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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how bank size affects the role of information asymmetry on financial access in a panel of 162 banks in 39 African countries for the period 2001-2011.

The empirical evidence is based on instrumental variable fixed effects regressions with overlapping and non-overlapping bank size thresholds to control for the quiet life hypothesis (QLH). The QLH postulates that managers of large banks will use their privileges for private gains at the expense of making financial services more accessible to the general public. Financial access is measured with loan price and loan quantity whereas information asymmetry is implicit in the activities of public credit registries and private credit bureaus.

The findings with non-overlapping thresholds are broadly consistent with those that are conditional on overlapping thresholds. First, public credit registries have a decreasing effect on the price of loans with the magnitude of reduction comparable across all bank size thresholds. Second, both public credit registries and private credit bureaus enhance the quantity of loans. Third, compared with public credit registries, private credit bureaus have a greater influence in increasing financial access because they have a significantly higher favorable effect on the quantity and price of loans Fourth, the QLH is not apparent because large banks are not associated with lower levels of financial access compared to small banks.

Studies of public credit registries and private credit bureaus in Africa are sparse. This is one of the few to assess linkages between bank size, information asymmetry and financial access.

This paper aims to investigate the relation between the creditworthiness of US institutions of higher education and their student selectivity (i.e. demand and quality).

The authors study whether the impact of student selectivity differs across public vs private universities; across the credit quality of the given public university’s state; and across the level of state appropriations for the given public university.

The authors find that student quality and demand measures are significantly associated with their corresponding institution’s creditworthiness, especially for private universities.

For public universities the association is weak and, contrary to the expectations, does not depend on the state credit quality or level of state funding. The findings are robust to the inclusion of control variables.

The equation of unified knowledge says that S = f (A,P) which means that the practical solution to a given problem is a function of the existing, empirical, actual realities and the future, potential, best possible conditions of general stable equilibrium which both pure and practical reason, exhaustive in the Kantian sense, show as being within the realm of potential realities beyond any doubt. The first classical revolution in economic thinking, included in factor “P” of the equation, conceived the economic and financial problems in terms of a model of ideal conditions of stable equilibrium but neglected the full consideration of the existing, actual conditions. That is the main reason why, in the end, it failed. The second modern revolution, included in factor “A” of the equation, conceived the economic and financial problems in terms of the existing, actual conditions, usually in disequilibrium or unstable equilibrium (in case of stagnation) and neglected the sense of right direction expressed in factor “P” or the realization of general, stable equilibrium. That is the main reason why the modern revolution failed in the past and is failing in front of our eyes in the present. The equation of unified knowledge, perceived as a sui generis synthesis between classical and modern thinking has been applied rigorously and systematically in writing the enclosed American‐British economic, monetary, financial and social stabilization plans. In the final analysis, a new economic philosophy, based on a synthesis between classical and modern thinking, called here the new economics of unified knowledge, is applied to solve the malaise of the twentieth century which resulted from a confusion between thinking in terms of stable equilibrium on the one hand and disequilibrium or unstable equilibrium on the other.

Banks play a crucial role in the sustainable development of exports as they finance much of the trade. Additionally, in Brazil's case, banks provide exporting companies with advisory and training services, which facilitate the internationalization process. This work aims to analyze the role of public and private banks in the export process of companies in Brazil.

Interviews are conducted with a sample of 318 Brazilian exporting companies. Two research questions are posed: What type of export services do companies use from public and private banks in Brazil? Is exporting companies' access to credit, as a type of banking service, related to their size or export experience? A descriptive study of the functions of public and private banks in helping Brazilian exports is presented. Hypotheses are proposed regarding companies' access to credit and its relationship with their size and export experience.

It is found that public and private banks in Brazil provide exporting companies with banking services, other services related to technical aspects, and export consulting. There are significant differences in access to credit in both public and private banks, depending on the exporting company's size.

This work contributes to the internationalization literature on the role of banks in supporting exports in an emerging country like Brazil.

Agricultural producers rely on debt capital to support many functions of their enterprise, yet private credit markets are frequently characterized by an imbalance between supply and demand. As a result, a number of public lending programs exist to mitigate the perceived market failures of private credit markets that serve agricultural producers. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study uses a structural disequilibrium model to examine the potential for excess demand or supply in the private market for non-real estate farm loans between 1978 and 2014.

The model demonstrates that the market is frequently characterized by disequilibrium, fluctuating between periods of excess demand and excess supply. These disequilibrium periods motivate the discussion of public intervention as a policy proposal within the agricultural sector.

This study uses traditional disequilibrium modeling to evaluate the private credit market for agriculture lending in a manner that has not been attempted previously in the literature. The model uses maximum likelihood methods with non-linear solution algorithms to investigate excess supply and demand in the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism how the platform obtains and uses undisclosed information to determine individual borrowers’ credit score and to examine the effectiveness of credit scoring in predicting default. The motivation stems from the fact that there is little evidence about the role of P2P platform, which has been positioned as a kind of information intermediary.

