Distance, Bank Organizational Structure and Credit

We survey the extant literature on the effects of both a bank’s organizational structure and the physical distance separating it from the lender on lending decisions. Banks do engage in spatial pricing, where the underlying mechanism can be both transportation costs and information asymmetries. Moreover, their ability to discriminate is bounded by the reach of the lending technology of surrounding competitors. It is not entirely clear from an empirical viewpoint that small, decentralized banks have a comparative advantage in relationship lending. Differences in data and methodology may explain these mixed findings. If it does exist, this advantage can be motivated theoretically by the existence of agency and communication costs within a bank.financial intermediation;distance;organizations;loan rates;collateral

Automating Regression Test Selection for Web Services

As Web services grow in maturity and use, so do the methods which are being used to test and maintain them. Regression Testing is a major component of most major testing systems but has only begun to be applied to Web services. The majority of the tools and techniques applying regression test to Web services are focused on test-case generation, thus ignoring the potential savings of regression test selection. Regression test selection optimizes the regression testing process by selecting a subset of all tests, while still maintaining some level of confidence about the system performing no worse than the unmodified system. A safe regression test selection technique implies that after selection, the level of confidence is as high as it would be if no tests were removed. Since safe regression test selection techniques generally involve code-based (white-box) testing, they cannot be directly applied to Web services due to their loosely-coupled, standards-based, and distributed nature. A framework which automates both the regression test selection and regression testing processes for Web services in a decentralized, end-to-end manner is proposed. As part of this approach, special consideration is given to the concurrency issues which may occur in an autonomous and decentralized system. The resulting synchronization method will be presented along with a set of algorithms which manage the regression testing and regression test selection processes throughout the system. A set of empirical results demonstrate the feasibility and benefit of the approach

Government Decentralization as a Disincentive for Transnational Terror? An Empirical Analysis

Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while political decentralization has no impact. These results are robust to the choice of control variables and method of estimation.terrorism, decentralization, federalism, governance quality, government effectiveness

Centralization, Decentralization, and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper examines broadly the intergovernmental structure in the Middle East and North Africa region, which has one of the most centralized government structures in the world. The authors address the reasons behind this centralized structure by looking first at the history behind the tax systems of the region. They review the Ottoman taxation system, which has been predominantly influential as a model, and discuss its impact on current government structure. They also discuss the current intergovernmental structure by examining the type and degree of decentralization in five countries representative of the region: Egypt, Iran, West Bank/Gaza, Tunisia, and Yemen. Cross-country regression analysis using panel data for a broader set of countries leads to better understanding of the factors behind heavy centralization in the region. The findings show that external conflicts constitute a major roadblock to decentralization in the region.Fiscal decentralization; intergovernmental relations; Middle East and North Africa

Decentralization and public services : the case of immunization

The author studies the impact of political decentralization on childhood immunization, an essential public service provided in almost all countries. He examines the relationship empirically using a time-series data set of 140 low- and middle-income countries from 1980 to 1997. The author finds that decentralization has different effects in low- and middle-income countries. In the low-income group, decentralized countries have higher coverage rates than centralized ones, with an average difference of 8.5 percent for measles and DTP3 vaccines. In the middle-income group, the reverse effect is observed: decentralized countries have lower coverage rates than centralized ones, with an average difference of 5.2 percent for the same vaccines. Both results are significant at the 99 percent level. Modifiers of the decentralization-immunization relationship also differ in the two groups. In the low-income group, development assistance reduces the gains from decentralization. In the middle-income group, democratic government mitigates the negative effects of decentralization, and decentralization reverses the negative effects of ethnic tension and ethno-linguistic fractionalization, but institutional quality and literacy rates have no interactive effect either way. Similar results are obtained whether decentralization is measured with a dichotomous categorical variable or with more specific measures of fiscal decentralization. The study confirms predictions in the theoretical literature about the negative impact of local political control on services that have public goods characteristics and inter-jurisdictional externalities. The author discusses reasons for the difference between low- and middle-income countries.Public Health Promotion,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Decentralization,Municipal Financial Management,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Governance Indicators

Efficiency of financial micro intermediation in the WAEMU countries: A stochastic frontier production analysis.

This paper investigates the efficacy and technical efficiency of financial micro intermediation in the productive process of the WAEMU economies over the period 2002-2007 using a stochastic frontier production model with technical inefficiency effects. Four specific variables of the financial dualism deepening and the financial micro intermediation are considered: the ratio of microcredit to GDP, the microcredit growth rate, the share of microcredit in the economy financing due to the private sector and the agents preference for decentralized deposits. Our findings show that the four variables have positive effect on technical efficiency with 0.6 of semi-elasticity estimated on average whereas bank loans have on average only 0.3 on average. We conclude that the financial micro intermediation development which results from the financial dualism deepening makes it possible to almost double increase the productive efficiency in WAEMU area.Financial micro intermediation, financial dualism, stochastic frontier, technical efficiency, WAEMU

Autonomy, participation, and learning in Argentine schools - findings andtheir implications for decentralization

