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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of short-term loan (STL) vs long-term loan (LTL) on wheat productivity of small farms in Sindh, Pakistan.

The econometric estimation is based on cross-sectional data collected in 2016 from 18 villages in three districts, i.e. Shikarpur, Sukkur and Shaheed Benazirabad, Sindh, Pakistan. The sample data set consist of 180 wheat farmers. The collected data were analyzed through different econometric techniques like Cobb–Douglas production function and Instrumental variables (two-stage least squares) approach.

This study reconfirmed that agricultural credit has a positive and highly significant effect on wheat productivity, while the short-term loan has a stronger effect on wheat productivity than the long-term loan. The reasons behind the phenomenon may be the significantly higher usage of agricultural inputs like seeds of improved variety and fertilizers which can be transformed into the wheat yield in the same year. However, the LTL users have significantly higher investments in land preparation, irrigation and plant protection, which may lead to higher wheat production in the coming years.

In the present study, only those wheat farmers were considered who obtained agricultural loans from formal financial institutions like Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited and Khushhali Bank. However, in the rural areas of Sindh, Pakistan, a considerable proportion of small-scale farmers take credit from informal financial channels. Therefore future researchers should consider the informal credits as well.

This is the first paper to examine the effects of agricultural credit on wheat productivity of small farms in Sindh, Pakistan. This paper will be an important addition to the emerging literature regarding effects of credit studies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the changes in wealth and consumption inequality in Spain and estimate the consumption effects of housing and financial wealth.

The estimations are made using micro-data from the Spanish Survey of Household Finances (2002–2014) applying cross-section, panel and interquartile techniques.

The findings of this paper suggest that there was an increase in wealth inequality during the period under analysis and a reduction in consumption inequality. Also, the authors find a significant positive effect of wealth on consumer expenditure. Disaggregating by asset type, the value of the main residence is the category with the highest estimated effect on consumption, whereas the remaining types of assets, although still positive and generally significant, have more modest effects on consumption. However, the estimated coefficients and their significance can change substantially depending on the phase of the economic cycle and the position of the household in the income distribution.

These results provide new empirical evidence on the effects of household wealth changes on their consumption behavior, the differences depending on the household's position in the distribution and the fluctuations of these estimated coefficients throughout a period of profound economic upheavals.

This study explores whether targeted microcredit can effectively alleviate households’ multidimensional relative poverty (MdRP) in rural China in the new era following the poverty elimination campaign and discusses it from a gendered perspective.

This study applies a fixed-effects model, propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage instrumental variable method to two-period panel data collected from 611 households in rural western China in 2018 and 2021 to explore the effects, mechanisms and heterogenous performance of targeted microcredit on households’ MdRP in the new era.

(i) Targeted microcredit can alleviate MdRP among rural households in the new era, mainly by reducing income and opportunity inequality. (ii) Targeted microcredit can promote women’s empowerment, mainly by enhancing their social participation, thereby helping alleviate households’ MdRP. The effect of the targeted microcredit on MdRP is more significant in medium-educated women households and non-left-behind women households. (iii) The MdRP alleviation effect is stronger in villages with a high degree of digitalization.

Learn from the experience of targeted microcredit. Accurately identify poor groups and integrate loan design into financial health and women empowerment. Particularly, pay attention to less-educated and left-behind women households and strengthen coordination between targeted microcredit and digital village strategies.

This study clarifies the effect of targeted microcredit on women’s empowerment and households’ MdRP alleviation in the new era. It also explores its various effects on households with different female characteristics and regional digitalization levels, providing ideas for optimizing microcredit.

This paper aims to investigate the mutual dependence between housing prices and housing credit in Estonia, a country that experienced rapid debt accumulation during the 2000s and big swings in house prices during that period.

The authors use Bayesian econometric methods on data spanning 2000–2015.

The estimations show the interdependence between house prices and housing credit. More importantly, negative housing credit innovations had a stronger effect on house prices than positive ones.

The asymmetry in the linkage between housing credit and house prices highlights important policy implications, in that if central banks increase capital buffers during good times, they can release credit conditions during hard times to alleviate the negative spillover into house prices and the real economy.

Several indigenous credit and savings schemes have been accredited recently in developing countries for the benefit of households and entrepreneurs alike. Famous among them are the Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) that exist in almost all continents currently. The rapid development of ROSCAs and their varied structures in many countries have been the subject of numerous studies. What has not been thoroughly analysed is the optimum size of these associations and the fact that lending and borrowing is without interest. The aim of this paper is to present a model that would determine the optimum size of ROSCAs and deal with the following issues: how the group size varies with changes in the income level of the members, the demand for the loan, the size of the collected loan and its duration. Further, the question of whether or not lending to the association in return for obtaining larger sums is a violation of the qarḍ (loan) contract is dealt with, and several Sharīʿah compatible formulations are provided.

Economic analysis has been applied to show the optimum size of Qarḍ Ḥasan Associations (QHAs), which are the Sharīʿah-compliant equivalent of ROSCAs, and the Sharīʿah rules of the qarḍ contract to illustrate the legitimacy of group lending.

The major findings of this study are determination of the optimum size of QHAs, the factors that affect the size and suggestion of alternative legal forms for group financing.

Inaccessibility to sources of data to test the hypothesis that has been put forth is the main difficulty encountered when conducting research on the subject.

The paper concludes that the development of informal interest-free ROSCAs in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries is an efficient informal microfinance scheme and that it is compatible with Sharīʿah rules.

