Cette thèse est une étude socioéconomique qui analyse la dynamique de pénétration et de socialisation des instituts de micro-finance (IMF) en Moyenne Guinée (république de Guinée), à travers les logiques d’acteurs et les transformations sociales associées à cette forme nouvelle de bancarisation qui cible les pauvres. La première partie présente le cadre de la recherche et indique que, pour l’État, la législation et les investisseurs, les IMF sont nés pour affaiblir l’économie informelle. La deuxième partie montre que pratiques et ressorts de légitimation des IMF assurent la pénétration sociale du monopole idéologique de la gouvernance globale de la pauvreté (OMD, DSRP, PPTE), constituant au passage une aubaine pour des entrepreneurs des réseaux parfois affiliés au pouvoir. Néanmoins, l’enquête de terrain montre que les clients de la Moyen Guinée sont abonnés autant aux IMF qu’aux régimes d’endettement et d’épargne très anciens qui résistent au changement et permettent de tenir dans la crise, d’assumer sa position sociale ou d’entreprendre son émancipation (cas des femmes). Dans la troisième partie, nous verrons que l’importance des IMF en Moyenne Guinée n’est pas tant dans la réduction de la pauvreté qu’ils aggravent parfois par le surendettement des ménages, que dans le renouvellement de la problématique du « développement » et des politiques publiques, ou l’introduction de la question sociale / This thesis is a sociological and economic study which analyzes the dynamic of penetration and socialization of Microloans Institutes (MLI) in Middle Guinea (region in republic of Guinea). Focalizing on actors logics and social transformations associated to this new form of entrance in bank system dedicated to poor people, the study presents, in a 1st part, the framework (context and concepts of study), noting that for state, legislation and entrepreneurs, the aim of MFI presence in Guinea is to break informal economy. In the 2nd part, practices and legitimating strategies of MLI assures a social penetration to the monopolistic ideology of “global governance of poverty” (MDG, PRSP, HIPC), constituting an opportunity for business men probably affiliated to governmental network. However, the reality of the ground reveals that in Middle Guinea, people are MLI costumers as much as members of old ant informal microloans groups, which resist to the change and help to hold in times of crisis, to assume social position or to engage a social emancipation process (case of women). In the 3rd part we will see that the importance of microloans institutions in Middle Guinea is not to reduce poverty-they contribute in some cases to accelerate household indebtedness-but to renew the problematic of “development”, public policies, introducing poverty as social issue.

Esse trabalho tem como objetivo verificar se o sistema bancário brasileiro protege indivíduos contra os choques transitivos de renda. Por meio de experimentos e avaliação empírica, em pequenas regiões, a literatura tenta explicar como arranjos informais podem contornar os problemas de crédito causados por falhas informacionais e de comprometimento limitado. No entanto, falha em avaliar choques que afetam uma região geográfica ampla já que esses são comportados apenas por bancos. Através de um modelo de dois estágios com variação de renda instrumentalizada por variáveis climáticas, analisamos se existe um efeito significante entre os choques e as contas de crédito das instituições formais. Verificamos que os agentes usam poupança como meio principal de suavizar seu risco intertemporal. As contas de crédito, entretanto possuem um efeito distinto em municípios com mais desenvolvimento financeiro do que aqueles com menos. Isso indica que possuímos uma restrição de crédito para parte da população, deixando-a exposta ao seu risco. / This work aims to verify whether the Brazilian banking system protects individuals against transitive income shocks. Through experiments and empirical evaluation in small regions, literature tries to explain how informal arrangements can overcome credit problems caused by informational failures and limited commitment. But they fail to evaluate shocks that affect a broad geographic region that can only be dealt with banks. Through a two-stage model with varying income instrumentalized by climatic variables, we analyze whether there is a significant effect between shocks and credit accounts of formal institutions. We verify that agents use savings as the primary means of smoothing their intertemporal risk. The credit accounts however have a distinct effect in counties with more financial development than the ones with the least. This indicates that we have a credit crunch for a portion of the population, leaving it exposed to their risk.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse selected amendments of The Building Savings Act No. 96/1993 of the Legal Code. It concerns the amendments that affected the system of building savings in a fundamental way, resp. they have been able to affect it. In its 8 chapters, the thesis deals with the original legislation on building savings, its place within the context of the Czech legal system, basic terminology of building savings and the contentious questions that arise from them. They are put in the context of both the historical and the current legislations, including not only re-codification of the Civil Law but also so called The Mortgage Directive 2014/17/EU. To illustrate this, it is used also selected court rulings concerning building savings, charts and tables. The whole issue is assessed from the qualitative point of view - while taking into account a 2012 amendment that has not been implemented. With the view of the lack of the specialist literature, it is used mainly texts of the related acts and casual reports as well as the wealth of experience I have gained during my many years at work. The result of this thesis is a summary of the key amendments of the building savings legislation in the Czech Republic and incorporation of building savings into the legal and economic contexts. I allowed...

Magister Economicae - MEcon / In South Africa, as in many developing countries, most households are poor and do not save, as a result of which they do not acquire any positive net worth and which also constrains access to formal means of finance. South Africa is a consuming nation, with increasing ratios of household consumption resulting in dissaving and often unsustainable levels of household debt, which is also stimulated by the current lower level of interest rates. This situation is worse amongst poorhouseholds who also often experience financial shocks, for instance because of the death of family membersas a result of HIV/AIDS. This report provided an overview of household saving in South Africa for the period 1983 to 2003. It identified the main factors responsible for the lack of a commitment to saving which are particularly relevant in the case of poor households. / South Africa

With public opinion shifting to a believe in climate change in the early 2000s the interest in energy efficiency has been increasing. EU Directives set the goal of deploying smart meters if cost efficient for providing more detailed energy consumption. The main goal is to better inform consumers and to give individual households the power to change possibly energy wasting behaviours. This paper evaluates through a literature review the effectiveness of intelligent electricity metering systems with a focus on the DACH region, the provision of different types of feedback and its persistence. It can be concluded that energy feedback enabled by smart meters can lead to savings in the range of 0% to 4.5% in this region. If feedback is provided continuously savings persist. However, several aspects have to be considered to ensure effectiveness of smart meter deployment.

