflict is present. I show that the amount of discretion increases with the value of an agent's private information, with the degree of alignment between the principal and agents, and with the ex ante uncertainty faced by the principal and agents. The latter finding implies that discretion may be used by agents to hedge the risk that they face. Nevertheless, I demonstrate that when all participants have rational expectations, it is never optimal for agents to add strategic uncertainty to receive more discretion ex post. I conclude the paper by applying the theory to delegated portfolio management, which yields novel empirical implications in this setting.The second paper is co-authored with Bruce I. Carlin and Andrew Iannaccone and it is titled "Competition, Comparative Performance, and Market Transparency." In the paper, we study how competition affects market transparency, taking into account that comparative performance is assessed via tournaments and contests. Extending Dye (1985) to a multi-firm setting in which top performers are rewarded, we show that increased competition usually makes disclosure less likely, which lowers market transparency and may decrease per capita welfare. This result appears to be robust to several model variations and as such, has implications for market regulation.The final paper is co-authored with Bruce. I. Carlin and is titled "Political Influence and the Regulation of Consumer Financial Products." In the paper, we explore a theoretical model of product regulation in which the social planner chooses an optimal level of market complexity, given that people have varied sophistication. We investigate how several dimensions affect the quality of regulation: the skill of the social planner, imperfect information, lobbying efforts, voting behavior in elections, and political philosophy. We find that both sophisticated and unsophisticated market participants often vote to elect the least informed and educated planners, which erodes social welfare. Further, when concerns regarding equality are sufficiently large (i.e., a socialistic agenda), the social planner limits the market to one product. In such case, adequacy suffers and all market participants are equally worse off.
The notion of "Islamic finance" was born during the tumultuous identity-politics years of the mid-twentieth century. Indian, Pakistani, and Arab thinkers contemplated independence from Britain, and independence of Pakistan from India, within a context of "Islamic society." Islam was assumed to inspire political, economic, and financial systems that are distinctive and independent of the Western (Capitalist) and Eastern (Socialist) models of the epoch. The term "Islamic economics" was coined by Abu al-A`la AlMawdudi, whose students and followers worked to develop an ostensible Islamic social science (Kuran, 2004). Mawdudi's influence on Arab Islamists began with the writings of Sayid Qutb, the father of modern Arab political Islam, whose quasi-exegesis Under the Qur'anic Shade referred exclusively to Mawdudi's writings on economic matters. Mawdudi's migration from majority-Hindu Indian society to maority-Muslim Pakistan thus became a prototype for Islamist migration away from secular political and economic systems.
