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Using S&P 500 additions, the purpose of this paper is to test the permanence of abnormal returns around the index inclusion announcement and effective implementation dates to differentiate among competing explanations for the index inclusion premia puzzle.

The event study methodology is used to examine abnormal returns and volume effects around the announcement dates (ADs) and implementation dates of index additions.

This study documents a twofold increase in trading volume and significant permanent abnormal returns at the ADs that are correlated with subsequent decreases in bid‐ask spreads. There is a fivefold increase in trading volume, but only temporary abnormal returns, around the effective dates (EDs). Taken collectively, the evidence indicates that the permanent return at announcement is best explained by liquidity/information cost explanation, but the temporary return and large trading increases at the ED can best be attributed to the price pressure hypothesis.

These results do not support the well documented long‐run downward‐sloping demand curve as the primary explanation for the abnormal returns observed on these dates.

This study contributes to the body of literature on the index inclusion effect by providing supporting evidence for the liquidity/information cost explanation, and by extending the previously analyzed index additions with an additional five‐year period from 2000‐2004.

The purpose of this study is to measure the availability, accessibility and usability of financial products and services in both rural and urban India from 1991 to 2014.

This paper uses principal component analysis (PCA) method to construct financial inclusion index that serves as a proxy variable for indicating the inclusiveness of financial products and services among the rural and urban people. To fulfill this objective, the study proposes separate indexes of financial inclusion for both rural and urban India from 1991 to 2014. The paper uses annual time series data from 1991 to 2014 to construct the rural-urban financial inclusion index. The used data have been collected from the basic statistical returns of Reserve Bank of India and Economic Political Weekly research foundation.

The study inferences that though there is a remarkable increase in financial inclusion in India from 1991 onwards, it does not result in sizeable growth of financial access to rural masses in comparison to urban masses. The rural India does not substantiate an equivalent growth to that of urban India, contrasting a perceptible increase in financial inclusion. The finding of this study will help the researchers and policymakers to understand the status of financial inclusion in the context of both rural and urban India. Furthermore, policymakers can take appropriate policy initiatives to fulfill the financial inclusion gap that exists between rural and urban people. Additionally, the proposed index is easy to compute and can be used to make comparison across countries for further studies.

The present paper attempts to include all possible dimensions (and indicators within a dimension) that have been considered so far by various authors. Therefore, the authors hope that this index will be more indicative and accurate than previous index. Again, the authors propose to use PCA for the first time to assign the weight of factors in the financial inclusion index for rural and urban India separately.

The purpose of this paper is to directly examine the information hypothesis of S&P 500 index inclusion announcements by investigating the degree to which information beyond Standard & Poor's eight stated criteria enters the inclusion decision.

Isolating a sample of S&P 500 additions and their eligible candidates during 1987‐2004, this paper employs logistic analysis that identifies factors ex post beyond the stated criteria that help distinguish the type of information that influences the final selection decision and that is arguably priced at the inclusion announcements.

The evidence indicates that, when choosing among new S&P 500 candidates, the S&P's committee relies primarily on publicly available information related to enterprise risk and historical performance. Material, private insight into future value‐relevant information plays at most a small part in the selection.

The results suggest that index additions convey limited new information about added firms. Studies analysing index additions should start with the presumption that index inclusion announcements are information‐free events, and focus on the consequences of index inclusions such as liquidity, awareness or arbitrage risk, in their relation to index premia.

The results indicate that the previous evidence supporting the information hypothesis using the S&P 500 inclusions is not compelling.

This paper proposes a new multi-dimensional financial inclusion index.

The authors employ two-stage principal component analysis (PCA) and aggregating indicators of availability, access and use. The paper first assesses the cross-country variations in the index and analyses trends over time for a sample of countries members of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) from 2010–2018. Second, it investigates factors that could explain the level of financial inclusion across countries.

The financial inclusion index shows a downward trend for the full sample over the period under investigation; however when splitting the sample by income group, it appears that high- and middle–income countries did not register the same trend. When examining the determinants of financial inclusion for the UfM countries, the authors find that macroeconomic, social and governance factors, as well as banking conditions, matter. Policy-makers in low- and middle-income economies should consider the importance of digital financial inclusion, which is substituting the role to traditional banking system, to close the gap and accelerate its development.

