Search results

During 1993 Member States of the European Union formally adopted two Directives—the Investment Services Directive and the Capital Adequacy Directive—concerned with the operation of investment business. This paper outlines the provisions contained in these Directives, which have to be enshrined in national law by the end of 1995 at the latest, explaining the role they play within the broader Single Market programme for financial services. A simple ‘cost‐benefit’ analysis of their likely impact, mainly on UK intermediaries, is also provided.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a deposit insurance program for household deposits, which is designed to act as safety net in order to minimize or eliminate the risk of loss of depositors' funds with banks represents a primary element of this reform.

This research paper is scientific investigation aimed at discovering and interpreting facts related to deposit insurance system in Azeri context. The goal of the research process is to produce new knowledge, through the exploratory research, which structures and identifies new problems, and the constructive research, which develops solutions to a problem.

The main finding is that the deposit insurance system in Azeri context as well everywhere provides for the security of funds in the event of bank failure and, thus, contributes substantially to the stability of the financial system in Azerbaijan. The deposit insurance system supports the smooth functioning of the payment system and the credit mechanisms and facilitates the exit of problem banks.

As a result of this research paper some changes may be made in local legislation in order to defend the depositor's rights in the most effective way in the case of bank failures.

The originality of this paper is that it for the first time describes the deposit insurance system of the Republic of Azerbaijan, its advantages and disadvantages. The paper is addressed to the international business community, particularly those involved in all aspects of banking and deposit insurance law.

In general, the return from participation in MNREGA will be highest for those women whose mobility and social interaction is least impeded by conservative social norms. However, if any intervention enhances knowledge base, or challenges traditional norms of gender, then return from that intervention may be highest for those women impede most by conservative social norms. It may be interpreted as non-monotonic effect of restrictedness across caste and religion. The purpose of this paper is to examine non-monotonicity hypothesis of social restrictedness for the intervention MNREGA.

Using primary data from three districts of West Bengal, the paper has tried to see whether there exists any non-monotonic effect of restrictedness on household’s “expenditure on consumption,” “expenditure on temptation good,” “expenditure on women’s health” and “expenditure on children’s education and health” across castes and religion. The sample is relatively homogeneous in terms of socio economic status, but differs in affiliation to castes and religion.

As a result of participating the labor force through MNREGA, the contribution of women to household earnings increases, which may potentially increase their bargaining power within the household. The conventional notion is that women who are least fettered by social norms should get maximum benefits of participation in MNREGA. However, the analysis shows that women of upper caste (UC) community have been able to exercise the highest level of agency in allocating household resources compared to the women of scheduled caste community. It substantiates the non-monotonicity of restrictedness of social norms across castes and religions. Agency of Muslim women has not increased significantly compared to the UC women.

The study suffers from usual limitations of sampling.

There is hardly any study deciphering MNREGA from the perspective of caste, religion and gender.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how rapid tourism growth in Macao affected local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The liberalization of the gaming industry to multinational corporations (MNCs) in 2002 led to a sevenfold increase in foreign direct investments (FDI) in Macao.

A survey grounded in issues concerning how SMEs adapt to the effects of FDI in Macao was carried out by interviewing managers of local SMEs, MNCs and an SME association. Information from various published sources was also consulted to complement and update the analyses.

Findings revealed that the emergence of investments by MNCs in Macao brought favorable and unfavorable effects to local SMEs. Local SMEs were challenged in terms of recruiting and retaining human resources, given the attractive salaries and training offered by MNCs. Equally challenging for local SMEs was the effect of economic growth on the costs of property space in Macao’s small territory. However, local SMEs have advantages when collaborating with MNCs as the former serves as important partners in networking. Local SMEs can collaborate quicker with their network of local stakeholders which MNCs lack and need. The government and various stakeholders will need to continue their role in developing the capacities and capabilities of local SMEs.

The research study has important public policy implications on structuring the foreign labor and property needs of local SMEs.

This paper provides insights on the challenges SMEs in small-open economies experience during rapid tourism growth fueled by MNCs, and some policy recommendations are proposed.

Examines the extent and coverage of private‐sector training in Australia and offers an overview of recent Australian Government initiatives in vocational education and training. Argues that Australia′s system of industrial relations diminishes the potential for training at the workplace but suggests that recent changes in institutional arrangements may mitigate this. Indicates that the introduction of a compulsory uniform training levy has not been very successful.