Using a sample of 5,176 unsecured P2P loans having expired before December 31, 2015 on Renrendai.com and an approach of two-stage regression, the paper first estimates the undisclosed information embedded in credit score by regressing credit score on four types of public information about a borrower’s creditworthiness. Then, the authors use a Logit regression to examine the role of the excess information in predicting the default probability.

The certification information provided by the platform is the most important determinant for a borrower’s credit score and the undisclosed information embedded in credit score can predict the loan performance better than the public information of posted listings. Moreover, the predictive ability of the undisclosed information is better for high-risk borrowers than for low-risk ones.

Providing a credit score for each individual is a way for P2P platforms to play an information intermediary role. More evidence about whether or how a platform plays its role are worthy to be exploited by investigating a platform’s operating policies in detail and doing cross-platform comparative studies.

The results about the effect of various types of information on loan performance can provide an insightful guidance for P2P platforms to optimize their mechanism on information disclosure and credit scoring.

The existing literature mainly focuses on the effects of information voluntarily disclosed by borrowers and the behaviors of investors on P2P lending outcomes. The paper highlights the information intermediary role played by the platform and presents empirical evidence that credit scoring for individual borrowers is a way for P2P platforms to promote the direct lending for individual.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

The article investigates whether variety of democracy affects the probability to employ public subsidies for credit support by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) led by female entrepreneurs.

Building on the literature on democracy and on gender differences, it leverages a large firm- and country-level dataset (SAFE) of 31 democracies in Europe (EU and non-EU) over the 2009–2014 period by using probit models and instrumental variable approaches.

Results from the different econometric techniques and samples suggest that variety of democracy affects female-led SMEs in using public subsidies for credit support. The evidence is robust to endogeneity concerns.

The empirical evidence presents a time frame limitation. At the same time, SAFE is the only database that supplies information about the gender of firms and public subsidies for credit support, rendering it the only resource that allows the test of the hypothesis proposed. The article therefore offers insights for scholars to revisit our results in future studies that make use of datasets with a longer time span – when they will become available.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the article is the first to study the effect of democracy on female entrepreneurial behavior in the use of public subsidies for credit support.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on public guarantees granted to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the Italian national credit guarantee programme (Fondo Centrale di Garanzia – Central Guarantee Fund – (CGF)). The CGF provides a direct guarantee to banks granting loans or a counter-guarantee to mutual guarantee institutions (MGIs) acting as first-level guarantors. Because the behaviour of MGIs could affect the default risk of counter-guaranteed loans, it is vital to investigate their operating and structural characteristics in order to identify an optimal design for public credit guarantee schemes (PCGSs).

Using regression models, the paper analyses the determinants of default for 33,229 SME loans guaranteed by an MGI and counter-guaranteed by the Italian CGF. The dependent variable is the ex-post default risk of SMEs’ counter-guaranteed loans in the 2010-2011 period. The explanatory variables are certain characteristics of the MGI.

The authors demonstrate that increases in an MGI’s leverage and the size of the counter-guaranteed portfolios increase the default risk. When the counter-guaranteed portfolio increases, MGIs are more risk taking but take less risk than when local and specialized MGIs are at play. Finally, direct public aid is relevant.

An appropriate design of the PCGS becomes crucial to controlling moral hazard in financial institutions and ensuring the financial sustainability of public intervention in favour of SMEs.

The paper evaluates an original and confidential firm-level data set that is not available in public documents or supervisory board statistics but is collected directly from the MGIs that participated in this study.

Although the study of credit ratings has focused on traditional credit bureau resources, scholars have recently emphasized the importance of big data. The purpose of this paper is to examine both how these data affect the credit evaluations of small businesses and how financial managers use them to stabilize their risks.

Using data from 97,889 data points for normal guarantees and 1,678 data points for accidents in public funds, the authors explore the effects of trade area grades as well as the superiority of the use of big data when evaluating credit ratings for small businesses.

The results indicate that the grade information of trade areas is useful in predicting accident rates, particularly for small businesses with high credit scores (AAA-A). On the other hand, the accident rates of small businesses with low credit scores increased from 3.15-16.67 to 3.20-33.3 percent. These findings demonstrate that accident rates for the businesses with high credit scores decrease, but accident rates for businesses with low credit scores increase when using the grades of trade areas.

The authors contribute to the literature in two ways. First, this study provides one of the first investigations on information on trade areas through public financial perspectives, thereby extending the financial risk and retail literature. Second, the current study extends the research on the credit evaluation of small businesses through the big data application of real transaction-based trade areas, answering the call of Park et al. (2012), who recommended an exploration of the relationship between business start-ups and financial risk.