Review of Development Finance最新文献

Despite the increase in the number of non-performing loans and competition in the banking market, most of the Jordanian commercial banks are reluctant to use data mining tools to support credit decisions. Artificial neural networks represent a new family of statistical techniques and promising data mining tools that have been used successfully in classification problems in many domains. This paper proposes two credit scoring models using data mining techniques to support loan decisions for the Jordanian commercial banks. Loan application evaluation would improve credit decision effectiveness and control loan office tasks, as well as save analysis time and cost. Both accepted and rejected loan applications, from different Jordanian commercial banks, were used to build the credit scoring models. The results indicate that the logistic regression model performed slightly better than the radial basis function model in terms of the overall accuracy rate. However, the radial basis function was superior in identifying those customers who may default.

This paper introduces a new dataset on the stock and structure of domestic debt in 36 Low-Income Countries over the period 1971–2011. We characterize the recent trends regarding LICs domestic public debt and explore the relevance of different arguments put forward on the benefits and costs of government borrowing in local public debt markets. The main stylized fact emerging from the data is the increase in domestic government debt since 1996. We also observe that poor countries have been able to increase the share of long-term instruments over time and that the maturity lengthening went together with a decrease in borrowing costs. However, the concentration of the investor base, mainly dominated by commercial banks and the Central Bank, may crowd out lending to the private sector.

There is little evidence on the effect of banking development on firm creation in the small firm sector. This paper examines whether differences in banking sector penetration across Indian districts explain the differences in firm start-ups in Indian informal sector. Our empirical strategy lies in examining the effect of the spread of banking facilities at the district level on new firm formation in the informal sector for the period 1994–1995 to 2010–2011. Our results confirm that local bank availability is associated with significant increase in enterprises in the informal sector and the effect is more pronounced for larger enterprises in the sector.

This paper examines the factors that account for the deterioration in the asset quality of Ghanaian banks during a period of financial crises using a unique dataset on 25 banks from 2005 to 2010. Based on system Generalized Method of Moments estimations, we find that the persistence of non-performing loans in addition to loan growth, bank market structure, bank size, inflation, real exchange rate and GDP growth are the significant determinants of banks asset quality in Ghana. The findings have implications for both bank management and regulators in emerging economies.

Can a significant technological improvement make an economically justifiable contribution to a financial market's development? The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) incorporated the SETS system from the London Stock Exchange in 2002. It is certain that SETS is a technologically efficient trading system, and it would undoubtedly improve trading in the JSE. We test whether SETS represents a structural break by examining whether there was an increase in the JSE's liquidity, market efficiency and international integration after the introduction of SETS. While SETS is certainly a technological improvement with increased liquidity, it is not a sufficient factor to render it efficient. After the incorporation of SETS, the JSE has become more independent and it now offers better diversification opportunities for international investors.

I study market behavior around earnings releases for Chinese stocks, emphasizing the opening of the B share market to PRC investors on February 19th 2001. Before then, abnormal pre-announcement trading volume in the A share market (restricted to locals) suggests inside information, while announcement period return and volume responses suggest “disagreement” in B and H share trading (restricted to foreigners). After that, B share market behavior more closely resembles A share trading. Similar changes are not observed in a “control”, the H share market, which remains closed to PRC investors. There is little evidence that the change in pre-announcement activity in the B share market affects relative B and A prices or reflects superior information about corporate performance.

We use an updated form of an old database to examine aid predictability, i.e. the relationship between commitments and disbursements. In contrast to the existing literature, the regression results suggest that on average almost all commitments tend to be met within two years, with the overwhelming majority met immediately. But the situation is different with respect to individual sectors. Some such as infrastructure have very long lags. For some sectors too it seems likely that commitments will never be fully met. Debt aid, however, tends to be disbursed in full almost immediately. There are also substantial differences between countries.

The objective of this paper is to improve understanding of the market for Islamic finance in Africa. Specifically the paper provides a mapping of Africa-based Islamic finance providers, quantifies the amount of foreign Islamic funding received by Africa and compares performance of African Islamic and conventional banks. We find that there are significant cross country variations in the way Islamic banking has been developed in Africa and in the type of services offered. Our empirical findings also support the superior efficiency of Islamic banks and suggest that Islamic banking could be beneficial for Africa.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the long-run growth effects of financial development in Ghana. We find that the growth effect of financial development is sensitive to the choice of proxy. Both the credit to the private sector as ratios to GDP and total domestic credit are conducive for growth, while broad money stock to GDP ratio is not growth-inducing. The indexes created from principal component analysis confirmed the sensitivity of the effect to the choice of proxy. The findings here suggest that whether financial development is good or bad for growth depends on the indicator used to proxy for financial development.

This paper investigates how the level of competition affects diversification and stability using a sample of 978 banks in 55 emerging and developing countries over an eight year period 2000–2007. We shed further light on the competition-stability nexus by examining the complex interaction between three key variables: the degree of bank market power, diversification and stability. The core finding is that competition increases stability as diversification across and within both interest and non-interest income generating activities of banks increases. Our analysis identifies revenue diversification as a channel through which competition affects bank insolvency risk in emerging countries. The results are robust to an array of controls including alternative methodology, variable specifications and the regulatory environments that banks operate in.