The purpose of this paper is to consider in the light of the post August 2007 banking crises, how “fair” access to retail banking services for British households and small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can be assured.

The current responsibility for assuring the bank customers are “treated fairly” belongs to the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The paper argues for the establishment of a banking commission to regulate retail banks as utilities, leaving the FSA to concentrate on prudential (“risk based”) supervision of bank and non‐bank financial institutions.

If access to payments services is infrastructural and access to finance is regarded as essential in a modern society, then retail banks should be regulated as utilities.

The banking crisis led to calls for banks to maintain lending to SMEs and households (especially mortgages). This implies that access to finance, like access to water and electricity, should be assured and that customers should be protected against the “monopoly” powers of large suppliers. Hence, retail banks are utilities and should be regulated as such.

This paper reviews the current regulatory framework for community development financial institutions (CDFIs), which aim to enable ‘socially excluded’ people and enterprises to access finance. Its focus is primarily on the UK, though account is taken of developments in other EU member countries and at the EU level. In the UK the most developed regulations relate to industrial and provident societies, which are essentially financial cooperatives lending to small enterprises and not for profit organisations, and credit unions, which tend to concentrate on personal savings and finance. CDFIs lie on the boundary of what is currently understood to be charitable status, but the Charity Commission announced a new charitable purpose, ‘community capacity building’, in December 2000 and committed to developing clear guidelines on the charitability of CDFIs by the end of 2001. Current regulatory arrangements are assessed and it is found that, apart from credit unions, which have been brought under the supervisory wing of the Financial Services Authority, CDFIs tend to operate in a context of ‘benign neglect’. While recognising that heavy‐handed regulation might stifle growth, it is argued that the downside of neglect could be uncertainty, which might also blight the development of the sector. An alternative, relatively liberal, regulatory framework is proposed, including self‐regulation for the smaller institutions via associations. It is concluded that the type of regulation should vary with the size, status (mutual vs non mutual), and source of finance (deposits vs risk capital).

A key element in the development of a technology, a company or an industry is the availability of finance. While much effort has been directed at understanding the roles of venture capital, angel investment and public investment, there does not appear to be much analysis of the industry-level effects as a new industry is emerging. In this chapter, we investigate the patterns of public and private investments and the role of government in support of financing the emergence of science and technology industries. We also examine the criteria used by venture capitalists in their assessment of investment opportunities regarding new technology-based ventures. We focus on the analysis of investment at stage between prototyping and commercialisation of a new technology. This stage has been labelled as the ‘valley of death’ from an investor perspective, which reflects greater risks for investors due to the high level of both technology and market uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the micro determinants of the extent of credit rationing experienced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana.

The study adopted the direct approach to investigating the presence of credit rationing. This involves the use of surveys permitting loan applicants to report on their credit market experiences. The multinomial logistic regression model was then applied to the survey data to arrive at the findings reported.

The study amongst other things confirms the existence of credit rationing in the SME sector. It also revealed that the extent to which SMEs are rationed varies and these variations are determined by the characteristic of the SME owner and the characteristics of the business.

The use of the survey method in investigating credit rationing could introduce some biases in the responses obtained. However, the lack of publicly available data did not permit the use of the indirect method which is based on the testing for possible violation of the permanent income hypothesis. Despite its weakness, the survey method remains the more realistic approach to investigating credit constraints especially in the data-constrained developing countries. The design and piloting of the questionnaire as well as the use a large sample size all went a long way to reduce any possible biases in the responses.

Despite the fact that a number of studies exist on SME financing problem in Ghana, available studies present the problem as if it were the same for all SMEs. Even though there is evidence to suggest that SMEs may be rationed in the credit market to different extents, currently, there are no known studies that have empirically investigated the various degrees of rationing and factors that determine the extent to which SMEs may be credit rationed. This paper thus attempts to contribute to the literature by unearthing these factors.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a Muzara’ah–supply chain model for the purpose of enhancing agricultural financing and productivity in Nigeria.

In this paper, an expert survey approach was employed to validate the newly developed model.

A survey result on the model reveals that majority of the respondents agreed with the Muzara’ah–supply chain model and preferred it to the existing models.

The main limitation of this study is limited number of respondents.

With this newly developed financing model that is based risk sharing principles, the application of this model could help to reduce moral hazard and enhance agricultural productivity.

To the best knowledge of the researchers, such kind of study for financing agriculture does not exists in the case of Nigeria.