socially responsible investors and the microentrepreneur a canadian case socially responsible investors buy financial securities with two goals to make a market based return and to make companies act in a more socially responsible way most research on socially responsible investment deals with investing in stocks traded on major exchanges we add the case of loaning small amounts of funds to microentrepreneurs through a discussion of a particular case the case is that of calmeadow which in conjunction with the royal bank of canada set up a microlending project in rural nova scotia canada using hirschman s analysis of exit and voice we show that while socially responsible investors may make market based returns for their investments in stocks traded on major exchanges they have no effect on corporate behaviour because their action consists of exit and they are easily replaced by other investors they attain their first goal but not their second on the other hand in the calmeadow royal bank of canada case we see that those who lend money to microenterprises can more easily use voice the relative power difference between the lender and the microentrepreneur enables the lender to make the microentrepreneur act in a more socially responsible way although only marginally but because of the market imperfections existing in this case the very high transactions costs associated with administering small loans the lender concluded it could not attain a market rate of return in this case then the lender attained its second goal but not its first

how do daily changes in oil prices affect us monthly industrial output detecting asymmetry has become increasingly difficult using single frequency data this paper goes beyond the prevailing use of aggregate averaged data in order to provide a more in depth treatment of the dynamic effects of the price of crude oil on industrial output growth to do so we propose an asymmetric mixed data sampling amidas model to examine if there is any concealed evidence of asymmetry arising from daily effects of the price of crude oil on monthly changes in industrial output in the united states us we find that this model is able to detect dynamic asymmetric impacts of a high frequency independent variable on a low frequency dependent variable more effectively than when the high frequency variable is aggregated up at the time interval of the low frequency variable we find that in comparison with the marginal lagged effects of a rise in the daily price of crude oil the effects of a fall in the daily price of crude oil are more sluggish as it takes longer for the effects of the oil price drop to die off over time this finding implies that a fall in the price of crude oil shifts the supply curve rightward less and at a much slower pace than an equivalent price rise shifts it to the left

exploring the core factors and its dynamic effects on oil price an application on path analysis and bvar tvp model abstract as the uncertainty of oil price increases impacts of the influential factors on oil price vary over time it is of great importance to explore the core factors and its time varying influence on oil price in view of this based on the path analysis model this paper obtains the core factors builds an oil price system var model which uses demand supply price and inventory as endogenous variables and china s net imports as well as dollar index as exogenous variables then we set up a bvar tvp time varying parameter model to analyze dynamic impacts of core factors on oil price the results show that 1 oil prices became more sensitive to oil supply changes and the influence delays became shorter 2 the impact of oil inventories on oil prices with a time lag of two quarters but has a downward trend 3 the impact of oil consumption on oil prices with a time lag of two quarters and this effect is increasingly greater 4 the us dollar index is always the important factor of oil price and its control power increases gradually and the financial crisis occurred in 2008 further strengthens the influence of us dollar

crude oil prices and liquidity the bric and g3 countries unanticipated increases in the bric countries liquidity lead to significant and persistent increases in real oil prices global oil production and global real aggregate demand unanticipated shocks to the liquidity of developed countries over 1997 01 2011 12 do not the relative contribution to real oil price of liquidity in bric countries to liquidity in developed countries is much greater since 2005 than before 2005 china and india drive the results for the effect of bric countries liquidity on real oil price and global oil production china and india and brazil and russia reinforce one another on the effect of liquidity on global real aggregate demand due to the difference between countries as commodity importers exporters the liquidity of brazil and russia increases significantly with a rise in real oil price and that of china and india decreases significantly with a rise in real oil price it is shown that the strong rebound in oil price during 2009 is mostly due to strong effects of shocks to liquidity in the bric countries the analysis helps in assessing the importance of the bric economies in the upsurge of the real price of crude oil

influential factors in crude oil price forecasting abstract this paper identifies factors that are influential in forecasting crude oil prices we consider six categories of factors supply demand financial market commodities market speculative and geopolitical and test their significance in the context of estimating various forecasting models we find that the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator lasso regression method provides significant improvements in the forecasting accuracy of prices compared to alternative benchmarks relative to the no change and futures based models lasso forecasts at the 8 step ahead horizon yield significant reductions in mean squared prediction error mspe with mspe ratios of 0 873 and 0 898 respectively we also document substantial improvements in forecasting performance of the factor based model that employs only a subset of variables chosen by lasso finally the time varying nature of the relationship between factors and oil prices is used to explain recent movements in crude oil prices

