Search Results (61)

We examine geographic spillovers in digital credit markets by studying how natural disasters affect borrowing behavior in adjacent, physically undamaged regions. Using granular loan-level data from Indonesia’s largest FinTech lender (2021–2023) and leveraging quasi-random variation in disaster timing and location, we estimate fixed-effects specifications that incorporate spatially lagged disaster exposure (an SLX-type spatial approach) to quantify spillovers. Disasters generate economically significant spillovers in neighboring provinces: a 1% increase in disaster frequency raises local borrowing by 0.036%, approximately 20% of the direct effect. Spillovers vary sharply with geographic connectivity—land-connected provinces experience effects about 6.6 times larger than sea-connected provinces. These results highlight that digital lending platforms can transmit geographically proximate risks beyond directly affected areas through channels that differ from traditional banking networks. The systematic nature of these spillovers suggests that disaster-response strategies may be more effective when they consider adjacent regions. That platform risk management can be strengthened by integrating spatial disaster exposure and connectivity into credit monitoring and decision rules. Full article

This paper examines the impact of fiscal policy responses on unemployment across EU countries from 2019 to 2024, a period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic as a shock event. A detailed monthly panel data set is used in this study, employing a fixed-effects estimation model with government spending, revenue, and debt as core variables, along with the COVID-19 dummy as a control variable. The findings reveal a strong association between government spending and revenue in reducing unemployment, aligned with countercyclical fiscal policy support. Conversely, increasing government debt is strongly linked to higher unemployment, indicating a risk of excessive borrowing that could hinder future labor market recovery. Moreover, uncertain external economic conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have further intensified labor market distortions. Finally, the results highlight that fiscal policies can effectively mitigate unemployment in the short term; however, excessive debt may pose challenges to long-term fiscal sustainability. This study underscores the importance of well-structured and timely coordinated fiscal policy frameworks that promote employment stabilization, while ensuring long-term debt sustainability. Full article

Credit cards play a central role in household financial behavior by combining payment and short-term financing functions shaped by socioeconomic, cognitive, and attitudinal factors. This study examines the determinants of credit card use and repayment behavior in Ecuador, focusing on purchasing power, financial literacy, and institutional trust. A quantitative, cross-sectional, and explanatory design was applied to a probabilistic sample of 550 credit card users from Quito and Santo Domingo. Multivariate analyses and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM)—including formative and hierarchical constructs—were used to validate the proposed behavioral framework. The results show that higher income is associated with more responsible repayment, while financial literacy and trust mediate this relationship through cognitive and attitudinal mechanisms. Moderate R² values and small-to-moderate f² effect sizes align with patterns observed in other Latin American credit markets. Behavioral differences also emerge across age, gender, and household composition, underscoring the heterogeneity of financial capability in the region. The findings demonstrate that responsible credit card indebtedness depends not only on economic capacity but also on financial knowledge and institutional trust, offering practical implications for financial inclusion policies and targeted education programs in emerging economies. Full article

Credit risk refers to the possibility that a borrower fails to meet contractual repayment obligations, posing potential losses to lenders. This study aims to enhance post-loan default prediction in credit risk management by constructing a time-series modeling framework based on repayment behavior data, enabling the capture of repayment risks that emerge after loan issuance. To achieve this objective, a Residual Enhanced Encoder Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (ResE-BiLSTM) model is proposed, in which the attention mechanism is responsible for discovering long-range correlations, while the residual connections ensure the preservation of distant information. This design mitigates the tendency of conventional recurrent architectures to overemphasize recent inputs while underrepresenting distant temporal information in long-term dependency modeling. Using the real-world large-scale Freddie Mac Single-Family Loan-Level Dataset, the model is evaluated on 44 independent cohorts and compared with five baseline models, including Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM), Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) across multiple evaluation metrics. The experimental results demonstrate that ResE-BiLSTM achieves superior performance on key indicators such as F1 and AUC, with average values of 0.92 and 0.97, respectively, and demonstrates robust performance across different feature window lengths and resampling settings. Ablation experiments and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP)-based interpretability analyses further reveal that the model captures non-monotonic temporal importance patterns across key financial features. This study advances time-series–based anomaly detection for credit risk prediction by integrating global and local temporal learning. The findings offer practical value for financial institutions and risk management practitioners, while also providing methodological insights and a transferable modeling paradigm for future research on credit risk assessment. Full article

