Foreign exchange market is the most active market in today’s global financial domains. While the consensus on several aspects of this market is fairly established, the informational efficiency in this market is still unsettled, particularly during unexpected interruptions and unusual or unstable periods. The financial crisis of 2008 is the most recent example of such a period. This dissertation focuses on the efficiency of the foreign exchange market during a unique, turbulent period using the six most actively traded currencies: the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc, Euro, British pound, and Japanese yen. Considering nine months before the peak of the financial crisis to nine months thereafter, the entire sample is divided into three sub-samples: full-, non-crisis-, and crisis-periods. Both daily and minute-by-minute data are used. A variety of instruments are analyzed, including spot, forward, and exchange traded funds on the currencies. The methodologies that are employed range from standard econometric tests of efficiency to estimation of vector error correction models to identify price discovery, or leadership positions, in each of the currency markets. The findings indicate behavioral similarities and differences. The patterns of the volatility of the currencies are mixed: two-humped for the AUD, CAD, and EUR; W-shaped for the CHF; three-humped for the GBP, and flat U-shaped for the JPY. The daily results from several methodologies provide mixed evidence on market efficiency. Over the entire sample period, the estimated forward premium coefficients from the GARCH (1, 1) model are not significant for all currencies, while the null hypotheses of zero and one cointegrating vectors cannot be rejected for all currencies, except for the AUD. These findings are consistent with some of the previous studies, concluding that the efficiency tests in the foreign exchange market would depend on the methodology and the time period of the study. The high frequency data results show different degrees of price discovery between pair-wise instruments. Specifically, the spot exchange market shows a greater contribution to price discovery than the corresponding exchange traded funds. A possible explanation is the current size of the market and its increased transparency through the use of electronic trading.

Purpose - The study sought to examine the liquidity linkages between the South African bond and equity markets before the global financial crisis in 2008. Design/methodology/approach: The window of observation covered the period January 2000 to September 2008. In order to ensure robustness in the estimation, the study used foreign participation in the various markets as an additional measure of liquidity. The other liquidity measures considered in the study were volume and value traded of the various securities respectively. Time series modeling techniques were used in the estimation. An unrestricted vector autoregressive (VAR) model was estimated following which the standard innovation accounting techniques, impulse response functions and forecast error variance decompositions were applied. In the empirical analysis, the Granger-causality between the two markets was also used. Findings - While all the liquidity measures suggest the existence of linkages between the bond and equity markets, the direction of causality was found to be unidirectional from equity to the bond market using the volume and value measures. On the other hand, the foreign participation measure of liquidity suggests bi-directional causality. The study also provides evidence of long run relationship between key macroeconomic variables such as inflation, exchange rate and interest rate on one hand and liquidity in the debt and equity markets on the other. As empirical findings indicates that the linkages in liquidity between these markets positive, this consistent with studies conducted by Chordia et al (2003 & 2005) and Engsted and Tanggaard (2000) who found the relationship was a positive one. When volumes of trade and trade values, the study find evidence on uni-directional causality and strong bi-directional causality is evidence when foreign investor participation is used as a liquidity measure. In summary, there is a strong evidence liquidity linkage between the bond and equity market from the empirical results.

This research examines the recent global financial crisis’ (GFC) impact on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and analyses governments’ responses. According to most literature, SMEs already faced obstacles prior to the GFC, such as paying high taxes, overcoming low profitability, being affected by rising business costs, finding qualified labour, dealing with increasing competition, etc. The GFC has had serious repercussions for SMEs with respect to financing, markets, and liquidity. In order to explore in depth the governments’ responses, qualitative methods are employed to test the following three research questions: 1) To what extent did governments aim to assist SMEs to survive the GFC? What types of programs have been implemented to address new and existing obstacles? 2) Did governments apply appropriate strategic initiatives to realize their goals? If the initiatives could not achieve the governments’ original goals, what obstacles did they address? 3) Did governments tend to help SMEs more after the GFC? Did governments give up on disadvantaged firms or did they try to help them survive the crisis? Analysis revealed that, as a result of the GFC, governments developed programs aimed at new obstacles and at some of the existing ones. The aims did not differ materially for developed and less-developed economies. Financing and taxation programs tended to be designed to achieve their goals directly, where other programs tended to achieve them in a more indirect manner. Overall, government initiatives covered most of the serious obstacles faced by SMEs and government assistance programs aimed at SMEs tended to have been augmented in light of the GFC.

The topic of this thesis is Credit swaps and CDOs and their use in the financial environment of the 21st century. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the market of these instruments works, show how they are traded and how diversely they can be used but also warns about the potential negative consequences in case these instruments are not handled with the required caution. The practical part of this thesis concentrates on the current situation on the credit derivatives market focusing on the above mentioned instruments. The role of CDSs and CDOs in the 2008 global financial crisis is examined with emphasis on the AIG case.