rotating savings and credit associations the choice between random and bidding allocation of funds abstract the performance and efficiency of random and bidding rotating savings and credit associations roscas are compared within a game theoretic model information about individuals return from investing the rosca pool is assumed to be asymmetric and imperfect and rosca members are allowed to use funds raised outside the rosca to supplement the funds raised in the rosca the conclusion is that although both types of roscas can improve individual welfare the bidding rosca is preferred to the random rosca except when credit from other sources is costly and types of rosca members are not widely dispersed

flexible practices for mass production goals economic governance in the indian automobile industry this paper explains the remarkable restructuring of the indian automobile industry it argues that firms have had to deploy new governance modes flexible industrial practices for economic coordination to overcome supply bottlenecks and meet expanding demand firms that failed to adopt these practices performed poorly while firms that attained economies of scale were able to graduate to exploiting economies of scope the industry experience suggests that new governance modes can serve mass production goals in developing economies and not just cushion market volatility for which they were designed

financial services for microenterprises principles and institutions abstract this article argues for the use of a financial systems approach in the provision of financial services to the poor the experience of the last decade has produced a successful technology for credit delivery that utilizes sound financial principles as its basis that is understanding the needs of the client increasing efficiency by cutting administrative costs and using various techniques to motivate repayment savings receives equal emphasis as a financial service and several principles for its provision are discussed the institutional dimensions behind this approach focus on the need to achieve self sufficiency which the article frames as a four stage process finally the article outlines various factors related to creating financial institutions that reach the poor and the policy implications that these suggest

oil prices and global factor macroeconomic variables abstract this paper investigates the relationship between oil prices global industrial production prices central bank policy interest rate and monetary aggregate with a global factor augmented error correction model we confirm the following stylized relationships i at global level money industrial production and prices are cointegrated ii positive innovation in global oil price is connected with global interest rate tightening iii positive innovation in global money price level and industrial production is connected with an increase in oil prices iv positive innovations in global interest rate are associated with a decline in oil prices and v the u s euro area and china are the main drivers of global macroeconomic factors

a novel hybrid method for crude oil price forecasting abstract forecasting crude oil price is a challenging task given the nonlinear and time varying characteristics of international crude oil prices we propose a novel hybrid method to forecast crude oil prices first we use the ensemble empirical mode decomposition eemd method to decompose international crude oil price into a series of independent intrinsic mode functions imfs and the residual term then the least square support vector machine together with the particle swarm optimization lssvm pso method and the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch model are developed to forecast the nonlinear and time varying components of crude oil prices respectively next the forecasted crude oil prices of each component are summed as the final forecasted results of crude oil prices the results show that the newly proposed hybrid method has a strong forecasting capability for crude oil prices due to its excellent performance in adaptation to the random sample selection data frequency and structural breaks in samples furthermore the comparison results also indicate that the new method proves superior in forecasting accuracy to those well recognized methods for crude oil price forecasting

impact of microfinance on schooling evidence from poor rural households in bolivia summary channels for the influence of microfinance programs on a rural household s demand for schooling are identified income growth risk management child labor demand gender empowerment and parent information within a random utility framework a model of household consumption investment in education and borrowing suggests determinants at the individual household and regional levels of the probability of schooling gaps using data from two surveys of households of clients of microfinance organizations in bolivia regression models examine determinants of schooling gaps inferences about otherwise positive microfinance impacts identify potential negative effects of increased child labor demand which challenge usual assumptions and pose dilemmas for policymakers

financial access and exclusion in kenya and uganda abstract policy emphasis has recently shifted to finance for all given evidence that financial sector development contributes to growth but effects on poverty do not arise from pro poor provision we argue that given this policy goal analyses of barriers to access must be country specific and go beyond the emphasis on transactions costs to incorporate the effects of social institutions since these contribute to discrimination this paper uses data from financial access surveys carried out in 2006 in kenya and uganda to investigate the socio economic demographic and geographical factors influencing access to and exclusion from formal semi formal and informal financial services

