Although microfinance has played a significant role in providing a wide range of financial products and services, many microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Kenya still face major challenges with efficiently and effectively delivering microfinance services in the country. As the demand for these...

Review of the book titled 'Rethinking Housing Bubbles The Role of Household and Bank Balance Sheets in Modeling Economic Cycles' by Steven D. Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith. Published by Cambridge University Press in May 2014.

In this study, using the World Bank’s Bank Regulation and Supervision Survey (BRSS) data, we draw insights about the bank regulatory/supervisory styles, illustrate the differences in regulation/supervision among crisis, non-crisis and BRICS countries, and highlight the ways in which bank...

We examine the response of U.S. (VIX) and German (VDAX) implied volatility indices to the announcement of interest rate policy decisions by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). We confirm prior findings that VIX declines on FOMC meetings days. We present...

The development of the capital markets increases the key role of the financial manager both in using the new techniques for administrating the risks and in assessing hedge effectiveness. Risk means possible uncertainty regarding cash flows, influencing the fair value of assets and liabilities or...

The basic thesis of this article is that the essential origins of the modern ‘financial revolution’ were the late-medieval responses, civic and mercantile, to financial impediments from both Church and State, concerning the usury doctrine, that reached their harmful fruition in the later...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the process of integration and competition in European financial markets. We explore the obstacles or barriers which hinder this process, as well as the main drivers and initiatives which have been implemented to move financial integration forward. According...

Despite the current enthusiasms in applying the concept of microfinance as a poverty alleviation tool in many countries, the risk management aspects of microfinancing should not be overlooked. This paper highlights several incidences of default risks in microfinance and subsequently, provides a...

Electronic Payment Instruments in Macedonia are very used and spread evenly among the population, although compare to EU member countries their use is lagging behind. This paper represents findings about the customer behaviors toward e-commerce activities, use of electronic cards in Internet, at...

This study contributes to the debate on financial development and economic growth in Malaysia using quarterly observations for a sample period from 1980 to 2002. It utilises a battery of financial indicators. Based on multivariate framework which takes real interest rate and capital stock into...