the economics of a blend mandate for biofuels a biofuel blend mandate may increase or decrease consumer fuel prices with endogenous oil prices depending on relative supply elasticities biofuel tax credits always reduce fuel prices tax credits result in lower fuel prices than under a mandate for the same level of biofuel production if tax credits are implemented alongside mandates then tax credits subsidize fuel consumption instead of biofuels this contradicts energy policy goals by increasing oil dependency co 2 emissions and traffic congestion while providing little benefit to either corn or ethanol producers these social costs will be substantial with tax credits costing taxpayers 28 7 billion annually by 2022 copyright 2008 oxford university press

the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

considerations on providing the energy needs using exclusively renewable sources energiewende in germany abstract the share of renewables in the primary energy demand of germany has increased from 1 3 in 1990 to 11 7 in 2013 the plans are to increase it further by the year 2050 to 50 or even 100 by carrying out the national energiewende energy change switch programme in this paper we analyze the current energy scenario and recall goals of the energiewende programme we also identify infrastructural and technological bottlenecks which are likely to affect the programme execution by doing so the enormous scale of this national venture becomes apparent and it is clear that its execution will last for several generations and perhaps even for a century or two additionally we introduce an idea of exclusively green energy communities egecs as an energiewende mile stone due to the dimensions of the tasks the energy change switch programme will last for several generations and perhaps even for a century or two realization of this overwhelming national venture has to proceed through milestones and demonstration projects we propose demo projects called green energy communities gecs to examine with what efforts and under what constraints such communities can operate using exclusively renewable forms of energy

optimal taxation and cross price effects on labor supply estimates of the optimal gas tax abstract this study estimates parameters necessary to calculate the optimal second best gasoline tax most notably the cross price elasticity between gasoline and leisure prior theoretical work indicates the importance of this elasticity but despite this almost none of the prior studies of commodity taxation and none of the studies on second best environmental regulation actually estimate it using household data we find that gasoline is a relative complement to leisure and thus that the optimal gasoline tax is significantly higher than marginal damages the opposite of the result suggested by the bulk of the prior literature indeed even if there were no externalities at all associated with gasoline the optimal tax rate would still be almost equal to the average gas tax rate in the u s following this approach to estimate cross price elasticities with leisure could strongly influence estimates of optimal rates for other important commodity or pollution taxes

capital structure and sustainability an empirical study of microfinance institutions abstract the capital structure of lending institutions has become an increasingly prominent issue in the world of finance contemporaneously microfinance institutions mfis have risen to the forefront as invaluable lending institutions in the development process since capital constraints have hindered the expansion of microfinance programs and microfinance organizations have had various degrees of sustainability the question of how best to finance these organizations is a key issue this paper explores how changes in capital structure could improve mfi efficiency and financial sustainability i find causal evidence supporting the assertion that increased use of grants by large mfis decreases operational self sufficiency

the mis allocation of capital is capital allocated so that its marginal product is equated to the market interest rate is the marginal product of capital equalized across its alternative uses this paper attempts to answer both of these questions using data from india and concludes that both these standard properties fail by a wide margin jel o16 g2

information the cost of credit and operational eﬃciency an empirical study of microfinance we provide direct evidence on the impact of asymmetric information on both financing and operating activities through a study of credit evaluations of microfinance institutions mfis we employ a regression discontinuity model that exploits the eligibility criteria of an evaluation subsidy ofered by a nonprofit consortium evaluations dramatically cut the cost of financing this efect is strongest for commercial lenders and for short term mfi lender relationships the impact of evaluations on the supply of finance is mixed evaluated mfis lend more efciently extending more loans per employee the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

the german energy transition modeling competition and substitution between nuclear power and renewable energy technologies abstract this paper studies some quantitative aspects of the energy transition in germany the energiewende which envisages the complete abandonment of nuclear power and a strong reliance on photovoltaic and wind energy for electricity provision the major aim is to shed light on and measure with indirect tools the possible social effects on competition and substitution dynamics characterizing such transition in doing so an analysis on the innovation diffusion framework is proposed through the application of two diffusion models for a duopolistic competition unrestricted and standard ucrcd to the annual time series of consumption of nuclear and renewables wind and solar energy in germany in order to test empirically the presence of such substitution effect the obtained results confirm this conjecture and show that renewables have exerted a significant and measurable effect in determining the observed decline of nuclear power consumption in particular we find that the diffusion of renewables wind and solar is characterized by a high within word of mouth testifying the widespread belief of germans towards the energy transition while the parallel diffusion of nuclear power is characterized by a highly negative cross word of mouth due to the competing role exerted by renewables