microenterprise credit programs deja vu abstract microenterprises in low income countries are the target of an increasing number of credit programs these efforts resemble earlier problematic attempts to assist operators of small farms with credit similarities discussed include target group definition assumptions policies and project justifications authors go on to list a dozen lessons from the experience with small farmer credit that might apply to microenterprise credit efforts authors then conclude that debt is not an effective tool for helping most poor people to enchance their economic conditions be they operators of small farms or microenterprises

modeling volatility and correlations between emerging market stock prices and the prices of copper oil and wheat abstract increased financial integration between countries and the financialization of commodity markets are providing investors with new ways to diversify their investment portfolios this paper uses varma agarch and dcc agarch models to model volatilities and conditional correlations between emerging market stock prices copper prices oil prices and wheat prices the dynamic conditional correlation model is found to fit the data the best and used to generate dynamic conditional correlations hedge ratios and optimal portfolio weights emerging market stock prices and oil prices display leverage effects where negative residuals tend to increase the variance conditional volatility more than positive ones correlations between these assets increased considerably after 2008 and have yet to return to their pre 2008 values on average oil provides the cheapest hedge for emerging market stock prices while copper is the most expensive but given the variability in the hedge ratios one should probably not put too much emphasis on average hedge ratios

the restructuring of the indian automobile industry indian state and japanese capital abstract this paper analyzes the changing institutional context in which the restructuring of the indian automobile industry is taking place it explains the internationalization of the industry under the aegis of deregulation of a heavily statist economy economic liberalization however has not resulted in withdrawal of the state from the industry transnational corporations have not necessarily weakened domestic capital instead japanese capital and technology have transformed the industry with mixed outcomes creating both benefits of and constraints to restructuring the reorganization of the indian automobile industry reflects not only global forces but rather the interplay of changing institutional factors in influencing industrial restructuring in a developing economy

oil price fluctuations and u s dollar exchange rates adding oil prices to the monetary model of exchange rates we find that oil prices significantly explain movements in the value of the u s dollar usd against major currencies from the 1970s to 2008 our long run and forecasting results are remarkably consistent with an oil exchange rate relationship increases in real oil prices lead to a significant depreciation of the usd against net oil exporter currencies such as canada mexico and russia on the other hand the currencies of oil importers such as japan depreciate relative to the usd when the real oil price goes up

estimating and forecasting the real prices of crude oil a data rich model using a dynamic model averaging dma approach given that oil price fluctuations have been of great interest for macroeconomics in the recent years due to its important implications for future inflation economic growth and policy making the aim of this paper is to estimate and forecast west texas intermediate wti crude oil prices using a large monthly dataset that covers the period from march 1983 to december 2011 to achieve this aim forecasting with factor models offers a usual approach that utilizes large datasets however a forecasting model which simply includes all factors in state space equation and does not allow for time varying may be not suitable with a highly volatile market such as oil market to overcome these limitations an approach that accounts both for parameter and model uncertainty is employed in particular this study uses the dynamic model averaging dma approach suggested by koop and korobilis 2012 the key element of the dma approach is that it allows both for model and parameter to vary at each point of time by doing so the dma is robust to structural breaks empirical findings show that dma approach outperforms any other alternative model used in the forecasting exercise results also show that there is model but not parameter variation in this oil price forecasting exercise finally the findings suggest that the dma approach provides a better proxy of expected spot prices than future prices

forecasting oil price trends using wavelets and hidden markov models the crude oil price is influenced by a great number of factors most of which interact in very complex ways for this reason forecasting it through a fundamentalist approach is a difficult task an alternative is to use time series methodologies with which the price s past behavior is conveniently analyzed and used to predict future movements in this paper we investigate the usefulness of a nonlinear time series model known as hidden markov model hmm to predict future crude oil price movements using an hmm we develop a forecasting methodology that consists of basically three steps first we employ wavelet analysis to remove high frequency price movements which can be assumed as noise then the hmm is used to forecast the probability distribution of the price return accumulated over the next f days finally from this distribution we infer future price trends our results indicate that the proposed methodology might be a useful decision support tool for agents participating in the crude oil market

bank branch presence and access to credit in low to moderate income neighborhoods banks specialize in lending to informationally opaque borrowers by collecting soft information about them some researchers claim that this process requires a physical presence in the market to lower information collection costs the author provides evidence in support of this argument in the mortgage market for low income borrowers mortgage originations increase and interest spreads decline when there is a bank branch located in a low to moderate income neighborhood

