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As students increasingly incur debt to finance their undergraduate education, there is heightened concern about the long-term implications of loans on borrowers, especially borrowers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing upon the concepts of cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), this research explores how student debt and social class intersect and affect individuals’ trajectory into adulthood. Based on 50 interviews with young adults who incurred $30,000–180,000 in undergraduate debt and who were from varying social classes, the findings are presented in terms of a categorization schema (income level by level of cultural capital) and a conceptual model of borrowing. The results illustrate the inequitable payoff that college and debt can have for borrowers with varying levels of cultural resources, with borrowers from low-income, low cultural capital backgrounds more likely to struggle throughout and after college with their loans.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the long‐term impact of the current financial and economic crisis on competition in the European Union (EU) banking sector.

The article first discusses the long term role of competition in the banking sector, commenting on policy developments prior to the crisis. Then the impact of the crisis is discussed focusing on two main areas of policy state: aids and bank regulation and supervision. The article culminates with the conclusions.

The main findings about state aids are that the efforts of the Commission to ensure that aided companies would not use the government support to distort competition seem to be working. However, given that the full impact on competition of these aids may take years to be felt, the Commission should be prepared to take action where necessary to ensure that competition will be protected. The provision of state aids could not have been avoided due to the grave systemic risks associated with bank failures. In respect of regulation and supervision, the article concluded that there is a lot of work to be done in this area to ensure that mistakes that led to the crisis will not be repeated but also that there is need for the Commission to ensure that the reforms to the regulatory and supervisory architecture do not occur at the expense of competition.

The article contains proposals about policy adjustments, thus contributing to the ongoing debate about the role of competition policy in the efforts to address the impact of the crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the interlinkages between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and crowdfunding in the context of disaster relief operations (DRO). It intends to explore how information quality moderates the relationship of CSR and crowdfunding to achieve financial and social stability. The study also controls variables such as type of disaster, size of the firm and sector to which the firms belong while drawing implications.

The study collects empirical data in an Indian context through a structured questionnaire. The respondents belong to organizations which made a financial contribution toward DRO during the past decade (2008–2018). The sample size for data analysis is 232 responses belonging to different industries like plastic, chemical, textile and apparel, automotive parts and electronics, and construction. The study employs partial least squares structural equation modeling for testing the hypothesis.

Results indicate a positive effect of CSR activities on donation-based crowdfunding to achieve financial and social normalcy in a DRO. CSR can thus be used as an alternate way to support DRO. Results also reveal that quality of information positively impacts the relationship between crowdfunding and social aid as well as financial aid offered to the victims of the disasters. It is further observed that the type of disaster accounts for the inflow and frequency of funds made by companies as a part of their CSR activities.

The study restricts its analysis to CSR contributions made by Indian firms for DRO in an Indian context. While the study is centered in an Indian context, it holds strong implications by offering guidelines and framework for integrating funds of the government, CSR contributions of companies and donations made by citizens. The outcome also provokes thoughts on testing the results with multiple disasters across the globe in order to validate the findings and possibly extend them.

The approach of the study holds a unique slot in understanding concepts relating to CSR, crowdfunding and information science literature in the context of DRO. The study offers unique contribution in making the readers aware how CSR funds, when guided through a donation-based crowdfunding platform can help achieve social and financial aid for the victims of natural disaster.

The purpose of this study is to examine if public policy satisfaction is related with perceived financial security. The public policy examined is an emergency income policy in Brazil.

The authors used a questionnaire to interview a random sample of 235 single-parent women who received Emergency Aid (EA) resources in Brazil during the pandemic. The questionnaire included measures of financial security, financial anxiety, financial resilience and profile aspects. The authors applied a multiple regression approach to identify the determinants of financial security during the pandemic.

Our findings show that factors such as satisfaction with the emerging income policy and financial resilience are positively related to perceived financial security. Financial anxiety, financial fragility and job loss in the pandemic are negatively related with perceived financial security.

While our results correspond to a random probabilistic sample of women residing in southern Brazil, they may not be generalizable to Brazil as a whole.

This study provides evidence of the financial situation in the pandemic for the lives of economically vulnerable women. The research encourages government and financial institutions to understand the unique challenges faced by vulnerable populations during the pandemic and analyzes the direct results of EA. The study contributes to the establishment of policies to support vulnerable populations, encouraging security and financial resilience.

This research is innovative in its analysis of women’s financial situations during the pandemic, taking into consideration both behavioral aspects and profiles. Our focus on a specific case of emergency income policy adds to the understanding of the relation of such policies on vulnerable populations.