Leveraging the exogenous shock of Chinese commercial banks’ adoption of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking (UNPRB) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study employs a Time-Varying Difference-in-Differences (TV-DID) approach to investigate how formally committed responsible credit, augmented by Fintech, enhances ESG performance in private enterprises. The findings reveal that banks adopting UNPRB significantly improve the post-loan ESG performance of their private enterprise borrowers compared to non-adopting banks, with Fintech serving as a positive moderator. Mechanism analysis indicates that, under the empowerment of financial technology, commercial banks that extend loans to enterprises are influenced by the signing of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking (UNPRB). Banks promote the sustainable development of enterprises through pre-loan “screening effects” and post-loan green “governance effects”. Heterogeneity analysis indicates stronger ESG improvement effects for enterprises in environmentally sensitive industries, those with high capital intensity, and those holding long-term loans. Extended research further identifies a significant enhancement in ESG alignment between banks and enterprises following UNPRB adoption. By examining responsible credit investment, this study not only broadens the scholarly discourse on sustainable finance and Fintech but also offers empirical insights from a representative emerging market context. Full article

FinTech-based lending has rapidly expanded in emerging economies, offering convenience and inclusion but also raising concerns about over-indebtedness. In Indonesia, the surge of digital loans has been accompanied by growing signs of risky borrowing behavior, including late payments, high debt-to-income ratios, and poor credit discipline. This study investigates the determinants of individuals’ propensity to indebtedness in FinTech-based loans, focusing on the influence of financial behavior biases, emotions, culture, and materialism, as well as the moderating effects of financial literacy, job security, and religiosity. Data were collected from 400 Indonesian civil servants and private/self-employed workers through an online questionnaire and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Results show that all proposed determinants significantly increase indebtedness, with financial behavior biases having the strongest impact. Financial literacy and job security amplify these effects, while religiosity weakens the influence of emotions and materialism. These findings contribute to behavioral finance theory and underscore the importance of promoting financial literacy, strengthening job stability, and integrating responsible lending policies to mitigate debt risks in emerging economies. Full article

This study explores the impact of credit spreads—defined as the difference between corporate bond yields and matched government bond yields—and macro-financial conditions on Japanese firms’ decision-making regarding whether to issue corporate bonds in domestic or international markets. Using firm-level panel data from 2010 to 2019, we employ fixed-effects regressions to identify the determinants of credit spreads and assess their influence on issuance location. The results suggest that firms strategically opt for foreign markets when anticipating narrower spreads, despite the typically higher borrowing costs associated with overseas issuance. Sensitivity to credit spreads systematically varies with issuer characteristics—such as leverage and credit ratings—and market elements—including the United States volatility and stock performance. Interaction models further demonstrate that market selection dynamically responds to pricing signals and uncertainty. By connecting credit spread formation to venue choice, this study provides a new perspective on cross-border financing in segmented capital markets. These findings offer theoretical insights and practical implications for understanding how firms adapt their debt strategies in response to global financial conditions. Full article

Government debt can potentially enhance high-quality economic development, yet its effects and risks diverge substantially under the interplay of scale economies and diseconomies. Against the backdrop of the 20th CPC Central Committee’s Third Plenary Session, which emphasized coordinated development-security integration and local debt risk resolution, this study investigates the debt-development nexus through the lens of dual-scale economies in explicit/implicit local government debt. We innovatively incorporate resource allocation efficiency and investment levels as mediating factors. Empirical results demonstrate the following: (1) An inverted U-shaped relationship between local debt scale and economic development quality during two debt rectification periods, with implicit debt exhibiting a more pronounced curvilinear pattern; (2) Both resource allocation efficiency and investment levels significantly moderate the scale economies of explicit/implicit debt, yet paradoxically constrain development quality. Key obstacles include short-term adjustment costs, income disparity, and innovation suppression. Notably, while government debt currently operates within scale economies, implicit debt possesses greater borrowing capacity than explicit debt. Debt-driven economies of scale exhibit significant regional heterogeneity. In coastal areas, these effects are more sustainable, whereas in inland areas it is relatively weak. Policy implications suggest the following: (1) Recognizing debt’s nonlinear developmental impacts; (2) Optimizing resource allocation to improve investment quality; (3) Clarifying central-local fiscal responsibility demarcation; (4) A regionally differentiated collaborative strategy is needed for coordinating debt, investment, and resource allocation. Full article