First, the authors provide a new measure of financial inclusion using a three-dimensional index: availability, access and use, for which weights are assigned using PCA. It uses data available for the UfM sample by combining data from different databases in order to include most indicators considered in the literature, as the majority of studies only use single measures (number of bank branches, ownership of a bank account, ratio of credits or deposits to gross domestic product [GDP], etc.). Second, by focussing on UfM countries, the study covers a region that includes both large developed and small developing economies that are connected via financial and trade ties, whilst previous studies generally give global evidence from an international sample with little or no economic ties. Third, splitting the sample by country income groups, the paper presents a more comprehensive representation of the cross-country variation in financial inclusion levels between high- and middle-income economies for this region.

Purpose: This chapter proposes a number of measures for financial inclusion and financial exclusion.

Method: The author use ratio analysis and statistics to develop several indices of financial inclusion.

Findings: This chapter finds that there are several indices of financial inclusion that can contribute to inform policy making in the financial inclusion agenda.

Implications: The indices developed in this chapter can help policymakers toward designing better financial inclusion policies and can provide feedback and insight to policy makers to improve current financial inclusion policies.

Originality: The literature on financial inclusion and exclusion lacks a comprehensive index that measures the extent of financial inclusion and exclusion across countries. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by proposing some index or indicators of financial inclusion and exclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to combine the critical parameters used to study financial inclusion into a composite index. The idea is to rank Indian states and union territories (UTs) on the basis of this index, determine change in ranks during 2011 to 2014 and identify factors affecting high/low scores on the index.

Data for the study were collected from secondary sources published by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Central Statistical Organization. Applying technique of order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), a composite multi-dimensional index of financial inclusion (IFI) has been built by using three broad parameters of penetration, availability and usage of banking services. Factors significantly influencing scores of states/UTs on IFI were identified using multiple regression analysis.

The value of financial inclusion for India on composite IFI has increased by 0.045 points during the study period. Share of agriculture to state gross domestic product, literacy ratio, population density, infrastructure development and farmer suicides are significant factors affecting financial inclusion.

The multi-dimensional IFI is a useful tool to measure financial inclusion using several parameters for various states/regions. The index can also be used to compare the performance of states/regions over same/different periods.

This paper is unique in its attempt to construct multi-dimensional IFI for Indian states/UTs by applying TOPSIS. It will prove useful for future researchers by combining several aspects of financial inclusion into single index.

There is a need for a more critical perspective and reporting about the value of taking a model of inclusion developed in western countries and based upon the human rights ethos applying it in developing countries. This chapter will report firstly on how the Index for Inclusion (hereinafter referred to as the Index) was used in Australia as a tool for review and development; and secondly how the process of using the Index is adjusted for use in the Pacific Islands and other developing nations in collaborative and culturally sensitive ways to support and evaluate progress towards inclusive education. Examples are provided from both contexts to demonstrate the impact of the Index as an effective tool to support a more inclusive response to diversity in schools.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the initial public offerings (IPOs) of the firms that are eventually included in one of the S&P 400, the S&P 500, or the S&P 600 Indices. Do these firms have very different IPO features than the rest of the IPOs?

The control sample is formed of IPOs that are not included in the corresponding index, and the IPOs that end up in each S&P index are compared to this control sample. Logistic regressions are utilized to estimate the odds of inclusion into one of these indices.

The author finds that the IPO features, such as underpricing, offer price, underwriter's reputation, venture capital presence, and so on, are found to be substantially different for the index samples. The index firms are found to be “superstars” that deliver extremely high long‐run returns between their IPO date and their index inclusion date. The above results suggest that the quality of index firms has a persistent component to it that can be detected even during the IPO process. After estimating the determinants of the index inclusion, the author discovers that factors implying lower asymmetric information about firm's business (such as, the firm being a spinoff, or being certified by a venture capitalist or a prestigious underwriter, etc.) increase its odds of inclusion.