a review of the ecological and socioeconomic effects of biofuel and energy policy recommendations abstract many countries have attached great emphasis on biofuel because it is universally acknowledged renewable and sustainable however there remain doubts regarding biofuel s renewability cleanliness and ecological friendliness in addition its impacts on income employment and food security have been widely discussed therefore the effect of developing biofuel as an important method of resolving the energy crisis and climate change is questioned based on the rocketing concern on the multiple effects of biofuel this paper provides a comprehensive and updated review of the literature on biofuel s ecological effects and socioeconomic effects the literature included in this paper is selected english language papers being published since 2004 we find that existing studies have not arrived at a consensus regarding the ecological or the socioeconomic effects of biofuel there remain uncertainty and doubts toward biofuel s renewability and cleanliness biofuel s impacts on water and biodiversity are also questioned although biofuel is widely regarded to have positive impacts on income and employment many studies prove that biofuel influences food security negatively besides biofuel s economic cost is likely to be the barrier to its promotion because of the uncertainty of biofuel s impacts this study recommends cautious attitude toward biofuel development especially for those countries where biofuel development would be inappropriate and suggests that policy makers engage in demand side management instead of unsustainable supply side management

gasoline demand revisited an international meta analysis of elasticities meta analysis is used to determine if there are factors that systematically affect price and income elasticity estimates in studies of gasoline demand four econometric models are estimated using long run and short run price and income elasticity estimates from previous studies as the dependent variables explanatory variables include functional form lag structure time span national setting estimation technique and other features of the model structure elasticity estimates are found to be sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of some measure of vehicle ownership static models appear to overestimate short run elasticities underestimate long run price elasticities but pick up the full long run income responsiveness there is variation in the elasticity of demand across countries especially in the short run and gasoline demand appears to be getting more price elastic and less income elastic over time

emergence of green business models the case of algae biofuel for aviation emergent business models seek to take advantage of new market mechanisms driven by technological changes particularly those related to the production and delivery of clean or sustainable energy such business models often function at the intersection of various industries with global views and the resulting systems have distinct social political environmental economic technological and business dimensions such holistic systems are not only difficult to develop but also require support from a broad range of actors with effective regulations and policies in place such that the firm functions within a framework that integrates various factors this study substantiates such a framework by detailing the nascent algae based bio fuel industry that caters to the aviation sector while arguing that businesses in the energy industry can emerge as a next practice platform that drive a sixth wave of innovation the framework begins with three basic enablers innovation flexibility and sustainability and explains how value from renewable energy technologies can be created and captured sustainably and innovatively with new market mechanisms implemented by firms with green business models

multi objective regulations on transportation fuels comparing renewable fuel mandates and emission standards 2015 elsevier b v we compare two types of fuel market regulations a renewable fuel mandate and a fuel emission standard that could be employed to simultaneously achieve multiple outcomes such as reduction in fuel prices fuel imports and greenhouse gas ghg emissions we compare these two types of regulations in a global context taking into account heterogeneity in carbon content of both fossil fuels and renewable fuels we find that although neither the ethanol mandate nor the emission standard is certain to reduce emissions relative to a business as usual baseline at any given level of biofuel consumption in the policy region a mandate relative to an emission standard results in higher ghg emissions smaller expenditure on fuel imports lower price of ethanol blended gasoline and higher domestic fuel market surplus this result holds over a wide range of values of model parameters we also discuss the implications of this result to a regulation such as the us renewable fuel standard given recent developments within the us such as increase in shale and tight oil production and large increase in average vehicle fuel economy of the automotive fleet