The analysis of reasons, side effects and consequences of the global financial crisis in relation to KBC Group. Analysis of profit evolution of KBC Group as well as particular business units. The other indices of financial health - credit ratings, the share price, solvency. The analysis of the strongest effects on the profit decline - CDO, US and Icelandic banks, decline of prices of shares. Comparison of the closest competitors - Société Générale and Erste Group.

The number of dividend paying firms has been on the decline since the popularity of stock repurchases in the 1980s, and the recent financial crisis has brought about a wave of dividend reductions and omissions. This dissertation examined the U.S. firms and American Depository Receipts that are listed on the U.S. equity exchanges according to their dividend paying history in the previous twelve quarters. While accounting for the state of the economy, the firm’s size, profitability, earned equity, and growth opportunities, it determines whether or not the firm will pay a dividend in the next quarter. It also examined the likelihood of a dividend change. Further, returns of firms were examined according to their dividend paying history and the state of the economy using the Fama-French three-factor model. Using forward, backward, and step-wise selection logistic regressions, the results show that firms with a history of regular and uninterrupted dividend payments are likely to continue to pay dividends, while firms that do not have a history of regular dividend payments are not likely to begin to pay dividends or continue to do so. The results of a set of generalized polytomous logistic regressions imply that dividend paying firms are more likely to reduce dividend payments during economic expansions, as opposed to recessions. Also the analysis of returns using the Fama-French three factor model reveals that dividend paying firms are earning significant abnormal positive returns. As a special case, a similar analysis of dividend payment and dividend change was applied to American Depository Receipts that trade on the NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX exchanges and are issued by the Bank of New York Mellon. Returns of American Depository Receipts were examined using the Fama-French two-factor model for international firms. The results of the generalized polytomous logistic regression analyses indicate that dividend paying status and economic conditions are also important for dividend level change of American Depository Receipts, and Fama-French two-factor regressions alone do not adequately explain returns for these securities.

This study examines the effects of 2007/8 financial crisis on capital structure determinants of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies in South Africa. Data extracted from INET BFA Expert database was analyzed using regression models on the correlation between the leverage and company size, growth, profitability, tangibility, liquidity, non-debt tax shield along with Ordinary Least Squares based on the sample of JSE listed companies for the period of 2004 to 2013. The study examined two industries namely, Real estate and Retail industry. The results show that size, tangibility, profitability and liquidity have significant impact on the capital structure before, during and after financial crisis. Growth results were inconsistent over the period under review, and non-debt tax shield was found to be statistically insignificant. The study also shows that the 2007/8 had statistical significance on the capital structure of the listed companies in South Africa.

