The misallocation of government resources to the politically connected is considered to impose substantial economic costs. We document that resource misallocation to the politically connected extends to resources allocated by private sector firms. Following the presidential election in 2007,...

Economic policy in Cyprus completely ignores the fact the problem to overcome is the enormous, and almost unprecedented, private debt burdening the economy. The Government seems to be complacent in serving the narrowly defined needs of the few remaining systemic banks in Cyprus. It presents the...

The author has written two articles on the subject of “the Deal” sought and negotiated by the Government for privatising the ailing Co-Op Bank in Cyprus. In this paper he continues with “Socialising the losses and privatising the gains - Part 3” which provides an alternative proposal...

In May 2, the author wrote an article with the title “Socialising the Losses and Privatising the Gains” where private sector indebtedness in Cyprus is addressed as the main economic problem impeding sustainable development to take place. However, the Government and the banks in Cyprus...

Recent evidence shows that the poor desperately need access to savings products. But despite this general consensus, microfinance institutions (MFIs) offering savings products are still under-studied. Using random-effect probit estimation on a dataset of 722 MFIs active over the 2005-2010...

A drawback of available portfolio credit risk models is that they fail to allow for default risk dependency across loans other than through common risk factors. Thereby, these models ignore that close ties can exist between companies due to legal, financial and business relations. In this paper,...

Following the extra ordinary decision to bail in the unsecured depositors and restructure the two main banks and the near complete destruction of the country's economic business model as an International Financial Centre, the author considers the real causes of the problems facing the Cyprus...

This paper analyzes and quantifies cost structures of agent-assisted banking beyond branches channels (ABCs) and compares them to the costs of branch channels. This addresses a gap in the existing literature. The qualitative review finds that ABCs maximize the proportion of variable costs that...

This paper discusses different means of regulation, taking the example of post-crisis financial markets regulation. It is remarkable that the general discussion about reforming financial regulation centres on the substantive standards of the new rules and neglects the problem of choosing the...

Banks must manage their trading books, not just value them. Pricing includes valuation adjustments collectively known as XVA (at least credit, funding, capital and tax), so management must also include XVA. In trading book management we focus on pricing, hedging, and allocation of prices or...