does britain or the united states have the right gasoline tax this paper develops an analytical framework to assess the second best optimal level of gasoline taxation taking into account unpriced pollution congestion and accident externalities as well as interactions with the broader fiscal system we provide calculations of the optimal taxes for the us and the uk under a variety of parameter scenarios under our central parameter values the second best optimal gasoline tax is 1 01 gal for the us and 1 34 gal for the uk current tax rates are much lower than this in the us and higher in the uk the calculations are moderately sensitive to alternative parameter assumptions the congestion externality is the largest component in both nations revenue raising needs also play a significant role as do accident externalities and local air pollution potential welfare gains from reducing the current uk tax rate are estimated at nearly one fourth the production cost of all gasoline used in the uk even larger gains could be achieved by switching to a tax on vehicle miles with equal revenue yield for the us the welfare gains from optimizing the gasoline tax are smaller but those from switching to an optimal tax on vehicle miles are very large

on the existence of an optimal capital structure theory and evidence one of the most contentious issues in the theory of finance during the past quarter century has been the theory of capital structure the geneses of this controversy were the seminal contributions by modigliani and miller 18 19 the general academic view by the mid 1970s although not a consensus was that the optimal capital structure involves balancing the tax advantage of debt against the present value of bankruptcy costs no sooner did this general view become prevalent in the profession than miller 16 presented a new challenge by showing that under certain conditions the tax advantage of debt financing at the firm level is exactly offset by the tax disadvantage of debt at the personal level since then there has developed a burgeoning theoretical literature attempting to reconcile miller s model with the balancing theory of optimal capital structure e g deangelo and masulis 5 kim 12 and modigliani 17 the general result of this work is that if there are significant leverage related costs such as bankruptcy costs agency costs of debt and loss of non debt tax shields and if the income from equity is untaxed then the marginal bondholder s tax rate will be less than the corporate rate and there will be a positive net tax advantage to corporate debt financing the firm s optimal capital structure will involve the trade off between the tax advantage of debt and various leverage related costs the upshot of these extensions of miller s model is the recognition that the existence of an optimal capital structure is essentially an empirical issue as to whether or not the various leverage related costs are economically significant enough to influence the costs of corporate borrowing the miller model and its theoretical extensions have inspired several timeseries studies which provide evidence on the existence of leverage related costs trczinka 28 reports that from examining differences in average yields between taxable corporate bonds and tax exempt municipal bonds one cannot reject the miller hypothesis that the marginal bondholder s tax rate is not different from the corporate tax rate however trczinka is careful to point out that this finding does not necessarily imply that there is no tax advantage of corporate debt if the personal tax rate on equity is positive indeed buser and hess 1 using a longer time series of data and more sophisticated econometric techniques estimate that the average effective personal tax rate on equity is statistically positive and is not of a trivial magnitude more importantly they document evidence that is consistent with the existence of significant leverage related costs in the economy

analysis of renewable energies in european union abstract the paper s main research objective is to analyse the renewable energy sector in the european union member states the first step of the research was to generate clusters of countries based on the share of renewables in total energy produced and the countries energy dependence in order to generate the clusters we applied the k means clustering method based on the data obtained from eurostat by using the statistical package for the social sciences three clusters of countries have been generated in the next step the eu states were ranked based on the following criteria share of renewable energy sources share of renewable electricity share of renewable heating and cooling and share of renewable energy in transport then the main characteristics of the renewable energy policy in each member state have been highlighted

currency crashes in emerging markets an empirical treatment we use a panel of annual data for over 100 developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes we define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation we examine the composition of the debt as well as its level and a variety of other macroeconomic factors external and foreign crashes tend to occur when output growth is low the growth of domestic credit is high and the level of foreign interest rates are high a low ratio of fdi to debt is consistently associated with a high likelihood of a crash