Die Dissertation "Essays in Finance"' besteht aus vier Fachbeiträgen auf dem Gebiet der Finanzwirtschaft. Der Beitrag "Dissecting the pecking order -- When does it hold?" widmet sich der Frage nach der Evidenz für die Pecking-Order-Theorie im Laufe der Zeit in einer Stichprobe von 1992--2009 in den Ländern der G7. Die Länder werden jeweils nach der Ausprägung in markt- und bankorientiert unterschieden. Es stellt sich heraus, dass der Erklärungsgehalt der Pecking-Order-Theorie über die Betrachtungsperiode abnimmt. Die anfänglich großen Unterschiede zwischen bankorientierten und marktorientierten Finanzsystemen werden ebenso kleiner, allerdings hat die Pecking-Order-Theorie über den gesamten Zeitraum einen höheren Erklärungsgehalt in bankorientieren Finanzsystemen. Insgesamt stellt sich jedoch heraus, dass die Pecking-Order-Theorie nur unzureichend in der Lage ist, Kapitalstrukturentscheidungen zu erklären. Der zweite Beitrag "Illuminating the speed of adjustment -- Exploring heterogeneity in adjustment behavior" widmet sich ebenso der Kapitalstrukturpolitik und nimmt den Faden der Dynamic-Trade-Off-Theorie auf. Die unterschiedlichen Theorien haben Implikationen für die Anpassungsgeschwindigkeit an eine Zielkapitalstruktur. Während die Pecking-Order-Theorie eine Anpassungsgeschwindigkeit von null impliziert, impliziert die Dynamic-Trade-Off-Theorie eine positive Geschwindigkeit. Auch dieser Beitrag berücksichtigt die institutionellen und rechtlichen Gegebenheiten sowie das makroökonomische Umfeld. Zur Bestimmung der Anpassungsgeschwindigkeit werden verschiedene Panelschätzer eingesetzt. Insgesamt zeigt sich eine Anpassungsgeschwindigkeit von 20%. Diese ist in marktorientierten Ökonomien höher. Es zeigt sich auch, dass Firmen große Finanzierungsdefizite nutzen, um schneller ihre Kapitalstruktur anzupassen. Der dritte Beitrag "Haben Manager Timing-Fähigkeiten? Eine empirische Untersuchung von Directors'-Dealings" untersucht, welches Signal Directors' Dealings an den Kapitalmarkt senden. Unter Directors' Dealings versteht man den Handel eines Managers mit Wertpapieren des "eigenen" Unternehmens. Dieser Handel unterliegt in Deutschland einer Regulierung, die eine Meldepflicht einer solchen Transaktion vorsieht. Die Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) führt eine Datenbank dieser Transaktionen, die in dem Beitrag ausgewertet wird. Dieser Datensatz ist der umfangreichste in der bisherigen Forschung zu Directors' Dealings. In dem Beitrag wird darüber hinaus untersucht, ob das Anlegerschutzverbesserungsgesetz aus dem Jahr 2004 eine Verringerung der Überrenditen mit sich bringt. Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass Unternehmensinsider über ausgeprägte Timing-Fähigkeiten verfügen und diese zur Erzielung von Überrenditen nutzen. Ein Vergleich mit früheren Studien zeigt, dass die Werthaltigkeit von Insider-Transaktionen im bankorientierten deutschen Finanzsystem nicht höher ausfallen als in den marktorientierten angelsächsischen Finanzsystemen. Der vierte Beitrag "Common risk factors in the returns of shipping stocks" untersucht das Risikoprofil des Schifffahrtssektors. In die Stichprobe gehen alle börsengehandelten Schifffahrtsgesellschaften ein. Aus diesen werden Indizes für Massengutfrachter, Containerfrachter und Öltanker gebildet. Die Schätzungen zeigen ein geringes Beta für Schifffahrtsaktien; überraschend angesichts des hohen vor allem zyklischen Risikos in diesem Sektor. Das Asset-Pricing-Modell zeigt, dass das Risiko von Schiffahrtsaktien mehrdimensional erfasst werden muss. Neben einem Weltmarktaktienindex spielen Wechselkursrisiken des US$, Outputrisiken, wie die Veränderung der Industrieproduktion, und Inputrisiken, wie die Veränderung des Ölpreises, eine Rolle als Risikofaktoren. Insgesamt zeigt der Beitrag, dass Schifffahrtsaktien ein von anderen Sektoren und Ländern stark abweichendes Risikoprofil aufweisen und daher gut als diversifizierende Portfolioergänzung geeignet sind.
