Access to financial services in Zambia

Despite the deep financial sector reforms undertaken in Zambia in the early 1990s, the expected benefits of establishing a market-based banking system has not materialized. In 2005 the banking system continued to be small and underdeveloped. Credit to the private sector by banks represented only 8 percent of GDP in 2005, which is slightly lower than the level registered in 1990. As in the early 1990s, only large corporations and a few small- and medium-size enterprises have access to credit in 2006. Moreover, less than 8 percent of Zambia's adult population had a bank account in 2005. And despite the open door policy to foreign financial institutions, which has been in place since Zambia's independence, only a few new banking products have been introduced by foreign banks to serve the needs of households and firms. This paper analyzes the factors that have prevented the development of a large and inclusive banking system in Zambia and highlights possible actions that may help improve access to finance in Zambia in both the short and long terms.Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Corporate Law,Banking Law

International survey of integrated financial sector supervision

Despite the intense debate on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting integrated supervision that has taken place in recent years, little is known about the experiences of countries that have adopted it and the obstacles and challenges they have faced to implement it. In an attempt to shed light on this area, the authors present the results of a survey conducted in a group of 15 countries that have adopted integrated supervision. After a brief review of the literature on integrated supervision, the authors examine four topics: 1) The reasons cited by this group of countries for establishing an integrated supervisory agency. 2) The scope of regulatory and supervisory powers of these agencies. 3) The progress of these agencies in harmonizing their regulatory and supervisory practices across the intermediaries they supervise. 4) The practical problems faced by policymakers in adopting integrated supervision. The survey revealed that the group of integrated supervisory agencies is not as homogeneous as it seems. Important differences arise with regard to the scope of regulatory and supervisory powers the agencies have been given. In fact, contrary to popular belief, less than 50 percent of the agencies can be categorized as mega-supervisors. Another finding is that in most countries progress toward the harmonization of prudential regulation andsupervision across financial intermediaries remains limited. Interestingly, the survey revealed that practically all countries believe they have achieved a higher degree of harmonization in the regulation and supervision of banks and securities companies than between banks and insurance firms. The survey also identified some practical problems faced by this group of countries in establishing their unified supervisory agencies. The authors discuss these problems, along with the practical lessons and recommendations provided by the 15 agencies to other countries considering integrated supervision, in the final section of the paper.Banks&Banking Reform,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Housing Finance,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Financial Intermediation,Housing Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies

Global survey of development banks

Historically, development banks have been an important instrument of governments to promote economic growth by providing credit and a wide range of advisory and capacity building programs to households, small and medium enterprises, and even large private corporations, whose financial needs are not sufficiently served by private commercial banks or local capital markets. During the current financial crisis, most development banks in Latin America, followed by Asia, Africa, and Europe, have assumed a countercyclical role by scaling up their lending operations exactly when private banks experienced temporary difficulties in granting credit to the private sector. Despite the importance of development banks during crisis and non-crisis periods, little is known about them. This survey examines how development banks operate, what their policy mandates are, what financial services they offer, which type of clients they target, how they are regulated and supervised, what business models they have adopted, what governance framework they have, and what challenges they face. It also examines the countercyclical role played by development banks during the recent financial crisis. This survey is based on new data that have been collected from 90 national development banks in 61 countries.Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance,Debt Markets,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress,Emerging Markets

Distributed, adaptive deployment for nonholonomic mobile sensor networks : theory and experiments

In this work we show the Lyapunov stability and convergence of an adaptive and decentralized coverage control for a team of mobile sensors. This new approach assumes nonholonomic sensors rather than the usual holonomic sensors found in the literature. The kinematics of the unicycle model and a nonlinear control law in polar coordinates are used in order to prove the stability of the controller applied over a team of mobile sensors. This controller is adaptive, which means that the mobile sensors are able to estimate and map a density function in the sampling space without a previous knowledge of the environment. The controller is decentralized, which means that each mobile sensor has its own estimate and computes its own control input based on local information. In order to guarantee the estimate convergence, the mobile sensors implement a consensus protocol in continuous time assuming a fixed network topology and zero communication delays. The convergence and feasibility of the coverage control algorithm are verified through simulations in Matlab and Stage. The Matlab simulations consider only the kinematics of the mobile sensors and the Stage simulations consider the dynamics and the kinematics of the sensors. The Matlab simulations show successful results since the sensor network carries out the coverage task and distributes itself over the estimated density function. The adaptive law which is defined by a differential equation must be approximated by a difference equation to be implementable in Stage. The Stage simulations show positive results, however, the system is not able to achieve an accurate estimation of the density function. In spite of that, the sensors carry out the coverage task distributing themselves over the sampling space. Furthermore, some experiments are carried out using a team of four Pioneer 3-AT robots sensing a piecewise constant light distribution function. The experimental results are satisfactory since the robots carry out the coverage task. However, the accuracy of the estimation is affected by the approximation of the adaptation law by difference equations, the number of robots and sensor sensitivity. Based on the results of this research, the decentralized adaptive coverage control for nonholonomic vehicles has been analyzed from a theoretical approach and validated through simulation and experimentation with positive results. As a future work we will investigate: (i) new techniques to improve the implementation of the adaptive law in real time,(ii) the consideration of the dynamics of the mobile sensors, and (iii) the stability and convergence of the adaptive law for continuous-time variant density function

