This article uncovers the role of financial clustering in creating competitive advantage forincumbents in the Singapore Financial Centre. The revelatory case of the underresearchedSingapore cluster reveals (a) how clustering conditions have influenced thedevelopment of the City as a financial...

This paper explores the sources of agglomeration externalities in enhancing firmperformance, in particular, the pecuniary externality that supports firms’ bottom line.The fundamental argument on increasing returns leads to the premise that cluster sizehas beneficial influence to firm...

A growing number of studies in finance decompose multi-period buy-and-hold portfolioreturns into a series of single period returns. The method used to decomposethese returns is important because researchers use them in tests of asset pricing modelsand market efficiency and in evaluating the...

We use a unique dataset of bond downgrades from a niche rating company that has been found to be reacting faster to publicly available information than its competitors. Using regime-switching models we propose risk measures to quantify stock return disturbances (distress costs) associated with...

This paper examines the price impact of trading intensity on an emerging futures market. Utilizing anovel volume-augmented duration model of price discovery, the intensity effect is decomposed intoliquidity and information components for the MexDer 28-day interest rate futures contract. We...

The market for asset-backed securities (ABS) – financial instruments backed by underlying assets such as mortgages – suffered a major setback in 2007, as a cascade of downgrades and defaults brought turmoil to credit markets and the world economy. Authorities in the United States have since...

La presente edición de Microempresa cuenta con dos artículos principales. En el primero se examina el hecho de que las microempresas obtienen crédito en peores condiciones que las grandes compañías: pagan más interés, reciben préstamos más pequeños relativos al flujo de caja y tienen...

En esta edición de Microempresa se presentan dos artículos principales. En el primero, se examina por qué siendo las instituciones microfinancieras (IMF) una oportunidad atractiva para los inversores privados, son tan pocos los inversores financieros y sociales privados que proveen fondos a...

El valor de la vivienda de una familia latinoamericana promedio equivale a casi seis años de ingresos familiares. Sin embargo, en América Latina menos de una cuarta parte de las viviendas que se construyen son financiadas por mecanismos formales, y el crédito hipotecario para la adquisición...

This report (RE-341) presents the Office of Evaluation and Oversight's country program evaluation (CPE) assessing the Bank's Ecuador program in 2000-2006. The present CPE takes in the Bank programming exercises charted in the country strategies for 2000-2002 (GN-2169-1) and 2004-2006...