effect of inventory announcements on crude oil price volatility abstract this paper examines the behavior of crude oil futures price volatility and investigates how the eia weekly crude oil inventory reports announcements especially information shocks impact crude oil price movement and volatility this study focuses on inventory information shocks using a new measure rather than on inventory changes themselves the empirical results reveal that inventory information shocks rather than actual inventory changes negatively affect crude oil returns on the day the eia releases the inventory information although inventory shocks have no effect on daily conditional variance which mainly follows a garch 1 1 process to test the robustness of our model we re estimate the models for three subsamples according to all results we find that the effect of inventory shocks is weakened in rapid growth periods and disappears in steep fall markets

trust social capital and economic development many argue that elements of a society s norms culture or social capital are central to understanding its development however these notions have been difficult to capture in economic models here we explore ap ossible role for trustworthiness as corresponding to social capital individuals are trustworthy when they perform in accordance with promises even if this does not maximize their payoffs the usual focus on incentive structures in motivating behaviour plays no role here instead we emphasize more deep seated modes of behaviour and consider trustworthy agents being socialized to act as they do to model this socialization we borrow from a process of preference evolution pioneered by bisin and verdier 2001 the model developed endogenously accounts for social capital and explores its role in the process of economic development it captures in a simple formal way the interaction between social capital and the economy s productive processes the results obtained caution against rapid reform and provide an explanation for why late developing countries may not easily be able to transplant the modes of production that have proved useful in the west

ngo performance what breeds success new evidence from south asia abstract what is the best way for nongovernment organisations ngos to make a lasting impact on poverty this paper summarizes the findings of recent research into the impact sustainability and cost effectiveness of two ngos in india and two projects implemented by save the children fund uk in bangladesh the factors determining performance are explored through the interaction of organizational decisions with the external context although these interactions are complex and dynamic some clear conclusions emerge making a difference to livelihoods and capacities among poor people depends on ngo successes in fostering autonomous grassroots institutions and linking them with markets and political structures at higher levels these conclusions question the current predilection among donor agencies to fund large scale ngo service delivery

microenterprise development programs in the united states and in the developing world abstract sparked by examples from bangladesh bolivia indonesia and other developing countries hundreds of microenterprise programs have been started in the united states will these us efforts be successful this paper reviews the evidence and concludes that microenterprise development is much more difficult in the united states than in the developing world the paper suggests some ways to address the challenges of us microenterprise development

a little at a time the use of regularly scheduled repayments in microfinance programs abstract informal lenders appear to be thriving even in regions where microfinance institutions mfis such as the grameen bank have established lending programs we suggest that an explanation for this well documented observation lies in the ubiquitous use of regularly scheduled repayments by mfis borrowers are typically required to repay their loans in tightly structured installments beginning soon after loan disbursement this little remarked aspect of the repayment schedule is usually explained as inculcating fiscal discipline among borrowers we argue that an alternative rationale for this loan repayment structure lies in the difficulty of monitoring borrowers actions the potential for moral hazard leads mfis to use innovative mechanisms such as regularly scheduled repayments which indirectly coopt the better informed informal lenders conversely this installment repayment structure allows informal lenders to survive further we show that this linkage can not only expand the volume of informal lending but may also raise the interest rate in the informal sector

evaluating density forecasts with applications to financial risk management density forecasting is increasingly more important and commonplace for example in financial risk management yet little attention has been given to the evaluation of density forecasts the authors develop a simple and operational framework for density forecast evaluation they illustrate the framework with a detailed application to density forecasting of asset returns in environments with time varying volatility finally the authors discuss several extensions copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

technique and system the spread of japanese management techniques to developing countries in this paper a distinction is drawn between the isolated use of individual japanese management techniques and their adoption in an integrated package as part of a production system although the use of individual techniques does confer significant benefits to innovating firms it is clear from international experience that the major gains arise from systemic application the central objective of this paper is to explore whether there are obstacles specific to less developed countries ldcs in the systemic application of japanese management techniques the major forces driving the adoption of these new management techniques are reviewed based upon research in latin america india and zimbabwe then three major ldc specific factors affecting systemic adoption are considered human resources interfirm cooperation and management

