SMEs are considered to be an engine for growth in both developed and developing countries, by generating employment opportunities, strengthening industrial linkages, securing home markets and earning valuable export revenue. Government-backed loan schemes play a major role in many countries, by enabling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to access credit facilities. The Credit Guarantee Corporation in Malaysia has been charged with this key role in assisting SMEs, and its main financing instrument is the New Principal Guarantee Scheme (NPGS). The overall aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which the NPGS is appropriate to the financing needs of Malaysian SMEs. The primary objective is to identify the factors that determine the utilisation of the NPGS; utilisation depends upon a number of demand and supply factors, as well as the characteristics of firms and owner-managers (OMs). An important secondary objective is to investigate the effectiveness of the NPGS, by exploring the generation of finance and economic additionality, as well as the net cost of the Scheme to the Treasury. After a literature review, and the development of theoretical frameworks, a number of hypotheses are put forward. The methodological approach combines a questionnaire survey with case studies based on interviews with borrowers and financiers, and interviews with key informants. The questionnaire is principally concerned with the factors that affect the utilisation of the NPGS, whereas the case studies and interviews focus on the three elements of effectiveness. The questionnaire data are derived from a sample of firms from the CGC's database. The sample includes firms involved in a variety of activities, from the manufacture of high-technology goods to the processing of resource-based products. Firms were randomly selected to adequately represent racial composition, legal structure and loan size within the CGC's portfolio. The questionnaire data were supplemented by 15 in-depth case studies. Two major findings emerge from this study. First, a number of independent variables did have a significant relationship on the utilisation of the NPGS: the amount of security or collateral; limited company status; manufacturing sector; size of firm; use of external advisers for fund raising; and the existence of written business plans. However, the majority of the hypotheses relating to the characteristics of OMs were rejected; the researcher offers some explanations for this apparent anomaly. Second, the case studies demonstrate that NPGS has achieved finance additionality comparable with achieved in guarantee schemes elsewhere, as well as a significant degree of economic additionality. The net cost of the Scheme was difficult to determine with any degree of precision. On the basis of the research findings, the researcher is able to put forward a series of recommendations to improve the operations of the CGC.

International finance is often understood to be a rational practice, taking place within an autonomous, coherent and clearly bounded structure. This thesis questions the naturalness implied by such understandings of the international financial system. It argues that the contingencies and ambiguities of financial history have been largely written out of the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE) in general and the study of international finance in particular. The thesis presents a detailed account of the conceptual histories that enable us to think of a domain called finance. It does so in terms of a 'genealogy,' the concept offered by French philosopher Michel Foucault to denote a historical study that resists being a linear and frictionless account of the emergence of modern practices. A genealogy of finance discusses the continggeenntt emergence of fi'n ancial thought, thus arguing that no logical or evolutionary trajectory for the development of fi' nancial rationality was implicit in history or human nature. The thesis analyses a range of archival materials debating the emerging fin ' ancial sphere in London and NewYork, beginning with the birth of the credit economy in seventeenth-century England and proceeding into to the 1990s. The analysis' looks at political contestations over understandings of time and money, the gendered discourse of credit and credibility, the proper meaning of the free market, understandings of financial crisis, the morality of speculation, the differences between gambling and fin' ance, and the imagination of fi' nance as a rational and scientific practice. The thesis emphasises how these political controversies assume, in' yoke and debate a subject called 'fin ' ancial man.' The debates analysed in this thesis have shaped the regulatory and institutional structures of modern in ' ternational fin ' ance. In an era when fin ' ancial practices are closed off from democratic politics through the assertion that fin' ance is too specialist for broad-based public debate, the exposure of contingencies and ambiguities in financial practices must be regarded as a political critique.

The purpose of this study was to explore how Dual Credit (DC) programs at Ontario high schools impacted the persistence of students when they are in college and what specific features of these programs affected the participating students’ academic performance. This study focused on the Dual Credit students enrolled full-time at Sir Sandford Fleming College who successfully completed one full-time semester of academic study. Fleming College is one of the 24 Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts & Technology. This was a case study based on both qualitative and quantitative data collected by a number of methods including survey questionnaires, audio-recorded phone and face-to-face interviews, and document analysis. There were a number of findings related to persistence at College. For example, the DC student group persisted at the same rate as did all College students and DC students who enrolled in a College program that was “related” to their DC program were more likely to persist at college. Although there was no attempt to compare the data for the two groups because of uncontrollable variables, this study found that DC students (as a group) did not achieve academically quite at the same level, as did all Fleming College students. However, considering that the DC target group was “at risk” students, the overall academic achievement (64%) of the DC students (2011) was similar to the academic achievement of all College students (68%). The participants in this study recommended that the DC program be as much like college as possible. This study supports previous research, which indicates that the DC courses should be delivered at the college campus (rather than in the high school) and DC students should be integrated with other college students. Although this was a case study of DC students at only one Ontario College and the findings are not generalizable to other sites, the findings of this study will partially address a gap in the research literature and add to the body of knowledge about the impact of DC programs in the areas of student engagement, integration and persistence with respect to DC programs elsewhere.

The purpose of this study was to explore how Dual Credit (DC) programs at Ontario high schools impacted the persistence of students when they are in college and what specific features of these programs affected the participating students’ academic performance. This study focused on the Dual Credit students enrolled full-time at Sir Sandford Fleming College who successfully completed one full-time semester of academic study. Fleming College is one of the 24 Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts & Technology. This was a case study based on both qualitative and quantitative data collected by a number of methods including survey questionnaires, audio-recorded phone and face-to-face interviews, and document analysis. There were a number of findings related to persistence at College. For example, the DC student group persisted at the same rate as did all College students and DC students who enrolled in a College program that was “related” to their DC program were more likely to persist at college. Although there was no attempt to compare the data for the two groups because of uncontrollable variables, this study found that DC students (as a group) did not achieve academically quite at the same level, as did all Fleming College students. However, considering that the DC target group was “at risk” students, the overall academic achievement (64%) of the DC students (2011) was similar to the academic achievement of all College students (68%). The participants in this study recommended that the DC program be as much like college as possible. This study supports previous research, which indicates that the DC courses should be delivered at the college campus (rather than in the high school) and DC students should be integrated with other college students. Although this was a case study of DC students at only one Ontario College and the findings are not generalizable to other sites, the findings of this study will partially address a gap in the research literature and add to the body of knowledge about the impact of DC programs in the areas of student engagement, integration and persistence with respect to DC programs elsewhere.

We analyze the nature of sovereign credit risk for selected Asian and European countries through a set of sovereign CDS data for an eighty-year period that includes the episode of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Our principal component analysis results suggest that there is strong commonality in sovereign credit risk across countries after the crisis. The regression tests show that the commonality is linked to both local and global financial and economic variables. Besides, we also notice intriguing differences in the sovereign credit risk behavior of Asian and European countries. Specifically, we find that some variables, including foreign reserve, global stock market, and volatility risk premium, affect the of Asian and European sovereign credit risks in the opposite direction. Further, we assume that the arrival rates of credit events follow a square-root diffusion from which we build our pricing model. The resulting model is used to decompose credit spreads into risk premium and credit-event components.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-104). Also available in electronic version.

Professional Master's Project in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: first-to-default baskets; multi-name credit derivatives; copula functions. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 29 ).

Konstanz, Univ., Diss., 2008.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Neven T. Valev, committee chair; Sally Wallace, Vassil T. Mihov, Felix K. Rioja, Shiferaw Gurmu, committee members. Electronic text (105 p. : ill.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 19, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-104).