Portugal financed the extraordinary expenditures of the First World War in the same way as many other countries, i.e. running budgetary deficits, issuing debt, and printing money. By the end of the war, all nations were facing the same dilemma - they could either adopt a deflationary monetary policy or embark on a fairly aggressive policy of currency devaluation. Due to political weakness, successive Portuguese governments accepted the latter. This inflationary policy penalized mostly private savings and the share of the population relying on fixed incomes, but it also slowed down the contraction of the economy. ; publishersversion ; published
To which extent may history help us understand current financial outcomes? FinancialHistory typically tests for financial theories using historical data, or studies past financialoutcomes to understand the present through analogy. This dissertation focuses on an alternative approach to the use of history in finance, which I label "History & Finance." This approach exploits facts and institutions of the past, and the persistence of the economic and social phenomena they determine, to directly explain current financial outcomes. In the first chapter of the dissertation, I define the scope of History & Finance based on its differences with Economic and Financial History. History & Finance has its roots in the Political Economy approach that exploits the long-run effects of historical shocks and institutions to understand current economic outcomes. I survey the research in History & Finance, organizing it across the subfields of Finance which have used this approach so far. I discuss the challenges that this method poses to researchers, and in particular the difficulty of making plausible causal statements in long-run settings, and of determining the channels of transmission of the effects of historical phenomena on current financial outcomes. I then propose five directions that scholars may follow to enlarge the scope of this approach to research in finance.In the second chapter of the dissertation, I use the History & Finance approach to understand the current spatial distribution of innovation. I focus on the innovation of traditional industries, a margin of innovation which is largely neglected in the literature, although it includes the vast majority of the innovations produced every year in Europe and the United States. I exploit newly assembled data on innovation and education at the level of European regions, as well as a unique rm-level data set on the innovation of traditional industries, to show that the amount of formal education of blue-collar workers is an important determinant of the innovation produced in traditional industries. The relevance of the formal education of blue-collar workers for innovation is alternative to the learning-by-doing hypothesis and the directed technical change literature, none of which recognizes a role for formal education in the productivity of jobs on the line. Moreover, I document for the first time that the variation in the amount of basic education across European regions is highly persistent over the decades, despite the major institutional and economic shocks that have differentially affected European regions over time. Hence, I use the historical variation of basic education across regions to address the issue of the reverse causality between current innovation and current basic education. I also propose an historical natural experiment, the quasi-exogenous diffusion of the printing press across Europe after 1450 AD, as a source of variation for cross-regional basic education in the past. Higher basic education increases the amount of innovation produced by firms in traditional industries, whose workers are in largepart basically educated individuals. The effect is indeed stronger for firms that employ more blue-collar workers. I also document that higher basic education determines higher capital expenditures and lower financial constraints for those firms that innovate more.In the third chapter of the dissertation, which is coauthored with Marcel Prokopczuk and Michael Weber, I use the History & Finance approach to understand the limited stockmarket participation of households. Because the Jewish population has been associated with the provision of financial services in Europe for more than eight centuries, we test whether those German counties with a higher persecution of local Jewish communities over time tend to invest less in stocks. Indeed, in those counties where historical persecution was higher as far back as in the Middle Ages, present-day households invest less in stocks. The size of the effect is similar across cohorts, and it does not fade away over time. The evidence is consistent with a cultural norm of distrust in finance that has started in those areas where Jews were persecuted more in the past, and has transmitted across generations over the centuries. To obtain quasi-exogenous variation in the extent of Jewish persecution across German counties in the distant past, we exploit the forced migrations of the first German Jewish communities from the Rhine Valley to current Poland to instrument for the existence of Jewish communities in counties in the Middle Ages, and hence the likelihood that persecution against the communities was documented. This dissertation defines History & Finance as a rising approach to the study of financial phenomena, and it proposes several promising routes that researchers across subfields of finance may take to bring this approach from its infancy to a mature stage.
There has always been demand for Shariah compliant finance in Uzbekistan. Considering beliefs of businessmen and individuals, as well as providing inclusive financial opportunities for all people and fostering economic development, this research examines the potential of Islamic finance and opportunities in Uzbekistan. The research addresses issues of meeting the demand for finances from entrepreneurs and population, diversification of economy. The results of the research will be presented to Oliy Majlis, Legislative Chamber of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Central Bank, the Cabinet of Ministers and other relevant government institutions.