This paper examines the effect of the 90s financial crisis in Sweden on patent quantity and attempts to determine the potential mediating role that institutions of higher education may play. The empirical design consists of adifference-in-differences model which relies on cross-municipality variation in crisis exposure, which is defined asthe percentage of employment loss during the crisis years, 1991-1993. The results suggest that the crisis did not significantly affect the overall number of patents issued; however, Innovation significantly increased in municipalities with an above-median college attendance rate. Additionally, I find that municipalities with access to institutions of higher education were also positively affected by the crisis in terms of patent quantity. Both these results indicate that government policy to expand access to higher education institutions may in fact facilitate innovation activity during times of financial crisis.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Administration and Law, in fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics at the University of Zululand, 2019. / The extent of the damage caused by the 2007/08 global financial crisis (GFC) has forced policymakers all over the world to respond promptly in order to mitigate its effect, a process in which they are still engaged in, particularly in advanced economies. The main objective of this study is to measure systemic risk in African emerging economies and develop a macroprudential regulatory framework to mitigate or limit the effect of such risk. More specifically, the study intends to1) Developing financial stress index (FSI) for the Emerging African economy; 2) Investigate the possibility of Early Warning Signal (EWS) helping in predicting and preventing or minimising the effects of the crisis on financial institutions; 3) Assess the resilience of individual banking companies to adverse macroeconomic and financial market conditions using stress testing technique; 4) Identify the source of fluctuation within the system; 5) Identify and measure systemic risk emanating from the capital flow (surge) as well as its effects on financial stability. This study contributed to the body of knowledge by measuring systemic risk in emerging African economies. To the best of my knowledge, there have not been any studies that have been conducted for the measure of systemic risk with the context of emerging African economies. The target economies include South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya. The first objective of the study is to construct a financial stress index (FSI) for emerging African economies. The FSI which is aimed at revealing the functionality of the financial system a single aggregate indicator that is constructed to reflect the systemic nature of financial instability and as well to measure the vulnerability of the financial system to both internal and external shocks. The result shows that both the domestic and international shocks created uncertainty in the economies under consideration. On the international scene, we have the financial crisis while on the domestic scene; we have slow growth, banking crisis, energy crisis, labour crisis, coupled with political uncertainty. The FSI is also useful and appropriate as the dependent variable in an early signal warning model, and as well be used to gauge the effectiveness of government measures to mitigate financial stress. The models forecasting performance was tested using the ordinary least square methods and it affirmed that the model is reliable and that the FSI can be used for prediction of a future crisis. v The aim of the second objective is to develop an early warning signal (EWS) model to predict the possibility of the occurrence of a financial crisis in emerging African countries. The multinomial logit model built by Bussiere and Fratzscher (2006) was adopted to afford policy makers ample time to prevent or mitigate potential financial crisis. In summary, the result suggests that emerging African economies are more likely to face financial crisis as debts continue to rise without a corresponding capacity to withstand capital flow reversal as well as excessive FX risk due to currency exposure. The result further indicates that rising debt exposure increases the probability or likelihood of the economies remaining in a state of crisis. This result confirms the significance of a financial stability framework that fits Africa’s emerging economies characteristics such as rising debt profile liquidity and currency risk exposure. The third objective is to test the resilience of the financial sector using stress testing technique. Macro stress testing is a multi-step simulation process aimed at estimating the impact of credit risk shock on macroeconomic as well as financial sectors. In this study, a two-step approach was employed in this chapter. The first step involves analyzing the determinants of credit risk in 4 Emerging African economies during the period 2006m1 to 2012m12 using the panel Auto Regressive Distribution Lag (ARDL) model. Second, the vector autoregressive (VAR) models were employed to assess the resilience of the financial system as well as the economy to adverse credit risk shocks. The result shows that all the variables under both the macro and financial model jointly determine credit risk, although when examined on an individual basis only, UMP, IBR, and INF have a significant impact on NPL in the long run. For the macro stress testing, the VAR methodology was employed to stress test the emerging African economy financial sector and the result indicated that there a significant relationship between changes in output gap (GAP) and the nonperforming loans. A significant relationship was also established between inflation and nonperforming loans. In all, South Africa and Nigeria’s financial system seems more resilient to credit losses associated with this scenario without threatening financial stability compared to Kenya and Egypt. The fourth objective examined the sources of capital flows surge and their impact on macroeconomic variables. This study employed a ��−�������� to investigate the source capital flow surge within the system. The main findings of the result indicate that capital flow, which is vi proxied by FDI, is influenced by a wide variety of macroeconomic variables such as inflation, export growth and unemployment. There is therefore need for the implementation of capital controls framework tame massive capital inflows. Nevertheless, such a mechanism should not undermine the impact of capital inflows on employment, growth and financial stability. The fifth objective of the study is aimed at identifying and measuring the sources of systematic risk and its impact on the stability of the financial system using the Conditional Value-at-Risk methodology. The main finding of the study indicates that at the normal and extreme event the banking sector contributes positively and significantly to the real economy for all the countries except for Nigeria at the extreme event or 1 percent quantile. This study, therefore, concludes that the banking sector, stock market volatility contributes greatly to systemic risk in emerging African economies. The individual bank also contributes significantly to systemic risk for all the economies although the magnitudes are relatively different across economies. This finding is of great interest to policymakers since it shows that the banking sectors as well as stock market volatility have a negative impact on the real economy. This result is plausible as the banking and financial sector for most emerging economies constitute a greater proportion of the real economy. There is, therefore, need for a regulatory framework to reduce risk emanating from the banking sector as well as the financial markets. In summary, due to huge capital flows and rising debt level in emerging African economies, there is, therefore, a need for a macroprudential policy that will fit African economies as well as the implementation of capital controls framework tame massive capital inflows. Efforts should be made to reduce the rising debts profile of most countries and that will require a greater level of commitment from their respective government and central banks. However, these should be in the interest of the growth and stability of the financial system and the real economy at large. In the case of the banking sector, since it has a great impact on triggering systemic risk, more effort should be utilized to continue to monitor its performance so that potential risk can be detected early and nip in the bud.

This thesis deals mainly with the question how and to what extent the 1997 Asian financial crisis influenced the unprecedented development of the welfare system in South Korea while other Asian countries remained or diminished their welfare programs. This research explains the historical development of the South Korean welfare system, which has been entwined with political and economic conditions in the theoretical approach of the path dependence. This research proved that the 1997 crisis was a critical juncture, which explains how unprecedented welfare policy reforms were achieved and that the character of the South Korean welfare system has improved. While the IMF and the World Bank required the reforms and expansion of social safety net as a bailout condition, the political leadership of South Korea was changed by President Kim Dae-Jung, which made possible opening progressive policymaking and decision processes in reform politics to extend the national welfare system, particularly four social insurance systems and the public assistance. Given these occasions, the character of the South Korean welfare system has transferred from the liberal welfare-state regime to the conservative.