Currently, renewable energy (RE) sources represent a crucial pillar in obtaining sustainable development, one of the global goals for all countries. However, this presents a unique challenge for emerging and developing countries. As the technical and financial issues remain a significant barrier in implementing RE projects, several mechanisms are available to aid the financial aspect of investing and implementing clean energy projects. This paper aims to discuss new and traditional trends in the financial area of renewable investment, focusing on the Dominican Republic (DR), identifying the gaps in the financial area regarding RE.

An empirical study was conducted in the DR. This country is located at the heart of the Caribbean. Given the complexity of RE and developing countries issues and the scarcity of comparable research in the area, an interpretivist research paradigm along with the qualitative methodology was adopted. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The study sample includes: directors, chief executive officers and managers responsible for the implementation of RE strategies in their respective departments/organisations. NVivo software was used for data management and the collected data was analysed using content analysis.

The research highlighted several severe financial handicaps regarding RE in the DR: The lack of RE assets recognition; lack of RE investment loans; perceived RE risk; and lack of financial guarantor. After extensive interviews with critical actors in the RE sector in the DR, the possible solutions and recommendations for avoiding locking the energy and economic sector in fossil fuel debt are: (a) diversification of RE technology assets recognition, (b) implementation of government RE fund, (c) RE education on all actors and (d) introduction and adoption of new financial trends such as green bonds, bank pooling, cooperatives and more.

This paper provides information and knowledge related to financial tools and policies that are available for the RE projects in the DR. The results have a socio-economic impact. This research provides a better understanding of the key financial tools to be explored by RE project developers in the developing countries. This study shows the gaps that exist between the knowledge that the stakeholders should possess and the actual knowledge that exists in the country regarding the financial aspect of an RE project.

With the goal of helping consumers bounce back from the financial challenges they faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many firms developed and announced consumer-targeted resiliency programs (e.g. Walgreens waived delivery fees, Associated Bank allowed deferred mortgage payments). However, there is a paucity of research examining the unique features of these programs, and whether firms' investors (the first external stakeholder group to provide them with feedback regarding their strategies) were receptive to these programs during a period of time in which firms themselves were suffering financially. Drawing on resilience theory and stakeholder theory, the present research incorporates an event study of consumer-targeted resiliency program announcements to understand their financial implications for firms, and to learn whether firms witnessed different financial effects as a result of firm- and program-specific factors.

This study referred to business news publications and newswire services to collect a comprehensive list of consumer-targeted resiliency programs announced by publicly traded U.S. firms during the pandemic. The resulting dataset consisted of 145 announcements made during the period of February–June 2020. An event study was conducted in order to precisely measure the main effect of consumer-targeted resiliency programs on firm value, as manifested through abnormal stock returns. Finally, a moderation analysis (regression) was conducted to uncover whether firm characteristics or specific features of firms' consumer-targeted resiliency programs lead certain firms to witness stronger financial effects than others.

The main effect of consumer-targeted resiliency programs on firm value was found to be positive – a 1.9% increase on average. The moderation analysis finds that non-financial firms were rewarded more positively than financial firms (e.g. banks and credit card companies). In addition, financial aid (i.e. allowing customers to defer their payments to a firm for its products/services, versus a reduction in the price of a product/service or offering it for free or giving cash back to customers) and temporal characteristics (i.e. an offer being framed as limited-time, vs being indefinite or for the foreseeable future) are not found to have a moderating effect.

This theory-driven empirical study uncovers practical implications for managers of firms interested in whether investing in corporate social responsibility during times of crisis is a wise allocation of resources. Any form of financial aid for consumers, regardless of temporal limitations, is received positively by investors.

This study aims to examine online research guides as a measure of academic library support for students seeking educational funding opportunities.

The library websites of 38 members of a regional academic library consortium were examined for guides that address funding for educational purposes. The guide content was manually reviewed. Information regarding institutional characteristics was gathered from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

Despite relatively few reports of educational funding support in the library literature, online guides exist at 42% of studied institutions. However, few guides are comprehensive and many lack features that promote discoverability. Instructional content – guidance, advice or information beyond resource descriptions – and in-person funding support rarely appear in the studied guides, presenting opportunities for academic libraries to contribute to student retention and success.

This paper provides information on and examples of online guides to educational funding useful to academic libraries looking to support students facing affordability concerns.

This paper contributes to the literature on non-disciplinary uses of online research guides and is the first to survey academic library guides on educational funding opportunities.