This essay examines the questions raised by the present financial crisis through an enquiry into the institutional foundations of American finance. We view with some skepticism strong claims concerning the disastrous outcome for the structural dynamism of the global financial system and America's position in it. Many critical political economists tend to take the system of global financial markets as their point of departure and then locate the US in this system. Such approaches, however, generally fail to do justice to the decades-long build up of US financial power and do not capture many of the organic institutional linkages through which the American state is connected to the world of global finance and which are responsible for its imperial sprawl. In many ways, financial globalization is not best understood as the re-emergence of international finance but rather as a process through which the expansionary dynamics of American finance took on global dimensions. Because the present system of global finance has been shaped so profoundly by specifically American institutions and practices, it will not do to evaluate the changes and transformations of this system on the basis of either an abstract, generic model of capitalism or mere extrapolations from conjunctural crises. Crisis and instability are part and parcel of the dynamics of imperial finance and so are the managerial capacities developed by the US state. The most important questions that should occupy critical political economists therefore have to do not with what appear to be external challenges to US financial power (or the putative opportunities for progressive change opened up by them), but rather relate to the ways in which the imperial network of intricate, complex and often opaque institutional linkages between the US state and global finance is managed and reproduced. ; This essay examines the questions raised by the present financial crisis through an enquiry into the institutional foundations of American finance. We view with some skepticism strong claims concerning the disastrous outcome for the structural dynamism of the global financial system and America's position in it. Many critical political economists tend to take the system of global financial markets as their point of departure and then locate the US in this system. Such approaches, however, generally fail to do justice to the decades-long build up of US financial power and do not capture many of the organic institutional linkages through which the American state is connected to the world of global finance and which are responsible for its imperial sprawl. In many ways, financial globalization is not best understood as the re-emergence of international finance but rather as a process through which the expansionary dynamics of American finance took on global dimensions. Because the present system of global finance has been shaped so profoundly by specifically American institutions and practices, it will not do to evaluate the changes and transformations of this system on the basis of either an abstract, generic model of capitalism or mere extrapolations from conjunctural crises. Crisis and instability are part and parcel of the dynamics of imperial finance and so are the managerial capacities developed by the US state. The most important questions that should occupy critical political economists therefore have to do not with what appear to be external challenges to US financial power (or the putative opportunities for progressive change opened up by them), but rather relate to the ways in which the imperial network of intricate, complex and often opaque institutional linkages between the US state and global finance is managed and reproduced.
This report gives an overview of the concerns over financing federal elections campaigning. The contents include Campaign finance practices, related issues, and policy options to address campaign finance issues
Das vorliegende Papier behandelt die Rückwirkungen der Erkenntnisse der Behavioural Finance auf die Geldpolitik. Nach einer Begriffsdefinition und abgeleiteten generellen Implikationen werden speziell die Indikatorebene und der Transmissionsprozess der Geldpolitik dahingehend analysiert. Als Grundlage dienen ausgewählte Phänomene der verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Literatur. Im Ergebnis führen diese Phänomene zu einer Erhöhung des geldpolitischen Unsicherheitsbereiches, komplexeren Modellen und einem verstärkten Bedarf nach robusten geldpolitischen Verfahren. ; The present paper analyses the implications of the findings of Behavioral Finance for monetary policy. After a definition of terms and general implications, we turn our attention to indicator variables and the transmission process of monetary policy. The starting point in each case are selected phenomena of the behavioral economics literature. As a result, these phenomena lead to an increase of monetary policy uncertainty, more complex models and an increased demand for robust monetary policy strategies.
Access to adequate housing is critically important to the health and wellbeing of the world's population. Yet, despite the fact that this statement is part of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has been on the global policy agenda for many years, hundreds of millions of people continue to live in inadequate conditions with little or no access to decent housing. The demand for housing solutions will increase as urbanization and population growth persists. The United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) has estimated that the number of people living in slums around the world will rise to 900 million by 2020 if nothing is done. Asia and Africa will face special challenges, because urbanization in those regions is proceeding rapidly. Housing is frequently unaffordable to all but the top earners. A recent report estimates a housing affordability gap affecting 330 million households, with 200 million households in the developing world living in slums (McKinsey Global Institute 2014). Research has shown that more and better housing increases the welfare of occupants. Homeownership may increase stability and civic engagement, and provide financial security in old age. Improvements in housing also have important benefits to the economy. Housing construction and home improvement generate demand for professional, skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled labor; and allow many micro and small businesses to flourish. The housing market is an important component of national economies and housing booms and busts can have significant effects on the macro economy and financial sector. The core purpose of this learning product is to generate knowledge and provide lessons learned from World Bank Group support to housing finance. Lessons were derived primarily from evaluated interventions in the form of World Bank loans or International Finance Corporation (IFC) investments and advisory services. World Bank technical assistance and knowledge products and interventions on housing finance matters were considered when provided in the context of lending operations. One limitation faced in preparation of this learning product was the lack of coverage of stand-alone World Bank advisory services.