forecasting crude oil market volatility further evidence with jumps this paper analyzes volatility models and their forecasting abilities in the presence of jumps in two crude oil markets brent and west texas intermediate wti between january 6th 1992 and december 31st 2014 we compare a number of garch type models that capture short memory as well as asymmetry garch gjr garch and egarch estimated on raw returns to three competing approaches that deal with the presence of jumps garch type models estimated on jump filtered returns and two new classes of volatility models called generalized autoregressive score gas and markov switching multifractal msm models estimated using raw returns the forecasting performance of these volatility models is evaluated using the model confidence set approach which allows us to identify a subset of models that outperform all the other competing models we find that asymmetric models estimated on filtered returns provide better out of sample forecasts than do garch gas type and msm models estimated on raw return series for brent and wti returns

managing credit for the rural poor lessons from the grameen bank abstract this paper based on a detailed study of the grameen bank in bangladesh suggests that the credit policies of the bank do not constitute a sufficient explanation for the bank s success and that its acclaimed policy of replacing individual collateral with group guarantee is in fact not practiced the paper presents an alternate explanation for the success of the grameen bank in addition it explains how the grameen bank has been able to overcome typical problems of implementing development programs by sustaining good performance from its large work force and keeping to a minimum the tendency of a few target beneficiaries to corner program benefits and flout organizational norms for their personal benefit

forecasting energy market volatility using garch models can multivariate models beat univariate models abstract in this paper we forecast energy market volatility using both univariate and multivariate garch class models first we forecast volatilities of individual assets and find that multivariate models display better performance than univariate models second we forecast crack spread volatility and contrast the performance of multivariate models for two underlyings with the alternative of univariate ones for crack spreads directly our evidence shows that univariate models allowing for asymmetric effects display the greatest accuracy we also discuss the hedging strategy based on multivariate models and its implications for market participants

crude oil price analysis and forecasting a perspective of new triangle abstract in this paper the new structural characteristics and core influencing factors of the crude oil prices are summarized based on previous representative research results firstly a newly dynamic bayesian structural time series model dbsts is developed to investigate the oil prices in particular google trend is introduced as an indicator to reflect the impact of search data on the oil price secondly the spike and slab method is employed to select core influence factors finally the bayesian model average bma is utilized to predict the oil price experimental results confirm that the supply and demand of global crude oil and the financial market are still the main factors affecting the oil price furthermore google trend can reflect the changes in the crude oil price to a certain extent moreover the impact of shale oil production on the oil price is gradually increasing yet remains relatively small in addition the dbsts model can identify turning points in historical data such as the 2008 financial crisis finally the findings suggest the dbsts model has good predictive capabilities in short term prediction making it suitable for analyzing the crude oil prices

innovation in rural finance indonesia s badan kredit kecamatan program abstract donor agencies and governments are committing increasing resources to microenterprise credit programs much as they earlier funded rural credit yet few programs embody the lessons from this earlier experience central java s badan kredit kecamatan program shows considerable promise in providing the access convenience and flexibility desired by poor borrowers while assuring the financial viability of the credit institution by minimizing administrative costs and imposing interest rates sufficient to cover costs and prevent capital erosion recent progress has also been made in mobilizing voluntary savings strong political support from the government has been crucial to the program s success

do oil spot and futures prices move together abstract this paper investigates the time varying correlation and the causal relationship between crude oil spot and futures prices using a newly developed approach wavelet coherency analysis in time frequency domain first we find evidence of a long run cointegration relationship between oil spot and futures prices moreover the short run causality is more significant in shorter maturity pairs versus longer maturity pairs in the vector error correction framework second the results from wavelet coherency analysis show significant dynamic correlations between variables in the time frequency domain third the illustration of the phase difference series around zero suggests that spot and futures prices contribute to the dynamics of the long run equilibrium fourth and finally we provide reasons for the structural changes in oil prices and also recommend investment strategies corresponding to risk diversification future studies focusing on the behavior of oil prices should consider the characteristics of the time frequency space and lead lag dynamic relationships