Achieving sustainable economic growth requires a careful balance between public debt accumulation and the macroeconomic stability necessary for long-term development. While public debt can support growth through productive public investment, excessive debt may crowd out private investment, raise borrowing costs, and undermine financial stability, ultimately threatening economic sustainability. In this context, the quality of institutions plays a pivotal moderating role by fostering responsible debt management and ensuring that debt-financed investments contribute to sustainable development. In this context, this study investigates the relationship between public debt and economic growth, with a focus on the moderating role of institutional quality (IQ). Utilizing an unbalanced panel of 115 countries over the period from 1996 to 2021, this study tests the hypothesis that robust institutional frameworks mitigate the negative impact of public debt on economic growth. To address potential endogeneity, this study employs the dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation technique. The results reveal that, although the direct effect of public debt on economic growth is negative, the interaction between public debt and IQ yields a positive influence. Furthermore, the results indicate the presence of a threshold beyond which public debt begins to exert a beneficial effect on economic growth, whereas its impact remains adverse below this threshold. These findings underscore the critical importance of sound debt management strategies and institutional development for policymakers, suggesting that effective government governance is essential to harnessing the potential positive effects of public debt on economic growth. Full article

In Latin America, over 50% of the population has relied on loans from family members or friends, reflecting the importance of trust-based networks in response to financial exclusion. This study examines how distrust in the formal financial system influences the use of informal borrowing. Using data from 17 countries for the years 2014, 2017, and 2021, and applying a fixed-effects logistic regression model by country and time, we confirm that rising distrust significantly increases the likelihood of turning to loans from personal networks. This relationship intensifies in times of crisis. Beyond this, we find that macroeconomic variables such as GDP per capita and unemployment also significantly affect informal borrowing behavior. This research contributes to the literature by integrating institutional, economic, and social variables, highlighting the role of interpersonal trust as a form of social capital. It also advances the field of personal finance by revealing an everyday strategy of financial resilience. Finally, this study offers relevant implications for public policy, advocating for a more realistic and context-sensitive approach to financial inclusion, especially in regions where credit constraints in the formal sector have pushed households to seek more accessible and flexible alternatives. Full article

This article considers two Malayalam films, each of which uses ‘the child’ to reflect on ‘precarious childhood’. Ottaal (2014, Dir. Jayaraj) and Veyilmarangal (2019, Dir. Bijukumar Damodaran) present the ontological relationality of their child characters within their context and the political and social realities of the people in Kerala. The ecological disasters, economic catastrophes, and multilayered forms of social abjection push the children out of human primacy, predominantly through their birth and existence as ‘nameless’ Dalits. The child characters, who contrast with the adults, negotiate a space for themselves amidst the question of belongingness through their relation with animals and the environment around them during the phase(s) of displacement. Borrowing Haraway’s concept of ‘companion species’, we expound on their assemblage with the environment through which they are able to survive the complex realities of daily life. Furthermore, the children are singularly and effectively extensions of animal personhood in their inability to determine the terms of their existence. In response to the larger question of precarity and childhood in the context of Kerala, this paper explores how these Malayalam films, by realistically portraying the idea that human primacy is oblivious to its precariousness, address the ecological predicament and the interconnectedness of all living things, emphasizing values of cohabitation and mutual care, which are central themes in posthumanist thought. Full article

Human cognitive architecture represents an intelligent natural information processing system that is described by six operational principles: information store, randomness as genesis, borrowing and reorganizing, narrow limits of change, environmental organizing and linking, and explicit intention to learn principles. The last principle, added recently, is critical, as it distinguishes this system from other, lower-level natural information-processing systems and is responsible for controlled information processing and explicit learning as opposed to implicit cognitive mechanisms of lower-level systems. The paper provides a theoretical overview of the updated model of intelligent natural information processing systems. In this model, the explicit intention to learn principle affects the operation of other principles and is directly related to intelligence as an emergent characteristic of such systems. Human intelligence and explicit, intentional learning (and motivation that is required for such learning to happen) caused the emergence of human culture on a distinct, grand scale in the process of transition from biological to cultural evolution. The paper concludes with some important educational implications emanating from the new model focusing on strengthening human intelligence. Full article

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a recent advancement of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, giving plenty of opportunities for financial inclusion, innovation, and growth domains by providing services such as lending, borrowing, and trading without traditional intermediaries. However, inadequate regulatory oversight and technological vulnerabilities raise pressing concerns around market manipulation, fraud, and regulatory compliance, exposing a clear research gap in effective DeFi risk management. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a utility-based framework to evaluate six leading DeFi tracking platforms—Chainalysis, Elliptic, Nansen, Dune Analytics, DeBank, and Etherscan—focusing on two critical metrics: transaction accuracy and real-time responsiveness. Applying a mixed methods approach that combines a quantitative survey (n = 138) with qualitative interviews (n = 12), we identified critical platform features and found significant differences across these platforms with respect to compliance features, advanced analytics, and user experience. We used a utility-based model that links accuracy and responsiveness metrics, allowing us to adjust differing priorities and risk management needs for users. The results show the need for balanced, user-centric solutions that accommodate regulatory, technological efficiency and affordability requirements. Our study contributes to the growing knowledge base by providing a structured evaluation model and empirical insights, offering clear directions for practitioners, platform developers, and policymakers aiming to strengthen the DeFi ecosystem. Full article

The current developments in the theory of quantum static triplet correlations and their associated structures (real r-space and Fourier k-space) in monatomic fluids are reviewed. The main framework utilized is Feynman’s path integral formalism (PI), and the issues addressed cover quantum diffraction effects and zero-spin bosonic exchange. The structures are associated with the external weak fields that reveal their nature, and due attention is paid to the underlying pair-level structures. Without the pair, level one cannot fully grasp the triplet extensions in the hierarchical ladder of structures, as both the pair and the triplet structures are essential ingredients in the triplet response functions. Three general classes of PI structures do arise: centroid, total continuous linear response, and instantaneous. Use of functional differentiation techniques is widely made, and, as a bonus, this leads to the identification of an exact extension of the “classical isomorphism” when the centroid structures are considered. In this connection, the direct correlation functions, as borrowed from classical statistical mechanics, play a key role (either exact or approximate) in the corresponding quantum applications. Additionally, as an auxiliary framework, the traditional closure schemes for triplets are also discussed, owing to their potential usefulness for rationalizing PI triplet results. To illustrate some basic concepts, new numerical calculations (path integral Monte Carlo PIMC and closures) are reported. They are focused on the purely diffraction regime and deal with supercritical helium-3 and the quantum hard-sphere fluid. Full article

This article analyzes recent controversies around gender in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) by examining an online list of women pastors from 112 SBC churches created in 2023 by supporters of an amendment to restrict “any kind” of pastor to qualified men. Using interviews with listed women and primary sources posted to church websites in the form of statements of beliefs, staff pages, church newsletters, church council minutes, and pastors’ blogs, this study examines the identity of these women and how they and their churches responded to being publicly identified. It also analyzes the making of this list in the context of denominational history and contemporaneous crises. This study argues that while the proposed amendment largely borrowed language, recycled tactics, and reiterated themes from previous changes to the SBC Faith and Message, divergent responses to the list revealed the persistence of racial divisions in the denomination. Most striking is the absence of any direct response to the list or the proposed amendment by listed Black churches, indicating the complicated and contingent relationship between these churches and the denomination. The absence of engagement also subtlety signals the underlying failure by 2024 of a racial reconciliation movement championed by SBC leaders throughout the previous three decades. Full article