Optimization and Regulation of Performance for Computing Systems

The current demands of computing applications, the advent of technological advances related to hardware and software, the contractual relationship between users and cloud service providers and current ecological demands, require the re\ufb01nement of performance regulation on computing systems. Powerful mathematical tools such as control systems theory, discrete event systems (DES) and randomized algorithms (RAs) have o\ufb00ered improvements in e\ufb03ciency and performance in computer scenarios where the traditional approach has been the application of well founded common sense and heuristics. The comprehensive concept of computing systems is equally related to a microprocessor unit, a set of microprocessor units in a server, a set of servers interconnected in a data center or even a network of data centers forming a cloud of virtual resources. In this dissertation, we explore theoretical approaches in order to optimize and regulate performance measures in di\ufb00erent computing systems. In several cases, such as cloud services, this optimization would allow the fair negotiation of service level agreements (SLAs) between a user and a cloud service provider, that may be objectively measured for the bene\ufb01t of both negotiators. Although DES are known to be suitable for modeling computing systems, we still \ufb01nd that traditional control theory approaches, such as passivity analysis, may o\ufb00er solutions that are worth being explored. Moreover, as the size of the problem increases, so does its complexity. RAs o\ufb00er good alternatives to make decisions on the design of the solutions of such complex problems based on given values of con\ufb01dence and accuracy. In this dissertation, we propose the development of: a) a methodology to optimize performance on a many-core processor system, b) a methodology to optimize and regulate performance on a multitier server, c) some corrections to a previously proposed passivity analysis of a market-oriented cloud model, and d) a decentralized methodology to optimize cloud performance. In all the aforementioned systems, we are interested in developing optimization methods strongly supported on DES theory, speci\ufb01cally In\ufb01nitesimal Perturbation Analysis (IPA) and RAs based on sample complexity to guarantee that these computing systems will satisfy the required optimal performance on the average

Palm tree image classification : a convolutional and machine learning approach

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesConvolutional neural networks have proven to excel at image classification tasks, do to this they have being incorporated into the remote sensing field, initial hurdles in their application like the need for large data sets or heavy computational burden, have being solve with several approaches. In this paper the transfer learning approach is tested for classification of a very high resolution images of a palm oil plantation. This approach uses a pre trained convolutional neural network to extract features from an image, and label them with the aid of machine learning models. The results presented in this study show that the features extracted are a viable option for image classification with the aid of machine learning models. An overall accuracy of 97% in image classification was obtained with the support vector machine model

Workers'remittances to developing countries : a survey with central banks on selected public policy issues

This paper presents the findings of a survey conducted by the World Bank of central banks in 40 developing countries across different regions in the world. The survey focused on the following topics: (1) coverage of national statistics on remittances, (2) cost of transferring and delivering remittances, (3) regulatory regime for remittance transactions, and (4) efforts of developing countries to channel remittance flows through formal financial institutions. The study finds that in most countries existing data do not reflect the full amount of remittance inflows that they receive every year. Coverage of instruments and financial institutions through which remittances take place is limited. Moreover, only a few countries measure remittances that take place through informal channels. It also finds that the scope of financial authorities in developing countries to reduce remittance fees is limited because a large part of the fees charged to customers are set by financial institutions located in the countries where transactions originate. Cooperation between sending and recipient countries is needed to reduce remittance costs. The survey finds that in several countries money transfer companies are not properly supervised. Given the increasing international concerns with money laundering and terrorism financing issues, it is important that basic registration and reporting requirements are introduced for money transfer companies. Registration and reporting requirements should be designed in such a way that they do not deter the further development of this type of financial institution. Finally, the survey finds that most countries need to establish better mechanisms that would allow them to maximize the developmental effect of remittance inflows. By establishing new savings and investment instruments for remittance recipient households, a larger part of remittance flows might be channeled to finance productive investments, thus fostering economic growth.Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Economic Conditions and Volatility,Economic Theory&Research,Macroeconomic Management

The Incremental Satisfiability Problem for a Two Conjunctive Normal Form

We propose a novel method to review K ⊢ φ when K and φ are both in Conjunctive Normal Forms (CF). We extend our method to solve the incremental satisfiablity problem (ISAT), and we present different cases where ISAT can be solved in polynomial time. Especially, we present an algorithm for 2-ISAT. Our last algorithm allow us to establish an upper bound for the time-complexity of 2-ISAT, as well as to establish some tractable cases for the 2-ISAT problem