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The purpose of the study is to better understand the extent to which dual credit contributes to increased access and participation in college. As an initiative to facilitate the transition from high school to college for many students, dual credit has grown in scale and popularity in Ontario in recent years. By giving participating students credit towards both secondary school and college, dual credit is seen as a particularly effective mechanism in assisting disengaged students and groups under-represented in postsecondary education achieve success in high school and college. Still at an early stage of implementation in Ontario, little formal research has been conducted to explore the elements contributing to the program’s success and the benefits and outcomes for participants. Through the use of mixed methods of research, the study explores from a case study perspective the experience of dual credit at a single Ontario college in collaboration with its local partner school boards. Research methods include examination of student grades, policy and program documentation; student and parent surveys; and interviews with staff involved in planning and delivery. The analysis is informed by conceptual frameworks of student change allowing for consideration of a broad range of variables. Results of the study revealed that dual credit was deemed to be a success by students, parents and staff involved with the programs. Dual credit was viewed as particularly effective in terms of academic benefits and creating a greater awareness of college, contributing to student confidence and leading to increased likelihood of college participation. Dual credit participants were found to be primarily middle achievers academically, tended to perform better in dual credit courses than in high school, and obtained slightly higher grades than college peers in the same courses. Given the program delivery models studied, it was concluded that middle achievers were likely to benefit most. The study also concluded that student characteristics including pre-existing confidence and motivation should be considered an important element of success along with program elements and institutional factors. As an innovative program demonstrating positive results, more research should be done to assist in developing dual credit further.

In this thesis the aim has been to analyse changes and continuity in the governing of economic behaviour in small-scale credit schemes in colonial Nyasaland and independent Malawi from 1930 until 2010. Furthermore, how the effects of history in terms of how colonial and post-colonial development discourses and practices have been rephrased and reused in the early 21st century are discussed. The study focuses on the teaching and fostering of borrowers’ economic behaviour in order to reach increased living standards. The genealogical approach to the history of small-scale credit has made it possible to analyse a selection of colonial and post-colonial small-scale credit programs and microcredit organisations operating in the early 21st century. To analyse the governing of economic behaviour in the small-scale credit schemes, three aspects of the Foucauldian concept of governmentality are used: problematics of government, political rationality and governmentality technologies. The findings of the thesis, which are based on interviews, unofficial and official written sources, show that the genealogy of governing economic behaviour through small-scale credit schemes has varied over time depending on perceptions of the ideal actor’s economic behaviour. Despite this, some continuities have been identified. For example, there is a continuity in the problematics of government, the analysis of the perceived development problem and how small-scale credit was to be a solution. The study indicates that a linear and universal financial history is used in theory and practice and consequently that the local Malawian national history of small-scale credit has been ignored. Despite different political rationalities during the period there is a continuity in funding small-scale credit with external money, and the government’s interest in small-scale credit has also persisted. One effect of history is that small-scale credit seems to be politically efficient, but economically inefficient. In the colonial period and in more recent times, it seems like governmentality technologies regarding lending are quite ad hoc, for example regarding the supervision and distributions of loans. One effect of history is subordinated positions for borrowers and a governing towards economic responsibility, rather than entrepreneurship.

Credit risk models widely used in the financial market nowadays assume that losses are normally distributed and have linear dependence. Nevertheless it is well known that asset returns (loans included) are not normally distributed and present tail dependence. Therefore the traditional approaches are not able to capture possible stronger association among higher losses and tend to underestimate the probability of joint extreme losses. Copula functions are an alternative to overcome this drawback since they yield accurate dependence measures regardless of the distribution of the variables analysed. This technique was first applied to credit risk in 2000 but the studies in this field have been concentrated on corporate debt and derivatives. We filled this gap in the literature by employing copulas to estimate the dependence among consumer loans. In an empirical study based on a credit card portfolio of a large UK bank, we found evidence that standard models are misspecified as the dependence across default rates in the dataset is seldom expressed by the (Gaussian) copula implicit in those models. The comparison between estimations of joint high default rates from the conventional approach and from the best-fit copulas confirmed the superiority of the latter method. The initial investigation concerning pairs of credit segments was extended to groups of three segments with the purpose of accounting for potential heterogeneous dependence within the portfolio. To do so, we introduced vine copulas (combinations of bivariate copulas to form high-dimension copulas) to credit risk and the empirical estimations of simultaneous excessive defaults based on this technique were better than both the estimations from the pairwise copulas and from the conventional models. Another contribution of this work concerns the application of copulas to a method derived from the limited credit models: the calculation of the capital required to cover unexpected losses in financial institutions. Two models were proposed and, according to simulations, outperformed the current method (Basel) in most of the scenarios considered.