According to a theoretical model, school autonomy and parental participation in schools, can increase student learning through separate channels. Greater school autonomy increases the rent that can be distributed among stakeholders in the school, while institutions for parental participation (such as school board) empower parents to command a larger share of this surplus - for example, through student learning. Using a rich cross-sectional data set from Argentine schools (sixth and seventh grades), the authors find that autonomy, and participation raise student test scores for a given level of inputs, in a multiplicative way, consistent with the model. Autonomy has a direct effect on learning (but not for very low levels of participation), while participation affects learning only through the mediation of the effect of autonomy. The results are robust to a variety of robustness checks, and for sub-samples of children from poor households, children of uneducated mothers, schools with low mean family wealth, and public schools. It is possible that autonomy, and participation are endogenously determined, and that this biases the results - the data available do not allow this to be ruled out with certainty. Plausible predicators of autonomy, and participation are also plausible predicators of test scores, and they fail tests for the over-identifying restrictions. Heuristically argued, however, the potential for correlation with unobserved variables may be limited: the data set is rich in observed variables, and autonomy and participation show very low correlation with observed variables. Subject to these caveats, the results may be relevant to decentralization in two ways. First, as decentralization moves responsibility from the central, toward the provincial or local government, the results should be directly relevant if the decentralization increases autonomy, and participation in schools. Second, if the results are interpreted as representing a more general effect of moving decision-making toward users, and the local community, the results are relevant even if little happens to autonomy, and participation in schools. More important, perhaps, the authors illustrate empirically the importance of knowing who is empowered when higher levels of government loosen control.Politics and Government,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Politics and Government,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Utilizing e-business technologies in supply chains: The impact of firm characteristics and teams

This paper presents findings from an exploratory study that analyzes the drivers and outcomes of e-business technology use in the supply chain. Using a combination of case studies and survey data from a diverse sample of industries, the research examines how industry context, firm characteristics and firm-level strategic resources, such as purchasing teams, influence the exploitation of e-business technologies and the relationship between e-business technology use and firm performance. Based on a synthesis of related literatures from transaction cost economics and the relational view of the supply chain, a two-dimensional framework for e-business technology is proposed with transactional and relational dimensions. However, empirical analysis indicated that transactional technologies can be further subdivided into two factors: dyadic cooperation and price determination. Significant differences were found between the two dimensions in terms of their overall levels of adoption, with dyadic coordination being the most widely adopted. In addition, the development of strategic resources expanded, in particular internal and customer teams, the use of e-business technologies expanded. Purchasing organizational structure and firm size also were positively related to the adoption of transactional e-business technologies. Finally, of particular importance to practitioners, e-business technologies targeted at reducing dyadic coordination costs lead to improved financial performance

The Economics of Labor Market Intermediation: An Analytic Framework

Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) are entities or institutions that interpose themselves between workers and firms to facilitate, inform, or regulate how workers are matched to firms, how work is accomplished, and how conflicts are resolved. This paper offers a conceptual foundation for analyzing the economic role played by these understudied institutions, and to develop a qualitative and, in some cases, quantitative sense of their significance to market operation and welfare. Though heterogeneous, I argue that LMIs share a common function, which is to redress – and in some cases exploit – a set of endemic departures of labor market operation from the efficient neoclassical benchmark. At a rudimentary level, LMIs such as online job boards reduce search frictions by aggregating and reselling disparate information at a cost below which workers and firms could obtain themselves. Beyond passively supplying information, a set of LMIs forcibly redress adverse selection problems in labor markets by compelling workers and firms to reveal normally hidden credentials, such as criminal background, academic standing, or financial integrity. At their most forceful, LMIs such as labor unions and centralized job matching clearinghouses resolve coordination and collective action failures in markets by tightly controlling – even monopolizing – the process by which workers and firms meet, match and negotiate. A unifying observation of the analytic framework is that participation in the activities of a given LMI are typically voluntary for one side of the market and compulsory for the other; workers cannot, for example, elect to suppress their criminal records and firms cannot opt out of collective bargaining. I argue that the nature of participation in an LMI’s activities – voluntary or compulsory, and for which parties – is dictated by the market imperfection that it addresses and thus tells us much about its economic function.intermediation, unions, job search, internet, temporary-help, adverse selection, collective action

Decentralized Harmonization Algorithm and Application to Functional Network Connectivity

Neuroimage data collected from multiple research institutions may incur additional source dependency, affecting the overall statistical power and leading to erroneous conclusions. This problem can be mitigated with data harmonization approaches. While open neuroimaging datasets are becoming more common, a substantial amount of data can still not be shared for various reasons. In addition, current approaches require moving all the data to a central location, which requires additional resources and creates redundant copies of the same datasets. To address these issues, we propose a decentralized harmonization approach called Decentralized ComBat that performs remote operations on the datasets separately without sharing individual subject data, ensuring a certain level of privacy and reducing regulatory hurdles. The study was conducted on harmonizing functional connectivity. Results showed similar performance as the centralized ComBat algorithm in a decentralized environment