The optimum size of ROSCAs and QHAs has been presented in this paper.

This paper outlines an analytical framework for estimating households' access to formal credit across European transition economies shortly after the onset of the global financial crisis. This study, along with the individual-level socio-economic and demographic characteristics also considers the perceived quality of the institutions. The author wants to assess whether an adequate policy-level intervention to promote financial inclusion should account for the individuals' subjective evaluation of the political situation in their own country as well as their personal experience of corruption.

This paper identifies the main determinants of financial inclusion using European microdata (Life in Transition Survey II, LiTS II). In order to estimate individuals' access to formal financial markets, the author constructs a bivariate probit model to account for joint access to short-term and long-term credit products (Mohieldin and Wright, 2000).

The results show that improving people's access to financial markets across European regions requires a set of interventions at the institutional and local levels to link-up policies of financial inclusion and financial integrity.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by identifying a number of key causes of financial inclusion and the role of institutional (corruption crimes) factors in determining the levels of financial access in a country.

This paper aims to assess the long-run drivers and short-term dynamics of real house prices in Sweden for 1986Q1 to 2016Q4. More specifically, the author examines the extent to which real house prices are determined by affordability, demographics and asset price factors.

The author conducts a cointegration analysis and applies a vector autoregression model to examine the long- and short-run responsiveness of Swedish real house prices to a number of key categories of fundamental variables.

The empirical results indicate that house prices will increase in the long run by 1.04 per cent in response to a 1 per cent increase in household real disposable income, whereas real after-tax mortgage interest and real effective exchange rates show average long-term effects of approximately – 8 and – 0.7 per cent, respectively. In addition, the results show that the growth of real house prices is affected by growth in mortgage credit, real after-tax mortgage interest rates and disposable incomes in the short run, whereas the real effective exchange rate is the most significant determinant of Swedish real house appreciation.

The impact of the two lending restrictions been implemented after the financial crisis – the mortgage cap in October 2010 and the amortization requirement in June 2016 – are ineffective to stabilize the housing market. This suggests that macroprudential measures designed to ease pressure on housing prices and reduce risks to financial stability need to focus on these fundamentals and address the issues of tax deductibility on mortgage rates and the gradual implementation of debt-to-income limits to contain mortgage demand and improve households’ resilience to shocks.

This article describes financial professionals' perceptions of their clients' financial behaviors and the explanatory factors underlying these behaviors.

In this qualitative research, the authors seek to understand financial professionals' experiences in relation to how their clients manage their own finances. The authors conduct and analyze 26 semi-structured interviews with financial professionals from several industries within the financial sector in Canada.

The professionals in this study noted that despite their clients' financial knowledge, several other factors can explain these individuals' financial behaviors. They include psychological factors (such as financial bias, the need for instant gratification, and the lack of awareness regarding the long-term effects of certain types of financial behaviors), financial habits (such as lifestyle, financial planning and lack of discipline) and the financial system's flexibility with respect to debt financing and repayment. These perceptions are categorized according to whether they are related to debt financing or repayment, savings or investments.

By using a qualitative methodology that relies on the perceptions of financial professionals, this study aims to better understand the financial behaviors of individuals and households, and these behaviors' underlying factors. This study's findings could be useful to various stakeholders interested, in one way or another, in financial literacy, such as organizations aiming to strengthen and promote financial literacy, educators, researchers, regulatory bodies of financial institutions and financial advisers.

The challenge of accessibility to adequate housing in several countries by a large percentage of citizens has given rise to different housing programs designed to facilitate access to affordable housing. In South Africa, the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) was created to provides housing loans to low- and middle-income earners. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the implication of the macroeconomic risk elements on the performance of the NHFC incremental housing finance.

This study used a mixed-method approach to examine the time-series data of the NHFC over 17 years (2003–2020), relative to selected macroeconomic indicators. Additionally, this study analysed primary data from a 2022 survey of NHFC Executives.

This study found that incremental housing finance addresses a housing affordability gap, caters to disadvantaged groups, adapts to changing macroeconomic conditions and can mitigate default risk. It also finds that the performance of the NHFC’s incremental housing finance is premised on the behaviour of the macroeconomic elements that drive its strategy in South Africa.

Unlike previous works on housing finance, this case study of the NHFC considers the implication of macroeconomic trends when disbursing incremental housing finance to low- and middle-level income earners as a risk mitigation measure for the South African market. Its mixed method use of quantitative and qualitative data also allows a robust insight into trends that drive investment in incremental housing finance in South Africa.

This paper aims to analyse the stabilizing macroeconomic effects of economic policies during the COVID-19 crisis in Spain.

The contribution of the structural shocks that explain the behaviour of the main macroeconomic aggregates during 2020 are estimated, and the effects of economic policies are simulated using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model estimated for the Spanish economy.

The results highlight the importance of supply and demand shocks in explaining the COVID-19 crisis. The annual fall in gross domestic product (GDP) moderates at least by 7.6 points in the most intense period of the crisis, thanks to these stabilizing policies. Finally, the potential effects of Next Generation EU in the Spanish economy are estimated. Assuming that Spain may receive from the EU between 1.5 and 2.25 percentage points (pp) of GDP, activity could increase to between 2 and 3 pp in 2024.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the exercises and findings are original. All these results show the usefulness of a DSGE model, such as the estimated rational expectation model for Spain, as a practical tool for the applied economic analysis, the macroeconomic assessment of economic policies and the understanding of the Spanish economy.