This thesis examines the development of self-help as an ideology and as an organisational principle for poor relief and how it came to dominate discussions over poverty and crucially inform the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The continuity of self-help with earlier discussions and reviews of the poor laws is explored and emphasised, as is the continuing moral core of poor relief despite historians’ frequent ascription of de-moralisation to the new political economy that came to heavily influence poor law discourse. The thesis analyses the evolution of the poor laws and of attitudes to poverty and begins with an examination of a divergence in the discourse relating to poverty between a more formal and centralised institutional approach and a more devolved, permissive institutional approach; the latter gained precedence due to its closer proximity to a dominant mode of thinking (as analysed by A. W. Coats) about the poor that held self-betterment as offering a solution to poverty most appropriate to the governance structures of the day. The greater role given to self-betterment and the natural affinity of more devolved schemes with a macroeconomic political economy framework pushed the evolution of poor law discourse along a route of emphasising individual probity and agency over the established model of community cohesion. Parallel to this divergence was the development of distinct intellectual traditions within poor law discourse between the older natural-law tradition of a natural right to subsistence and a new ideology of the natural law of markets and of competition for resources. By analysis of the thought of writers such as Thomas Robert Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, Patrick Colquhoun, David Davies, Frederick Morton Eden, Edmund Burke, etc., it is shown that this newer conception of natural law, encompassing a less interventionist and more macroeconomic approach (involving the deployment of statistics and abstraction, as explored by S. Sherman), proved more compatible with the devolved, more permissive institutional approach and so came to take precedence over that of the natural right to subsistence, which was associated more with traditional paternalism and community-level responses to scarcity and poverty. The natural law tradition spoke more to the abstract conceptions of poverty associated at this time with the greater deployment of statistics and tables in the analysis of social problems. It is demonstrated how writers of the period utilised utilitarian conceptions and nascent political economic arguments to portray the greater good of the country as a whole as possessed of greater moral and economic authority than more traditional ‘moral economy’ responses, and that vocabularies of virtue and duty were used to illustrate and justify such a shift. This set the scene for self-betterment as an economic strategy to evolve into an ideology of self-help which was developed as the panacea of poverty and the answer to the social dislocations caused by industrialisation. Self-help came to the fore as an approach that was more politically resonant in the era of revolutionary France and which enabled a more permissive institutional apparatus to be advanced. These institutions, such as allotments, savings banks and schools of industry, came to prominence in the period 1816-1820 and pertained more to macroeconomic understandings of poverty. They were expounded using a theme, that of ‘character’, that described poverty as the result of personal imprudence and hence as treatable, the most appropriate level for this treatment being that of the individual. The reforms of 1818-19 and the debates that informed them are given an extended analysis as they formed the crucial juncture in the cohering of self-help as an ideology and a paradigmatic shift in poor law policy towards greater discrimination underwritten by self-help. Finally, the 1834 Poor law Reform Act is explained in terms of the ideological development of arguments of self-help and character towards a more punitive and disciplinarian platform for enforcing self-help, with the cost-efficient and systematic institutional approach of Bentham adapted to the purpose.

The thesis deals with loans to finance own housing. The thesis is primarily focused on mortgage loans, bridging loans and hans coming from building savings, both of them provided by building societies. In particular parts of the thesis are described basic principles of mortgage hans and building savings loans. There is stated thein legislation, kinds and types of individual housing loans. In the following part is analyzed the current market situation and market development of housing loans in the Czech Republic including the factors influencing this development. In the last part are compared different types of the hans using a model example. In comparison are included fees relating to loans and interest rates, which are published on the official website of selected companies.

Energy Performance Contracting is an energy saving method, when the supplier guarantees a certain minimal level of energy savings to the customer, as well as non-rising energy costs. The method was developed at the turn of 70's and 80's in the USA and has spread to dozens of countries around the world till today, although the rate of the EPC market development differs from country to country. The method is useful mostly for heating, electricity and gas cost savings by the end-users. In the Czech Republic, the method has been used since 1993. Until now, several dozens, or even hundreds of projects have been realized, mostly for public sector customers. This paper analyzes the current state of the EPC method usage around the world as well as in the Czech Republic, the key part comprises of the EPC principles description, based on data from real EPC contracts. The work is concluded by a SWOT analysis of the method and by a discussion of the following question: "Can EPC projects blockade the overall saving potential in some cases?" The key information source for most of the work were answers to questions sent to eight Czech ESCO companies representatives, as well as the outputs from guided interviews with four of them, which were taking place between January and May 2009.

Thesis "Market of Mortgage Credits"deals with analysis of the market development of own living loans since 1995 and the analysis and comparison of the most frequently used forms of the own living financing in the Czech Republic. These are mortgage loans, building savings loans and mutual combination of these products. Individual products are compared according to the selected criteria, that have major impact on decision about the appropriate way of own living financing.. On the base of the results the recommendations for own living financing in present mortgage market in the Czech Republic are provided.

The goal of the diploma thesis is to describe the impact of the financial crisis on financial position of czech households and to compare it with households from EU.