Assessing the Economic Value of Credit Guarantees

This article analyzes how a credit guarantee confers private benefits to creditors and proposes reform policies and related assessment measures in order to make credit guarantee a socially beneficial intermediation instrument. Analysis indicates that the necessary and sufficient conditions for credit guarantee to have positive economic value to creditors include sufficiency of collateral and creditor’s risk aversion. Findings also suggest that guarantee programs have a limited reach, implying a need for continuing subsidies.credit program, credit access

Rent-Seeking Public Policies and Corporate Conduct in the Philippine Flour Milling Industry

Results of relative welfare analysis conducted in this paper indicate that a large proportion of welfare losses in the past have been shouldered by the consumers. In addition, this article shows that the hypothesis of cartel-like behavior is consistent with the adverse results obtained.liberalization, welfare issues, wheat products, flour and flour products

Assessing the Economic Value of Credit Guarantees

This article analyzes how a credit guarantee confers private benefits to creditors and proposes reform policies and related assessment measures in order to make credit guarantee a socially beneficial intermediation instrument. Analysis indicates that the necessary and sufficient conditions for credit guarantee to have positive economic value to creditors include sufficiency of collateral and creditor’s risk aversion. Findings also suggest that guarantee programs have a limited reach, implying a need for continuing subsidies.credit program, credit access

A bottom-up approach to the strong CP problem

The strong CP problem is one of many puzzles in the theoretical description of elementary particle physics that still lacks an explanation. While top-down solutions to that problem usually comprise new symmetries or fields or both, we want to present a rather bottom-up perspective. The main problem seems to be how to achieve small CP violation in the strong interactions despite large CP violation in weak interactions. Observation of CP violation is exclusively through the Higgs--Yukawa interactions. In this paper, we show that with minimal assumptions on the structure of mass (Yukawa) matrices they do not contribute to the strong CP problem and thus we can provide a pathway to a solution of the strong CP problem within the structures of the Standard Model and no extension at the electroweak scale is needed. However, to address the flavor puzzle, models based on minimal SU(3) flavor groups leading to the proposed flavor matrices are favored. Though we refrain from an explicit a UV completion of the Standard Model, we provide a simple requirement those models should have to intrinsically not show a strong CP problem.Comment: 12 pages; v2: extended discussion, title changed to be more genera

Comparative Management Structure and Institutional Performance in Rural Banking Institutions

There has been a growing interest in the rural financial sector mainly due to the ongoing reforms in the financial system that is headed towards a more liberal stance by allowing increased free play of private incentives in financial markets. Utilizing the survey of rural, development and commercial banks, this paper show that in general, an analysis of the organization and management structure is necessary before one attempts to understand and evaluate the different characteristics and performance of rural financial institutions.rural credit, financial sector, banking system, rural banks, rural sector

Liberalization in Directed Credit Programs for SMEs

To evaluate the effectiveness of approaches to improve policies toward the development of small and medium enterprises, this article assesses the efficiency of directed credit programs and the impact of a liberalized design of a specific project.credit program, borrowing behavior, borrower

Liberalization in Directed Credit Programs for SMEs

To evaluate the effectiveness of approaches to improve policies toward the development of small and medium enterprises, this article assesses the efficiency of directed credit programs and the impact of a liberalized design of a specific project.credit program, borrowing behavior, borrower

Global analysis of radiative forcing from fire-induced shortwave albedo change

Land surface albedo, a key parameter to derive Earth’s surface energy balance, is used in the parameterization of numerical weather prediction, climate monitoring and climate change impact assessments. Changes in albedo due to fire have not been fully investigated on a continental and global scale. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to quantify the changes in instantaneous shortwave albedo produced by biomass burning activities and their associated radiative forcing. The study relies on the MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) MCD64A1 burned-area product to create an annual composite of areas affected by fire and the MCD43C2 bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) albedo snow-free product to compute a bihemispherical reflectance time series. The approximate day of burning is used to calculate the instantaneous change in shortwave albedo. Using the corresponding National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) monthly mean downward solar radiation flux at the surface, the global radiative forcing associated with fire was computed. The analysis reveals a mean decrease in shortwave albedo of 0.014 (1 D 0:017), causing a mean positive radiative forcing of 3.99Wm2 (1 D 4:89) over the 2002–20012 time period in areas affected by fire. The greatest drop in mean shortwave albedo change occurs in 2002, which corresponds to the highest total area burned (378 Mha) observed in the same year and produces the highest mean radiative forcing (4.5Wm2). Africa is the main contributor in terms of burned area, but forests globally give the highest radiative forcing per unit area and thus give detectable changes in shortwave albedo. The global mean radiative forcing for the whole period studied ( 0.0275Wm2) shows that the contribution of fires to the Earth system is not insignificantinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio