This study examined the determinants of commercial bank liquidity in South Africa. The panel regression approach was used, applying panel data from twelve commercial banks over the period 2006 to 2016. A quantitative research method was used to investigate the relationship between bank liquidity and some microeconomic and bank-specific factors and between bank liquidity and selected macro-economic factors. The regression analysis for four liquidity ratios was conducted using the pooled ordinary least squares regression, fixed effects, random effects and the generalised methods of moments. However, the system generalised methods of moments approach was preferred over the other methods because it eliminated the problem of endogeneity. Results show that capital adequacy, size and gross domestic product have a positive and significant effect on liquidity. Loan growth and non-performing loans had a negative and significant effect on liquidity. Inflation had both a positive and a negative but an insignificant effect on liquidity. The study concluded that South African banks could enhance their liquidity positions by tightening their loan-underwriting criteria and credit policies. Banks should improve their credit risk management frameworks to be more prudent in their lending practices to improve the quality of the loan book to enhance liquidity. They also need to grow their capital levels by embarking on efficient revenue enhancements activities. Banks may also to look at their clients on an overall basis and not on transaction bases, and they need to improve non-interest revenue by introducing innovated products. The South African Reserve Bank could push for policies that might enhance capitalisation by ensuring that the sector is consolidated and thus merging smaller banks to create banks with stronger balance sheets and stronger capital base. This study contributes to the empirical research repository on the determinants of liquidity and more specifically, it identified the significant factors that affect South African commercial bank liquidity. Identifying the determinants of South African commercial bank liquidity will provide the South African Reserve Bank with insight into ways of enhancing liquidity management reforms, to improve the sector’s liquidity management practices and help to maintain a sound and liquid banking sector. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

This thesis aims to find an optimal method for the creation and evaluation of the investment and use this method in the analysis of a specific investment objective. Was chosen option to acquire an investment bank loan with 30% participation and recovery time of three, respectively. four years, finance lease with a 30% repayment of outstanding recovery time also with three, respectively. four years, own resources. Other variants were designed alternative to hiring a car transport and rental vehicles through operating leases. Based on the discounted cash flow is optimal variant chartered transport. Acquisition of investments (new vehicles) is disadvantageous for the company.

Orientador: Valeriano Mendes Ferreira Costa / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-19T07:04:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ferrari_ViniciusEduardo_M.pdf: 2206005 bytes, checksum: 9d90089440c2d0376a8f29f9a85a70ce (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: O intento desta dissertação é avaliar a tentativa de conformação de uma base de financiamento de longo prazo privada e nacional para a economia brasileira após o Golpe Militar de 1964. A idéia, portanto, é examinar a elaboração e a implementação do projeto dos bancos de investimentos, uma vez que estas instituições apresentavam como objetivo o fornecimento de empréstimos de prazos dilatados para o setor produtivo. A evidência empírica revela a incapacidade das reformas do governo Castello Branco no tocante à expansão do financiamento de longo prazo doméstico privado. Os bancos de investimentos não se tornaram ofertantes de fundos de longo prazo, mas sim de capital de giro, atuando de forma semelhante às demais instituições financeiras nacionais. Esta dissertação pretende estudar as causas deste resultado. Conclui-se que a dinamização dos financiamentos privados de longo prazo não representava um interesse econômico prioritário para os grupos privados nacionais. Nas décadas de 60 e 70, a atratividade/lucratividade das operações financeiras de curto prazo à disposição do sistema bancário tendeu a reforçar a aversão histórica dos bancos nacionais aos riscos inflacionários associados às aplicações financeiras de prazo dilatado. No tocante ao setor produtivo, a vigência de alguns traços estruturais do desenvolvimento capitalista brasileiro, tais como a baixa propensão das empresas privadas ao uso de recursos de terceiros para financiar o investimento, consolidou dentre os setores industriais a seguinte percepção: a elaboração de mecanismos para o financiamento do capital fixo não representava um elemento essencial. Nesta visão, seria muito mais importante a dinamização das fontes de financiamento de capital de giro, garantindo a total ocupação da capacidade industrial existente na economia. Na arena política, o interesse dos banqueiros pela redução do prazo das operações financeiras encontrou correspondência nas reivindicações dos setores produtivos pela ampliação das fontes de crédito de capital de giro e ambas as pressões se reforçaram mutuamente. As demandas particulares dos banqueiros convergiram, sobretudo, para o Conselho Monetário Nacional. Já os setores industriais encontraram na locução ao presidente Castello Branco um mecanismo eficaz para a materialização dos seus interesses. O governo atendeu as reivindicações dos grupos privados; os bancos de investimentos foram deslocados para o mercado creditício de médio prazo destinado ao financiamento do capital de giro das empresas. Desta forma, o projeto governamental referente à dinamização do crédito privado de longo prazo foi abortado durante a fase de implementação das reformas financeiras do governo Castello Branco / Abstract: The aim of this manuscript is to better analyze the attempt from the first military government to construct a private and national nucleus of long term financing after the ?"Revolution of 1964". We sought to assess the formulation and implementation of the investment banks project, once these financial institutions had the purpose to provide long term loans to the industrial sector. However, the existent financial data points the inability of Brazilian Government's Reforms regarding the expansion of the domestic as well as private long term funding in the Brazilian economy. Investment banks did not become lenders of long term funding, but working capital lenders instead, operating similarly to the usual Brazilian financial institutions. The intent of this work is, hence, to study the causes behind this result. By analyzing the reminiscent data, it was possible to observe that the expansion of the long term funding sources did not represent a major economic priority to the Brazilian private groups. The appeal of short term financial operations available to the national financial system reinforced the tendency of the Brazilian banks' historical resistance to inflationary risks associated to such long term funding operations. In regards to the productive sector, some structural features related to national capitalist development, as the low propensity of private companies for use of third party funds to financial investment, consolidated among the industrial sector an important perception: that the development of a private and national nucleus of long term funding was not an essential issue. According to this argument, the expansion of working capital funding sources would be more important, ensuring full occupancy of the industrial capacity existing in the economy. In the political arena, the bankers' aspiration to shorten financial operations was correspondent to the demands of industrial sectors regarding the expansion of the working capital sources, so that these expectations reinforced each other. The bankers' particular demands converged to the National Monetary Council. The industrial entrepreneurs have found, in the direct access to President Castello Branco, an effective mechanism for realizing their interests. The Brazilian government, on the other hand, met these private pressures and the investment banks were reallocated to the medium-term credit market. These institutions consequently started to provide working capital funds to the private companies. As a result, the government project related to the expansion of the long terms funds in the Brazilian economy was aborted during the implementation of the Financial Reforms / Mestrado / Ciencia Politica / Mestre em Ciência Política

The theoretical part of the thesis introduces Austrian theory of business cycles and analyses equilibrium of savings and investments together with the transmission mechanism between savings, deposits, loans and investments. The practical part of the thesis explores business cycle and credit cycle. It analyses an excessive loan expansion of commercial banks together with a excessively expansive policy of central bank. The thesis deals with a procyclical action of commercial banks and contemporary tools of central bank with their limited effectiveness. Furthermore, the thesis analyses the possible adjustments of monetary policy with the emphasis on the macroprudential policy and its individual credit indicators. The end of the thesis deals with the method of credit rationing and with the imbalance between demand and supply at the credit market of non-financial corporations, which is modelled using the technique of disequilibrium model.

The debate concerning small firm access to finance continues. The proliferation of research of the issue underlines the importance attached in promoting a strong entrepreneurial culture within a country. Small firms are significant to economic growth if they are growing. Central to this significance is ascertaining the role of finance and in particular bank finance in accelerating small growth potential. The case study, through its ontological, epistemological and methodological position, draws on a document review and interview material from small firm owners and key informants to explore the role of bank finance in small firm growth. Case study evidence reveals that small firm owners do not intend to finance firm growth with bank finance but prefer to finance growth with internally generated funds. The owners indicate that non-financial and behavioural factors, such as, maintaining decision-making control, experience accessing bank finance, the perception of the banking relationship and growth aspirations of owners may be more important in dertermining the finance structure for firm growth. From the bank's perspective, findings suggest that risk assessment, financial viability of the enterprise and provision of collateral are more important in the lending decisions; findings supported by an analysis of selected documents. The small sample of small firm owners, bank representatives, experts and documents makes it difficult to generalize the findings. However, the findings are significant because exploring the issue from different perspectives presents invaluable insights, which can be investigated further to assist small firm owners, to develop finance products geared for small firm operations, and in the development of the knowledge base on finance-related issues in the South African context.

The master thesis describes financial assurance of a project, which is realized by the municipalities. The theoretical part is focused on describing basic concepts of public projects, municipalities and municipal budgets. Subsequently, the work deals with sources that can provide financial assurance. Thesis is also focused on categorization of roads and the economic evaluation of roads and highways. The practical part is devoted to the basic design of the project to local roads in the municipality Plumlov - Žárovice and then financial assurance of this construction investment project. It selects several financing options for the project and the subsequent assessment of individual options. The outcome of this work is the selection of the best possible way of financing for the proposed project.

För att ett kreditinstitut ska låna ut pengar, måste de först göra en kreditbedömning. Väl där granskas finansiell information, återbetalningsförmåga samt även personen bakom företaget och dess egenskaper. Trots att bankbelåning är det vanligaste sättet att finansiera sin verksamhet för många små företag, visar flera studier att kvinnoledda företag har svårare att få lån jämfört med manliga entreprenörer. Syftet med denna uppsats är att få en ökad förståelse samt redogöra för vilka diskurser som råder bland kreditbedömare vad gäller betydelsen/rollen som personliga egenskaper har hos manliga och kvinnliga entreprenörer. I denna studie har en abduktiv ansats använts, som är en blandning av den deduktiva och induktiva forskningsansatsen. Studiens resultat kommer fram till att diskurserna som hittades är att en del av respondenterna anser att egenskaper är viktiga, medan en annan del anser att egenskaper är viktiga, dock inte avgörande. Vidare visar resultat att respondenterna anser att uppdelningarna mellan manliga och kvinnliga entreprenörer inte existerar och är olämpliga. Slutligen visar studien att en entreprenör är en person oavsett kön, som innehar entreprenöriella egenskaper. / In order for a credit institution to lend money, they must first do a credit assessment. Once there, financial information, ability to repay and also the person behind the company and its owners characteristics are reviewed. Despite the fact that bank loans are the most common way to finance their business for many small businesses, several studies show that women-led businesses have more difficulty getting loans compared to male entrepreneurs. The purpose of this essay is to investigate what discourses there are among the bank assessors when it comes to the meaning/role of the characteristics of male and female entrepreneurs on credit assessment. In this study, an abductive approach has been used, which is a mixture of the deductive and inductive research approach. The results of the study conclude that the discourses that were found are that one part of the respondents means that characteristics are important, while the other thinks it's important but not decisive. Further the results show that the respondents think that the dividing of male and female entrepreneurs does not exist and is inappropriate. Lastly the study shows that an entrepreneur is a person regardless of the person being a male or female, which have characteristics that are viewed as entrepreneurial.

This dissertation presents three essays in financial economics. In the first chapter, Bankruptcy Lawyers and Credit Recovery, I study how bankruptcy law firm advertisements affect credit recovery of households in financial distress. Exploiting the border discontinuity strategy associated with the geographic unit in which local TV advertisements are sold, I empirically uncover bankruptcy filings and credit recovery related to exogenous variations in bankruptcy law firm advertisements. I first document a significant advertising effect on filing rates and show that advertising-induced filers are similar to existing filers. I then find a positive effect of advertisements on credit outcomes including credit score, new homeownership, and foreclosure. I interpret these findings as evidence that lawyers address information frictions in households' assessment of the bankruptcy option. In the second chapter, Cross-subsidization of Bad Credit in a Lending Crisis, we study the corporate-loan pricing decisions of a major, systemic bank during the Greek financial crisis. A unique aspect of our dataset is that we observe both the actual interest rate and the ``breakeven rate'' (BE rate) of each loan, as computed by the bank's own loan-pricing department (in effect, the loan's marginal cost). We document that low-BE-rate (safer) borrowers are charged significant markups, whereas high-BE-rate (riskier) borrowers are charged smaller and even negative markups. We rationalize this de facto cross-subsidization through the lens of a dynamic model featuring depressed collateral values, impaired capital-market access, and limit pricing. In the third chapter, Who Provides Credit in Times of Crisis? Evidence from the Auto Loan Market, we explore lending from traditional banks, credit unions, and finance companies (nonbanks) in the auto loan market over the past two decades with emphasis on the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that banks provided weak support during the pandemic, thus losing market share and continuing a trend that emerged following the Great Recession. Nonbank market share during this period grew most significantly for subprime borrowers and in counties with stronger bank dependence. We present evidence consistent with a supply-side interpretation of this bank market share loss. These findings contrast with the experience during the Great Recession, when banks contributed the most resilient credit to the auto loan market. Our paper highlights nonbanks’ critical role in the auto loan market in times of crisis, particularly for the subprime segment.

We consider the problem of optimization and decision-making in various settings involving complex systems. In particular, we consider specific problems in decentralized finance which we address employing insights from mathematical finance, in course-mode selection that we solve by applying mixed-integer programming, and in social networks that we approach using tools from graphical game theory.In the first part of the thesis, we model and analyze fixed spread liquidation lending in DeFi as implemented by popular pooled lending protocols such as AAVE, JustLend, and Compound. Empirically, we observe that over 70% of liquidations occur in the absence of any downward price jumps. Then, assuming the borrowers monitor their loans with exponentially distributed horizons, we compute the expected liquidation cost incurred by the borrowers in closed form as a function of the monitoring frequency. We compare this cost against liquidation data obtained from AAVE protocol V2, and observe a match with our model assuming the borrowers monitor their loans five to six times more often than they interact with the pool. Such borrowers must balance the financing cost against the likelihood of liquidation. We compute the optimal health factor in this situation assuming a financing rate for the collateral. Empirically, we observe that borrowers are often more conservative compared to model predictions, though on average, model predictions match with empirical observations. In the second part of the thesis, we consider the problem of hybrid scheduling that was faced by Columbia Business School during the Covid-19 pandemic and describe the system that we implemented to address it. The system allows some students to attend in-person classes with social distancing, while their peers attend online, and schedules vary by day. We consider two variations of this problem: one where students have unique, individualized class enrollments, and one where they are grouped in teams that are enrolled in identical classes. We formulate both problems as mixed-integer programs. In the first setting, students who are scheduled to attend all classes in person on a given day may, at times, be required to attend a particular class on that day online due to social distancing constraints. We count these instances as “excess.” We minimize excess and related objectives, and analyze and solve the relaxed linear program. In the second setting, we schedule the teams so that each team’s in-person attendance is balanced over days of week and spread out over the entire term. Our objective is to maximize interaction between different teams. Our program was used to schedule over 2,500 students in student-level scheduling and about 790 students in team-level scheduling from the Fall 2020 through Summer 2021 terms at Columbia Business School. In the third part of the thesis, we consider a social network, where individuals choose actions which optimize utility which is a function of their neighbors’ actions. We assume that a central authority aiming to maximize social welfare at equilibrium can intervene by paying some cost to shift individual incentives, and that the cost is upper bounded by a budget. The intervention that maximizes the social welfare can be computed using the spectral decomposition of the adjacency matrix of the graph, yet this is infeasible in practice if the adjacency matrix is unknown. We study the question of designing intervention strategies for graphs where the adjacency matrix is unknown and is drawn from some distribution. For several commonly studied random graph models, we show that the competitive ratio of in intervention proportional to the first eigenvector of the expected adjacency matrix, approaches 1 in probability as the graph size increases. We also provide several efficient sampling-based approaches for approximately recovering the first eigenvector when we do not know the distribution. On the whole, our analysis compares three categories of interventions: those which use no data about the network, those which use some data (such as distributional knowledge or queries to the graph), and those which are fully optimal. We evaluate these intervention strategies on synthetic and real-world network data, and our results suggest that analysis of random graph models can be useful for determining when certain heuristics may perform well in practice.