the costs of carbon sequestration a revealed preference approach increased concem by policy makers with the threat of global climate change has brought with it considerable attention to the possibility of encouraging the growth of forests as a means of sequestering carbon dioxide national academy of sciences nas 1992 james p bruce et al 1996 1 the kyoto protocol to the united nations framework convention on climate change 1997 which establishes emission reduction targets for the united states and other industrialized nations states that carbon sequestration can be used by participating nations to achieve their targets moreover even before the kyoto agreement this approach had become an explicit element of both u s and intemational climate policies u s department of energy 1991 united nations general assembly 1992 william j clinton and albert gore 1993 this high level of interest has been due in part to suggestions that sufficient lands are available to use the approach to mitigate a substantial share of annual carbon dioxide c02 emissions greg marland 1988 daniel a lashof and dennis a tirpak 1989 mark c trexler 1991 and claims that growing trees to sequester carbon is a relatively inexpensive means of combating climate change roger a sedjo and allen m solomon 1989 daniel j dudek and alice leblanc 1990 nas 1992 in other words the serious attention given by policy makers to carbon sequestration can partly be explained by implicit assertions about respective marginal cost functions i develop and demonstrate a method by which the costs of carbon sequestration can be estimated on the basis of evidence from landowners behavior when confronted with the opportunity costs of alternative land uses the simplest of previous economic analyses derived single point estimates of average costs associated with particular sequestration levels marland 1988 sedjo and solomon 1989 dudek and leblanc 1990 edwin s rubin et al 1992 omar masera et al 1995 often it has been assumed that land opportunity costs are zero g van kooten et al 1992 j k winjum et al 1992 new york state energy office 1993 robert k dixon et al 1994 another set of studies essentially engineering costing models has constructed marginal cost schedules by using information on revenues and costs of production for altemative uses on representative types or locations of land and then sorting these in ascending order of cost robert j moulton and kenneth r richards 1990 richards et al 1993 simulation models include a model of the lost profits due to removing land from agricultural production peter j parks and ian w hardie 1995 a mathematical programming model of the agricultural sector and the timber market richard m adams et al 1993 a related model incorporating the effects of agricultural price support programs j m callaway and bruce mccarl 1996 and a dynamic simulation model of forestry susan swinehart 1996 lastly an analysis by andrew j plantinga 1995 adopts land use elasticities from an econometric study to estimate sequestration costs we draw on some of the best features of the previous studies including the carbon levelization method of moulton and richards john f kennedy school of government harvard university 79 john f kennedy street cambridge ma 02138 and resources for the future richard newell supplied excellent research assistance and valuable comments on a previous version were provided by lawrence goulder william nordhaus andrew plantinga kenneth richards two anonymous referees participants in seminars at the universities of california at los angeles and santa barbara the university of maryland the university of michigan the university of texas harvard university stanford university yale university resources for the future and the national bureau of economic research the author alone is resdonsible for any errors 1 after fossil fuel combustion deforestation is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions estimates of annual global emissions from deforestation range from 0 6 to 2 8 billion tons compared with slightly less than 6 0 billion tons annually from fossil fuel combustion cement manufacturing and natural gas flaring combined r a houghton 1991 t m smith et al 1993

marginal reductions in vehicle emissions under a dual blend ethanol mandate evidence from a natural experiment among the many reasons policy makers across the world have sought to supplement fuel supplies with ethanol blended fuels are the cited environmental benefits that come with replacing a fossil fuel with a cleaner burning alternative dual blend ethanol mandates in which multiple ethanol blends are simultaneously available are one way policy markers can move forward with more aggressive mandates more quickly the recent ethanol mandate in the state of new south wales australia offers a unique natural experiment to quantify the potential environmental benefits and costs of a dual blend ethanol policy this paper estimates the impact on carbon dioxide co2 emissions from road activity that are attributable to the implementation of the new south wales ethanol requirements we find that there was a decrease in emissions due to the policy but that the decrease is relatively minor given the size of the market and that it comes at a high cost the cost was over 1200 per ton of carbon to reduce gasoline emissions by just 1 2

the indirect land use impacts of united states biofuel policies the importance of acreage yield and bilateral trade responses recent work has highlighted agricultural land conversion as a significant debit in the greenhouse gas accounting of ethanol as an alternative fuel this work has at the same time sparked considerable debate on the role of crop yield growth as a means of avoiding rapid land conversion we examine the agricultural land use impacts of mandate driven ethanol demand increases in the united states in a formal economic equilibrium framework which allows us to examine the importance of yield price relationships we find that the standard assumption of trend yield growth is likely restrictive for analysis of equilibrium response to significant demand increases for fuel feedstocks furthermore we identify both the acreage response and bilateral trade specification of a multi country model as important sources of variability in terms of parametric uncertainty in predicting global land use change from the biofuels boom