What kinds of support do interstate rivals provide to domestic actors in ongoing civil wars? And how do domestic actors utilize the support they receive? This chapter answers these questions by comparing Iranian and Saudi military and non-military (mediation, foreign aid and religious soft-power promotion) support to the Houthis and to the Government of Yemen (GoY) during the Saada wars (2004–2010) and the internationalized civil war (2015–2018). It also focuses on the processes through which the GoY and the Houthis have utilized this support for their own strategic purposes. This chapter applies a structured, focused comparison methodology and relies on data from a review of both primary and secondary sources complemented by 14 interviews. This chapter finds that there were less external interventions in the conflict in Saada than in the internationalized civil war. During the latter, a broader set of intervention strategies enabled further instrumentalization by domestic actors, which in turn contributed to the protracted nature of the conflict. This chapter contributes to the literature on interstate rivalry and third-party intervention. The framework of analysis is applicable to civil wars that experience intervention by rivals, such as Syria or Libya.

This paper investigates how state governments used budget balancing strategies to cope with budget shortfalls in the fiscal years between 2009 and 2013. Using data from the Fiscal Survey reports and Comprehensive Annual Financial Statements (CAFRs) covering all fifty states, the paper summarizes and analyzes several types of strategies such as state savings, federal aid, revenue enhancement and expenditure cutting in response to budget shortfalls during and after the Great Recession of 2008. In addition, findings from the three case studies in New York, Texas and Washington show distinct patterns in these states’ choices of balancing strategies to cope with budget shortfalls. New York adopted a more balanced approach between revenue increasing and expenditure cutting strategies, whereas Washington and Texas implemented more severe expenditure cutting strategies to address budget shortfalls.

The purpose of this study was to assess equity investors satisfaction with stockbroker services. Four components emerged from a factor analysis of 14 variables of retail equity investors’ satisfaction with stockbroker services. According to the findings, these elements have a substantial impact on investors’ trust and confidence in stockbrokers.

By physically visiting stockbrokers’ offices in Punjab, including Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Mohali, 1,000 questionnaires were distributed to retail equities investors. Stockbrokers were chosen using a simple random selection process due to their large number. Questionnaires were filled out by personally visiting stockbrokers’ offices and handing over surveys, instructing them to fill them out with information from their clients and personally visiting stockbrokers’ offices and instructing their clients to complete the questionnaires. The respondents completed 373 surveys. A total of 45 surveys were determined to be incomplete and were removed from the study. The remaining 328 surveys were used to conduct the analysis. The study uses ordinal regression to assess investors’ trust and confidence in stockbrokers’ services.

The findings of the study highlighted the importance of variables evaluated by respondents when seeking stockbroker services. These criteria included the accuracy of stockbrokers’ information, the speed with which accounts are settled and the brokers’ willingness to give valuable service to investors. These 14 variables, which measure investor satisfaction with stockbroker services, were subjected to factor analysis. With the use of component analysis, four factors were identified: satisfaction with stockbroker services, stockbroker regulations, stockbroker transactional services and stockbrokers’ image in the eyes of investors, which explained 72.55% of the variation in the data. With the use of ordinal regression analysis, it was discovered that these four criteria have a considerable impact on investors’ trust and confidence in stockbrokers.

The current study, which is being conducted at the state level, might be expanded to include the entire country. It might be possible to look into the impact of retail capital market investment on rural investors. The research might be expanded to include a look at how reforms affect the functioning of stock markets. A study on the awareness of retail investment trends among women investors could be conducted. It is possible to investigate the ramifications of internet stock trading in India. It is possible to investigate the impact of technical innovation on capital markets. In this study, a survey has been conducted, in the future, the behavior of the investors can be observed to analyze whether they are satisfied with the services of stockbrokers or not.

This research would be extremely beneficial to investors who make investment decisions and employ stockbrokers to help them make those selections. Because with the aid of the factors revealed investors can match the service quality of their own intermediary and only if they will be satisfied they will trust their intermediary.

This research will aid stockbrokers in providing investors with efficient and effective services. As they will have knowledge about the needs and aspirations of their clients, they will try to render their services as per their expectations. This will ultimately lead to the satisfaction of the retail equity investors, and they will have trust and confidence in the services provided by the stockbrokers. The present study helps the stockbrokers in understanding the fact that the qualitative aspects of their services are crucial for building investors’ trust and confidence otherwise investors will not be satisfied with their services. This study is extremely important for government as well. They can also take cues from witnessed the positive impact of their regulations on the quality of the stockbrokers’ services. This improvement in the quality of stockbroker services has further enhanced the trust and confidence of investors. Regulations are essential for improving the quality of stockbrokers’ services.

This paper reveals that a variety of factors, i.e. satisfaction with stockbroker services, stockbroker regulations, stockbroker transactional services and stockbrokers’ image in the eyes of investors influence retail equities investors’ trust and faith in brokerage services.