Investments in productive assets by broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) enterprises in South Africa (SA) during the 1990s have been constrained, in part, by a lack of access to capital. Even if capital can be sourced, BEE businesses often face a liquidity problem, as conventional, equally amortized loan repayment plans do not take into account the size and timing of investment returns, or there are lags in the adjustment of management to such new investments. The aim of this dissertation, therefore, is to compare five alternative loan products to the conventional fixed repayment (equally amortized) loan (FRL) that lenders could offer to finance BEE investments in productive assets that are faced with liquidity stress, namely: the single payment non-amortized loan (SPL); the decreasing payment loan (DP); the partial payment loan (PPL); the graduated payment loan (GPL); and the deferred payment loan (DEFPLO-2). This is done firstly by comparing loan repayment schedules for the six loans using a loan principal of R200 000, repaid over 20 years at a nominal contractual annual interest rate of 10%. Secondly, data from five actual BEE loan applications to ABSA Bank and Ithala in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) during 2003 are used to compare how the FRL, SPL, DP, GPL, and DEFPLO-l, affect investment profitability, and both the borrower's and the lender's cash-flows, assuming that the lender sources funds from a development finance wholesaler. Results for the first part of the study show that the SPL has smaller initial annual repayments than the FRL (R20 000 versus R23 492) that ease liquidity stress in the early years after asset purchase, but requires a nominal balloon repayment of both interest and principal in year 20 of R220 000. The SPL is also the most costly loan, with total nominal and real repayments that are R130 162 and R43 821, respectively, more than the FRL. The PPL has the lowest total nominal and real repayments assuming that the borrower can make the nominal balloon repayment in year 5 of R202 173. If not, the ending balance of the loan in year 4 would have to be refinanced at current market interest rates. In this situation, the PPL uses very similar financing terms to that of the variable rate long-term loans already used in SA, and thus may not be a useful option to consider for BEE investments facing a liquidity problem. Interest rates may have risen over the last four years of the loan, encouraging lenders to add a premium into the interest rate for the refinanced loan, which could worsen the liquidity position of the BEE enterprise. The DP requires higher initial nominal annual loan repayments (R6 508 more than the FRL) that do not ease the liquidity problem in the early years of operation. The DP loan, however, has total nominal and real repayments that are R59 838 and R23 118, respectively, less than the FRL. A GPL with diminishing, finite interest-rate subsidy seems to have the most potential to ease the BEE investment's liquidity stress. The 17YRGPL used to buy land had total nominal and real repayments that were R84 634 and R67 726 (after subsidy), respectively, less than the FRL. If the GPL was used to purchase machinery-type assets, then the 6YRGPL would have required total nominal and real repayments of R13 957 and R12 596, respectively, less than the FRL. Finally, the DEFPLO-2 loan required a total nominal repayment of R531 128 (R61 290 more than the FRL) and a total real repayment of R345 358 (R26 095 more than the FRL). Clearly, the GPL and DEFPLO-2 loan repayment schedules can partly resolve the liquidity problem in the early years (assuming no major income shocks), although the DEFPLO-2 plan requires higher total repayments than the FRL. The question remains whether lenders would be prepared to implement these two financing plans for BEE investments in productive assets, where the funds to finance the diminishing, finite interest-rate subsidy or the deferment would be sourced, and how the interest-rate subsidy would affect asset values. In the second part of the study, the profitability of the five proposed BEE investments in KZN during 2003 was compared for the five loan products using the Net Present Value (NPV) and the Internal Rateof- return (lRR) capital budgeting procedures. The loan terms, interest rates, principal and characteristics of each BEE firm are different with current rates of return on equity