the impact of energy prices on the volatility of ethanol prices and the role of gasoline emissions abstract the contribution of renewable energy resources is vital for a country s economic growth by providing high efficiency in energy as well as an effective tool for the confrontation of climate change in particular concerning the eu an increase in the consumption of renewable energy resources as a proportion of the total energy consumption by its member states was set as an objective until 2020 ethanol has been widely used as a substitute to conventional energy like gasoline and oil the present paper surveys the role of alternative energy prices and gas emissions in the formation of the ethanol prices the results of the empirical survey confirmed the existence of a sole relationship among the variables employed according to the results obtained an increase in the volume of emissions or in gasoline prices results in an increase in ethanol prices while the opposite is confirmed in the case of crude oil he elasticity of ethanol prices to the increase of the emissions is another result worth mentioning indicative of the significant role of the emissions in the formation of ethanol prices

the cost of reducing gasoline consumption high nominal gas prices new awareness of threats to national security and growing concern about global warming have reignited discussion of ways to reduce gasoline consumption in the united states debate centers on changing two policies already in place the federal gas tax and corporate average fuel economy cafe standards two influential recent reports find that increasing the gas tax would attain a given reduction in gas consumption at lower cost than would tightening cafe standards national research council 2002 congressional budget office 2003 the gas tax has this advantage because it encourages not just increases in fuel efficiency but also reductions in miles driven in contrast cafe standards actually encourage more driving because increases in fuel efficiency reduce the cost of gas per mile driven we also compare the costs of the gas tax and cafe standard but take into account interactions with preexisting tax distortions many papers examine the effects of these tax interactions in other contexts but to our knowledge none of them considers the cafe standard see e g lars bovenberg and ruud de mooij 1994 ian parry 1995 lawrence goulder 1995 bovenberg and goulder 1996 parry et al 1999 don fullerton and gilbert metcalf 2001 these interactions reduce the cost of the gas tax but increase the cost of cafe thus expanding the cost advantage enjoyed by the gas tax this difference does not arise because the gas tax raises revenue while the cafe standard does not rather this result is similar to that in west and williams 2004a which showed that since gasoline and leisure are relative complements raising the gas tax will increase labor supply generating additional efficiency gains in this paper we estimate a consumer demand system using data from the consumer expenditure survey and the california air resources board and find that miles driven and leisure are relative complements thus the gas tax encourages labor supply by raising the cost per mile driven producing an additional efficiency gain conversely because cafe reduces the cost per mile it discourages labor supply and yields an additional efficiency loss while the induced changes in labor supply are tiny relative to the labor market they are still substantial relative to the gas market and thus have a dramatic effect on the relative costs of the two policies our point estimates imply that they reduce the social marginal cost of the gas tax starting from the status quo gas tax rate and ignoring the benefits of reduced gas consumption by almost 30 percent while increasing the marginal cost of cafe by nearly 60 percent this result implies that the case for raising the gas tax rather than tightening the cafe standard is far stronger than previous studies suggest indeed it strongly suggests that any tightening at all of the cafe standard would lower welfare unless the benefits of reduced gas consumption have been seriously underestimated

estimating maximum land use change potential from a regional biofuel industry abstract the maximum amount of land for growing switchgrass for ethanol is estimated for a region in the southeastern u s breakeven capacities are calculated for land in row crops hay pasture and marginal land characteristics of land categories inform potential land use change impacts as well as switchgrass profitability variable yields within and across land categories are translated into distributions of switchgrass net revenue breakeven curves are generated for a range of switchgrass prices these curves provide upper bounds for further analysis of actual switchgrass adoption in context of broader economic forces and possible policy mechanisms to minimize environmental impacts a farm gate price of 55 mg 1 is estimated for half of marginal and pasturelands to break even with switchgrass at this price only 20 of land in hay and a small fraction of row crop hectares break even half of hay and row crops hectares break even at approximately 90 mg 1 and 100 mg 1 respectively at 60 mg 1 sufficient land area can profitably produce switchgrass for ethanol to displace approximately 10 of gasoline consumed in georgia north carolina and south carolina however this price only indicates breakeven capacity implying that higher prices may be necessary to realize 10 displacement