The paper proposes and tests two new hypotheses related to inclusion into an S&P index. Discoveries made in this paper can help someone recognize which IPOs could become “superstars” that end up in an S&P index.

This study has a dual purpose. The first is constructing a financial inclusion index to investigate if the reforms implemented during the last decades at the macroeconomic and sectoral levels have contributed to increase the financial inclusion level in Morocco. The second is to deepen the investigation to explore the impact of these reforms at the microeconomic level, by focusing on six major issues: determinants of financial inclusion, links between individual characteristics and barriers to financial inclusion, determinants of mobile banking use, motivations for saving, credit objectives and determinants of resorting to informal finance.

First, the principal component analysis methodology is mobilized to construct a financial inclusion index for Morocco. Second, the probit model methodology on a micro-level database of 5,110 Moroccan adults is used.

First, the financial inclusion index shows that financial inclusion in Morocco over the last two decades has followed different trends. The first period (1999–2004) was characterized by a slight upswing in the level of financial inclusion. In the second period (2004–2012), the level of financial inclusion increased significantly. During the third period (2012–2019), the financial inclusion maintained almost the same level. Second, empirical results showed that the determinants of formal finance and mobile banking are different from those of informal finance. Having a high educational attainment and being a participant in the labor market fosters financial inclusion. Concerning financial exclusion determinants, the results emphasized that a high educational attainment reduces the barriers leading to voluntary exclusion. As income level increases, barriers of involuntary exclusion such as “lack of money” become surmountable. Although "remoteness" and "high cost" are the major barriers to financial inclusion of all Moroccan social classes, the development of mobile banking allows to eliminate, smoothen and/or loosen all barriers sources of involuntary exclusion. As for the barriers causing voluntary exclusion, the Islamic finance model constitutes a lever for the inclusion of population segments excluded for religious reasons. As for the determinants of the recourse to informal finance, being a woman, an older person and having a low educational level (no more than secondary education) increase the probability to turn to informal finance.

The main limitation of this study is the non-availability of data on the two dimensions (quality and welfare) of financial inclusion. The composite index is constructed on the basis of two dimensions (access and use) for which data are available.

This study has three main implications. In practice, with the launching of the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion, this work provides empirical grounded evidence that contributes to design financial inclusion policies in Morocco. In research, while the debate on financial inclusion, mobile banking and informal finance has been raging in recent years, Morocco, like many other African countries, has not received coverage on these topics at the household level.

For society, this study provides considerable insight about the segments of population that are financially excluded and the main reasons for their exclusion.

This study enriches the existing literature with four essential contributions. First, it analyzes the evolution of the level of financial inclusion in the Moroccan economy through the development of a synthetic index. Second, it is the first to study the Moroccan population's financial behavior on the basis of micro-level data, which will help understand more precisely their financial behavior and the main obstacles to their inclusion. Third, this study explores the determinants of the use of mobile banking. Fourth, it sheds some light on the main determinants of the recourse to informal finance.

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) launched in the year 2006, with the pursuit of the objective of removing poverty and unemployment and thus address the issue of financial inclusion. The performance of the programme across the states in India has not been uniform. The purpose of this study is to focus on the financial inclusiveness features associated with MGNREGS program across the selected districts in West Bengal in the years of recent past.

In this study, financial inclusion index has been developed by consideration of four indicators with the help of principal component method. Fixed effect regression model has been applied to explain the impact of relevant determinants on financial inclusion index.

It is observed that out of 19 districts, seven districts registered an increase in the value of the financial inclusion index in the year 2019 compared to that in the year 2013. The empirical analysis for identifying the determinants of overall inclusion reveals that factors like households having active job card, utilization of fund, amount of labour cost and number of works have significant influence on financial inclusion.

The study widely discussed how the scheme was helping in promoting financial inclusion by providing wage payment through banks and post offices accounts. The author has also tried to highlight some of the difficulties in accelerating the speed of financial inclusion when banks and post offices are used as a means for wage payment and finally provide remedial measures that could be taken to tackle these problems.