varying by business type. Companies A (five-year loan) and C (10-year loan) are agribusinesses with a higher expected current rate of return of 8% on machinery investments, while companies B (eight-year loan), D (15-year loan), and E (20-year loan) invest in farmland with a lower expected current annual rate of return of 5%. The five business plans may not be representative in a statistical sense of all BEE firms in KZN, but were used because they were readily available. Initially it was assumed that donor/grant funds from a development finance wholesaler were lent to an intermediary (like a commercial bank), which in turn, could finance the five investments using any of the five alternative loans, with the lender's repayment to the wholesaler being via a FRL. It was then assumed that the lender could repay its borrowed funds using the same loans, or combinations of them, that it had granted to these companies. Results show that GPLs and DEFPLs can resolve the liquidity problem associated with investments like land in the early years after purchase provided that projected business performance is adequate, while the SPL and GPL are preferred for BEE projects with stronger initial cash-flows like machinery investments. The study also shows that the loan product that best improves the borrower's liquidity is not always best suited to the lender. In most cases, the GPL suited the borrower, but in four of the five cases, the lender would prefer the SPL and to repay the wholesaler using the SPL. The SPL, however, is unlikely to be used, given the large negative real net cash-flows that it generates when the final payments are due. Recent SA experience with the GPLs (interest rate subsidies funded by private sector sugar millers via Ithala) and the DEFPLs (via the Land Reform Empowerment Facility (LREF) which is a wholesaler of funds in SA) suggests that there is scope to alleviate the liquidity problem if a wholesaler of funds can offer such terms to private banks and venture capital investors who then on-lend to finance BEE asset investments that are otherwise considered relatively high credit risks. This would shift the liquidity problem away from the client to the wholesaler of the funds, but requires access to capital at favourable interest rates. Such capital could be sourced from dedicated empowerment funds earmarked by the private sector, donors and the SA government. The lesson for policymakers is that broad-based BEE could be promoted in other farm and non-farm sectors in SA using similar innovative loan products to complement cash grant funds via financial intermediaries, bearing in mind the limitations of the GPL and DEFPL - such as how to finance the subsidy or deferment, and the impact of income shocks. Donor and National Empowerment Fund capital could be used to allocate grants to provide previously disadvantaged individuals with own equity and also to fund finite, diminishing interest-rate subsidies via GPLs, or to fund DEFPLs (many LREF loans have been leveraged by a cash grant component). This could create an incentive for public/private partnerships, as public/donor funds could be then used to attract private sector funds to finance broadbased BEE investments in SA that satisfy empowerment criteria. The five case studies did not show how the GPLs and DEFPLs could make all profitable (positive net present value) but financially infeasible (returns do not match the size and timing of the lender's financing plan) BEE investments in productive assets under the FRL feasible, except for Company E that showed a positive NPV and IRR when the 19YRGPL was used. They did, however, show how the alternative loans could improve liquidity for investments with either strong or poor cash-flows. The financiers consulted to source case studies in KZN in 2003 at the time of the study could not provide the researcher with any profitable, but financially infeasible, BEE business plans. This raises some concern about how effective these empowerment loan products could be in the future as there is uncertainty over how many potential BEE investments in productive assets in SA are likely to be profitable but financially infeasible. Further research is thus needed to assess the impact of these alternative loans on a wider range of broad-based BEE investments, particularly non-farm projects, than considered in this dissertation. / Thesis (M.Agric.Mgt.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.