renewable energy gathers steam in south africa abstract south africa s renewable energy independent power producers procurement programme the rei4p is an extensive initiative to install 17 8 gw of electricity generation capacity from renewables wind solar biomass biogas and hydropower over the period 2012 2030 although at the outset the rei4p seemed an expensive option designed only to deflect criticism of south africa s high carbon footprint and excessive dependence on coal based electricity generation the escalating costs of the latter the rapidly falling costs of photovoltaic and wind power and the increasingly competitive bidding process of the rei4p have changed this prospect at the conclusion of round three the weighted cost of energy has reached a 23 discount to the cost of new coal based generation and a 28 discount to global renewable energy prices the bidders commitments to local employment creation have similarly increased from 11 to 18 jobs mw the programme is now well placed to deliver on a broad range of objectives including regional development and black economic empowerment however maximum benefit from the rei4p will not be secured without some revision to aspects of the bidding and procurement process more specifically the local content provisions need to be tightened to drive higher levels of local manufacturing

cost effectiveness of alternative green payment policies for conservation technology adoption with heterogeneous land quality this paper quantitatively analyses the cost effectiveness of alternative green payment policies designed to achieve a targeted level of pollution control by heterogeneous microunits these green payment policies include cost share subsidies that share the fixed costs of adoption of a conservation technology and or input reduction subsidies to reduce the use of a polluting input the paper shows that unlike a pollution tax that achieves abatement through three mechanisms a negative extensive margin effect a negative intensive margin effect and a technology switching effect a cost share subsidy and an input reduction subsidy are much more restricted in the types of incentives they provide for conservation of polluting inputs and adoption of a conservation technology to control pollution moreover they may lead to varying levels of expansion of land under production costs of abatement with alternative policies and implications for production and government payments are compared using a simulation model for controlling drainage from irrigated cotton production in california with drip irrigation as a conservation technology

biofuel economics in a setting of multiple objectives unintended consequences this paper examines biofuels from an economic perspective and evaluates the merits of promoting biofuel production in the context of the policies multiple objectives life cycle implications pecuniary externalities and other unintended consequences the policy goals most often cited are to reduce fossil fuel use and to lower greenhouse gas emissions but the presence of multiple objectives and various indirect effects complicates normative evaluation to address some of these complicating factors we look at a several combinations of policy alternatives that achieve the same set of incremental gains along the two primary targeted policy dimensions making it possible to compare the costs and cost effectiveness of each combination of policies for example when this approach is applied to u s produced biofuels they are found to be 14 31 times as costly as alternatives like raising the gas tax or promoting energy efficiency improvements the analysis also finds the scale of the potential contributions of biofuels to be extremely small in both the u s and eu mandated u s corn ethanol production for 2025 reduces u s petroleum input use by 1 75 and would have negligible net effects on co2 emissions and although eu imports of brazilian ethanol may look better given the high costs of other alternatives this option is equivalent at most to a 1 20 reduction in eu gasoline consumption

hidden regimes and the demand for carbon dioxide from motor gasoline abstract perhaps the most tactile source of anthropogenic carbon dioxide co2 emissions stem from vehicle use because consumers are well aware of their price and quantity decisions it is likely that consumer demand for co2 emissions from motor gasoline are quite responsive to the overall state of the economy using a structurally identified markov switching demand model i find that co2 emissions respond asymmetrically to changes in income and the price of gasoline in expansionary and contracting states of the economy the findings of this paper indicate that flexible policy instruments have the potential to mitigate undue burden on consumers and producers compared to their static counterparts

does the source of capital affect capital structure prior work on leverage implicitly assumes capital availability depends solely on firm characteristics however market frictions that make capital structure relevant may also be associated with a firm s source of capital examining this intuition we find firms that have access to the public bond markets as measured by having a debt rating have significantly more leverage although firms with a rating are fundamentally different these differences do not explain our findings even after controlling for firm characteristics that determine observed capital structure and instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of having a rating firms with access have 35 more debt copyright 2006 oxford university press

determinants of margin in microfinance institutions abstractmicrofinance institutions mfis lend to the poor however microfinance clients suffer from high interest rates a type of poverty penalty this article analyses the margin determinants in mfis a banking model has been adapted to microfinance this model has been tested using 9 year panel data some factors explaining bank margin also explain mfi margin with operating costs being the most important factor specific microfinance factors are donations and legal status as regulated mfis can collect deposits it has also been found that mfis operating in countries with a high level of financial inclusion have low margins