Financial inclusion efforts seek to ensure that all members of an economy can have access to and effectively use appropriate financial services. Improving financial inclusion has become a significant concern for developed and developing countries alike. There are many indicators of financial...

One of the best-known innovations of the recent past is blockchain. Due to its usability, it has generated considerable interest in several economic areas. A decentralised system's approach can potentially reshape existing industries or make them redundant. Such technology can add a new...

The financial crisis has revealed fatal institutional and structural deficits at the finance market. Politics has reacted to the financial crisis with a sea of legal bills and regulations. But all regulating efforts are merely system-imminent reparation measures and do not solve the core...

How can we explain that in 2008/2009 the global stock markets plummeted –50% in nine months only to rebound by 60% over the following nine months? Why did investors price in the future earnings of the global stock market at 35 times the market price at the height of the TMT bubble, while the...

The current focus of financial policy measures in nearly all G20 countries is to rescue commercial banks by running high bail-out programs. If banks can be bailed-out, or rescued from their present plight, everything will be getting better - that is, by large, the self-proclaimed belief, or...

The American corporate graveyard is littered with prior darlings of Wall Street and pillars of the New York Stock Exchange, such as Kodak and Polaroid (both photography pioneers). More recently, other businesses and entire industries that were once household names have similarly experienced...

In this paper, we review the concept of risk, its evolution in history and the big changes we experienced in the last 50 years. We conclude that peak risks are growing and the need for risk management is becoming a societal demand. Two phenomena are identified to render risks more complex,...

As the general economic context created by exacerbation of the global financial crisis has heavily affected the European Union (EU) banking sector, taking into account the systemic nature of this sector and its importance for the European economy, substantial government support took off, in the...

Financial inclusion is broadly defined as the ability of individuals and businesses to access useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way. It is considered...

One of the best-known innovations of the recent past is blockchain. Due to its usability, it has generated considerable interest in several economic areas. A decentralised system's approach can potentially reshape existing industries or make them redundant. Such technology can add a new...