This study investigates whether the use of mobile money affects the savings patterns of individuals that are vulnerable to financial exclusion, that is, the low-income earners, low-educated, women and rural habitants. Studying the case of Kenya, this study uses data from the 2016 FinAccess Household Survey (N=8,665) that was designed to track and measure the drivers, growth and impact of mobile money use in Kenya. Logistic model and the 2SLS IV regression are used as the empirical estimation method for testing the statistical significance of the correlation between mobile money usage and the savings behaviors of the individuals. The results show that users of mobile money are 1.96 more likely to have a savings product than those that do not use mobile money, and that the propensity for users of mobile money to save for emergencies and for future events is 1.44 and 1.27 times higher, respectively, as compared to the non-users. These findings suggest that individuals that use mobile money perceive it as a trustworthy, efficient and reliable store of value especially making savings for future use. This analysis also finds statistically significant evidence suggesting that mobile money use significantly increases the propensity to save for individuals in demographic groups that are more susceptible to the unique challenges that lower accessibility to formal financial services. Therefore, by increasing the probability of individuals in the female, low income, low education and rural groups to save, mobile money fosters financial inclusion which is essential in the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals such as reducing poverty, increasing equality and sustained economic growth among others. In general, this study has specific policy implications for using mobile money as a device for increasing financial inclusion among the ‘unbanked’ population.

Course: Degree Project in Supply Chain Management, the Business Administration and Economics Programme, 4FE19E Authors: Matilda Engblom and Katarina Nyberg Supervisor: Arash Kordestani Examiner: Helena Forslund Title: Following the Recipe Brings Franchisees to the Table - A Case Study Consolidating Purchasing and Calculating Cost Savings at Franchisees Background: As a franchisor, Company X does not have insight or control in purchasing at their franchisees. Spend analysis is a tool used to identify current purchased volumes and costs. An aim with spend analysis is to decrease the cost and analyse the spend. There are four different types of consolidation that can consolidate the current purchased volumes and create purchasing cost savings. They are article, volume, supplier and transport consolidation. However, identifying the current situation can be hard in the franchise concept and therefore hard to create purchasing cost savings. It is therefore of need for the franchisor to have insight and control over their franchisees in purchasing. Purpose: The purpose of this study is mainly to identify how the current purchased volumes can be consolidated to create purchasing cost savings for the franchisees of Company X in the Middle East. In addition, calculate the purchasing cost savings that consolidation could lead to. As well as, investigate how a franchisor can regain insight and control in purchasing over their franchisees. Methodology: This case study had a mixed research strategy of explanatory sequential design. Empirical data was collected by both unstructured, semi-structured and structured interviews. The analytical methodology was based on pattern matching. Confidentiality has been of great focus during the study for ethical considerations. Conclusion: The current purchased volumes and costs were identified, enabling different types of consolidation and calculations for purchasing costs. The consolidation model (Figure 28, p. 43) illustrates four different types of consolidation, article, volume, supplier and transportation, which should be followed. Lastly, Table 38 (p. 85) presents actions for regaining insight and control over franchisees.

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.

Thesis advisor: Peter N. Ireland / The banking structure as it is known today in the United States largely originated in the 1930s after the onslaught of the Great Depression. The Federal Deposit Insurance Company developed deposit insurance to stabilize the industry and protect consumers. They laid down rules and regulations that shaped the banking and financial sector of the American economy into the early form of what patrons use today. Large banks were concentrated in financial centers, mostly New York, with some scattered in the west coast and other big cities. Most smaller towns had one or two state-chartered commercial banks with thrift institutions flourishing alongside. Personal and even business customers banked on a small, local scale. Sixty plus years later, the same industry structure is still in place, but its face has changed dramatically. The financial system of the United States in the 21st century is vastly different from the one that was commonly used only one generation ago. Geographic deregulation in the 1970s drastically changed the geography of the American banking industry. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2006. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program.

This master thesis is looking into problems of financing of energy saving arrangements in residential buildings. The paper concentrates on an analysis of all available sources of financing. After a brief characteristic of basic ways of financing, including Czech and foreign models, it introduces closer only a selection of the available programs, grant titles and commercial products. Then the attention is paid to more specific programs and products from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany. This paper applies their program parameters to a model object of the residential building and assesses each and every option, using selected economical standards. Based on these parameters, it appraises an economical effectiveness of the investment in individual variations of financing from the point of view of an investor and a state, expressed with the price of a unit saved CO2 emission. By combining both preferential variations of an investor and a state, an optimal variation of financing for the model object is found.