This study intends to assess determinants of nonperforming loans. The mixed research approach was adopted for the study. Survey was conducted with professionals engaged in both private and state owned Banks in Ethiopia holding different positions using a self administered questionnaire. In addition, the study used structured review of documents and records of banks and in-depth interview of senior bank officials in the Ethiopian banking industry. The findings of the study shows that poor credit assessment, failed loan monitoring, underdeveloped credit culture, lenient credit terms and conditions, aggressive lending, compromised integrity, weak institutional capacity, unfair competition among banks, willful default by borrowers and their knowledge limitation, fund diversion for unintended purpose, over/under financing by banks ascribe to the causes of loan default.

- credit agreement Presented thesis deals with the credit agreement, risks related with this type of contract and legislation of this institute in selected Member States of the European Union. The credit agreements are concluded between the lender and the debtor. Through the credit agreement, the lender agrees to provide to debtor at his request and for his benefit funds to a certain amount, and the debtor agrees to return the funds back and pay interest. The credit agreements can be concluded between different types of subjects. In this case, attention was focused on a special type of credit agreement which is concluded between a consumer and a businessman. For the consumer credit market is typical an asymmetry of information, when subjects on one side of the market have better information than subjects on the other side. In this context, consumers are seen as weaker entities to which must be provided increased protection in legal relationships. In the EU consumer protection receive considerable attention. Union promotes consumer primarily through secondary sources of law - Directives (Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 on consumer rights, Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts., Directive 2008/48/EC of...

The thesis examines whether the role of credit rating prior to the announcement of credit rating change is the neglected factor explaining in large extent the paradox investigated in prior papers that downgrades influence the stock prices of company but upgrades not. It is motivated by the notion that credit rating changes from low credit rating classes influence the stock price of company more distinctively than changes from higher credit rating classes and there is proportionally more downgrades from low credit rating classes than upgrades. The large sample of credit rating changes including proportionally more upgrades from low credit rating classes than downgrades is collected and the results suggesting the influence of downgrades on stock prices of company and any influence of upgrades persist. Furthermore when controlled for credit rating prior to the announcement of credit rating change, magnitude of credit rating change, crossing the investment-speculative barrier, credit rating changes within and across credit rating categories, consecutive credit rating changes in the same direction and industry sector of issuer all the results are consistent with the original conclusions proposing significant stock price reaction to announcements of credit rating downgrades and no stock price response to...

This master thesis discusses alternative debt management instruments - GDP-linked bonds. It provides concise characterization of sovereign debt management. Additionally, it discusses traditional derivatives, such as futures, swaps and bonds, from the government's point of view. The main goal of the thesis is to verify whether GDP-linked bonds are suitable for the Czech and Slovak debt management. Ergo, the bonds could smooth the cost of serving the debt. Furthermore, it describes the development of the sovereign debt and risk premium of the government bonds of the Czech and Slovak republics. It tries to find out whether the risk premium of Slovak bonds differed after introduction of euro. Additionally, the thesis analyzes the effect of various country specific variables on the development of the risk premium. The last but not least goal is to support or reject the hypothesis whether the GDP-linked bonds should be appealing to European economic and monetary union as the members has to satisfied Stability and Growth Pact requirements. The conclusion of the thesis is that the hypothesis of positive effect of the GDP-linked bonds on the cost of serving debt is partly rejected in case of the Czech and Slovak republics as well as in the case of European economic and monetary union. Furthermore, the risk...