A large body of literature has shown that small firms, due to their opaqueness, may find it difficult to access the credit market. Informational asymmetries may be mitigated by posting collateral or by building relationships with lenders (relationship lending). However, in some cases, due to a...

In this paper we investigate whether or not mutual guarantee consortia (MGC), a financial institution well developed in Italy, alleviate the difficulties that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face when they ask for a bank loan. We find that the probability of a small firm affiliated to a MGC...

In a two period overlapping generations economy with asymmetric information, we investigate the interaction between credit market development and human capital accumulation. As is typical, young borrowers supply their endowed unit of labor time to earn wage income which is used as internal...

Loan refusal has been a problem facing many loan applicants at the household level and this problem is not new to loan applicants in Ghana. Despite this knowledge, researchers passively discuss loan refusal and do not consider the intensity of this problem. This study analyses the effect of...

This paper highlights the importance of the information efficiency in the banking sector as a way to ensure his correct operation as financial intermediary and the correct functioning of the economy in general. The problems of information in the banks distort their relation with the financing...

Taking into consideration the changes in the rules for the price support for agricultural and sea products, it seems appropriate to find out what other means could be used to cover the price risk in order to protect the commercial margin of these sectors of activity. The use of derivatives tools...

This paper undertakes a comprehensive evaluation of the efficacy of firm-specific trading halts in the Malaysian context. The paper examines a total of 291 trading halts that occurred over the five year period 2000 to 2004. In addition to examining the three variables commonly impacted by...

This paper examines several issues related to the introduction and trading of stock index futures contracts in Malaysia. Issues related to volatility, pricing efficiency, systematic patterns and lead-lag relationships are examined. These issues were studied by way of addressing six research...

Correlation matrices have many applications, particularly in marketing and financial economics - such as in risk management, option pricing and to forecast demand for a group of products in order to realize savings by properly managing inventories, etc. Various methods have been proposed by...

We consider the problem of consistently pricing new options given the prices of related options on the same stock. The Black-Scholes formula and standard binomial trees can only accommodate one related European option which then effectively specifies the volatility parameter. Implied binomial...