forecasting the real prices of crude oil using forecast combinations over time varying parameter models abstract in this paper we forecast real prices of crude oil using real time forecast combinations over time varying parameter tvp models with single predictor we reveal the significant predictability at all horizons up to 24 months the mean squared predictive error reduction over the benchmark of no change forecast is as high as 17 and the directional accuracy as high as 0 645 a combination with tvp models is found to generate more accurate forecasts than the same combination with constant coefficient models because the forecast errors of individual tvp models are correlated at a lower degree we also evaluate the forecasting performance in the framework of density forecasting our results indicate that the benchmark model can be significantly outperformed by forecast combination at the horizons longer than 3 months

rural credit markets and institutions in developing countries lessons for policy analysis from practice and modern theory this article presents evidence of the failure of government intervention in rural credit markets of ldcs in the past three decades it then shows how lessons for policy analysis can be drawn from modern theory particularly those theories focussing on credit rationing in competitive markets and interlinking of credit contracts with labor and land contracts the article outlines the policy implications of these theories and finds them insufficient to account for the empirical evidence it contends that a more systematic and rigorous analysis of institutions and institutional environments is essential for understanding and implementing effective policy reforms of rural credit markets it presents suggestions for undertaking such an analysis

the performance of village intermediaries in rural credit delivery under changing penalty regimes evidence from senegal this article concerns the use of village intermediaries to mitigate asymmetric information problems in rural credit delivery we consider an example from senegal and examine the intermediaries screening of loan applicants the results show that when the intermediaries expected to incur a substantial penalty in the event of borrower default they engaged in appropriate screening allocating credit to borrowers likely to repay their loans when the default penalty was lowered however the intermediaries engaged in opportunistic screening emphasising political affiliation and consanguinity in their lending decisions these results reveal both the potential efficacy of village intermediaries in allocating credit and their extreme sensitivy to penalty regimes

technology acquisition de regulation and competitiveness a study of indian automobile industry abstract this paper has attempted to analyse the effects of de regulation policy introduced in india during the mid 1980s on technology acquisition and competitiveness defined in terms of market share changes in the indian automobile industry during the 1980s following evolutionary theoretical framework the paper argues that asymmetry among firms in terms of technology acquisition through technology imports and in house efforts explain much of the firm level differences in competitiveness asymmetry in technology acquisition is largely due to differences in the firms ability to bring about technological paradigm and trajectory shifts the results of the econometric exercise support the view that even in an era of capacity licensing development of competitive skills crucially depended upon the ability to build specific technology trajectory advantages this is achieved by successfully complementing imported technology with in house technological efforts competitiveness in a de regulated regime would however depend upon the ability of the firm to bring about technological paradigm shifts new firms who depended on intra firm transfer of technology and firms with in house r d efforts to accomplish paradigm shifts appear more successful further in a liberal regime advantages of vertical integration over sub contracting also appear to be important in the determination of competitiveness

what ever happened to poverty alleviation abstract the failure of many programs directed toward alleviating poverty is better understood than the successes this paper identifies the traits that characterize several better performing programs funded by the ford foundation traits that are not commonly found in such programs all focused narrowly on a particular trade or activity in the beginning used credit as an entry point started by brokering loans rather than lending directly and had leadership linked to powerful institutions participants were already engaged in the economic activities supported by the programs marketing channels existed and powerful consumer groups were often in favor of production by beneficiary groups though these findings seem obvious few programs funded by donors display these characteristics suggesting that donors choose programs and organizations more carefully and not limit their funding to the nongovernmental sector

asymmetric impacts of oil price uncertainty on chinese stock returns under different market conditions evidence from oil volatility index abstract the crude oil volatility index ovx is a direct and more accurate measure of oil price uncertainty this paper uses this kind of implied volatility index of oil prices to investigate the impacts of oil price uncertainty on the aggregate and sectoral stock returns in china this issue is resolved by using a quantile regression which can provide a more detailed examination under different market conditions meanwhile the asymmetric effects of uncertainty shocks are also examined by using the positive and negative changes of the ovx furthermore we assess whether the reform of march 27 2013 affected the ovx stock nexus since this reform was a major step to relax the control of domestic oil prices in china our results reveal that ovx changes mainly show significantly negative effects on the aggregate and sectoral stock returns in the bearish market in particular these effects depend largely on the positive shocks of the ovx rather than the negative shocks of the ovx moreover the reform of march 27 2013 decreased the impacts of the positive ovx shocks on chinese stock returns