This Master's thesis focuses on family financial planning and emphasizes its importance in our lives. It's divided into several chapters that are logically linked to each other and form a complex whole. The main part consists of an overview of basic financial products, which everyone should have at least basic awareness of. Description of financial products is mainly focused on its functioning, specifics, advantages and disadvantages. In the next chapter is shown a few examples of how to create a family financial plan in practice.

This thesis focuses on financial planning and it's phases. It contains overview and characteristics of general financial products, which are suitable for families such as bank accounts, insurance, investment instruments and loans. Last section of this thesis contains an example, which shows application of some financial products.

BUILDING SAVINGS - LEGAL AND ECONOMICAL ISSUES, ABSTRACT The aim of this work is to familiarize the reader in details with the issue of building savings. The work describes the basic principles and the system of building savings, problematic of building savings from the point of view of the building societies and also provides useful advices to the potential participants of the building savings. It also deals with the key jurisprudence and considers the form of this financial product in the future. In the first chapter, historical process of the building savings in England, Germany and Czech Republic is described, and principle of the self-help building societies is explained. Second chapter presents introduction to problems of the building savings, basic principle is explained and the legal regulations are described here. Attention is also paid to one of the key terms of the building savings, which is the state support of building savings and its effect on profitability and existence of the building savings. The building societies, as highly specialized financial institutions, are described in the following chapter. There is also outlined the management of the building savings here, what is concerned with the building savings fund and consequently with keeping the balance between deposits and loans. Both...

Esta tese avalia os benefícios e desafios associados com a operação em uma ampla faixa de frequências e tensões próximas ao limiar do transistor. A diminuição da tensão de alimentação em circuitos digitais CMOS apresenta grandes vantagens em termos de potência consumida pelo circuito. Esta diminuição da potência é acompanhada por uma redução da performance, reflexo da diminuição na tensão de alimentação. A operação de circuitos digitais no ponto de energia mínima é comumente associada ao regime de operação abaixo do limiar do transistor, trazendo enormes penalidades em performance e variabilidade. Esta dissertação mostra que é possível obter 8X mais eficiência energética com uma ampla faixa dinâmica de tensão e frequência, da tensão nominal até o limite inferior da operação próximo ao limiar do transistor. Como parte deste estudo, uma biblioteca de células digitais CMOS para esta ampla faixa de frequências foi desenvolvida. A biblioteca de células lógicas foi exercitada em um PDK comercial de 65nm para operação próximo ao limiar do transistor, reduzindo os efeitos da variabilidade sem comprometer o projeto em termos de área e energia quando operando em inversão forte. Para operar próximo e abaixo do limiar do transistor as células devem ser desenvolvidas com um número limitado de transistores em série. Nosso estudo mostra que uma performance aceitável em termos de margens de ruído estático é obtida para um conjunto restrito de células, onde são empregados no máximo dois transistores em série. Reportamos resultados para projetos de média complexidade que incluem um filtro notch de 25kgates, um microcontrolador 8051 de 20kgates, e 4 circuitos combinacionais/ sequenciais do conjunto de avaliação ISCAS. Neste trabalho, é estudada a máxima frequência atingida em cada tensão de alimentação, desde 0.15V até 1.2V. O ponto de mínima energia é demonstrado em operação abaixo do limiar do transistor, aproximadamente 0.29V, oque representa um ganho de 2X em eficiência energética comparado ao regime de operação próximo ao limiar do transistor. Embora o pico de eficiência energética ocorra abaixo do limiar do transistor para os circuitos estudados, nós também demonstramos que nesta tensão de alimentação ultra-baixa o atraso e a potência sofrem um impacto substancial devido ao aumento na variabilidade, atigindo uma degradação em performance de 30X, com respeito à operação próxima ao limiar do transistor. / This thesis assesses the benefits and drawbacks associated with a very wide range of frequency when operation at near-threshold is considered. Scaling down the supply voltage in digital CMOS circuits presents great benefits in terms of power reduction. Such scaling comes with a performance penalty, hence in digital synchronous circuits the reduction in frequency of operation follows, for a given circuit layout, the VDD reduction. Minimum-energy operation of digital CMOS circuits is commonly associated to the sub-VT regime, carrying huge performance and variability penalties. This thesis shows that it is possible to achieve 8X higher energy-efficiency with a very-wide range of dynamic voltage-frequency scaling, from nominal voltages down to the lower boundary of near-VT operation. As part of this study, a CMOS digital cell-library for such wide range of frequencies was developed. The cell-library is exercised in a 65nm commercial PDK and targets near-VT operation, mitigating the variability effects without compromising the design in terms of area and energy at strong inversion. For near-VT or sub-VT operation the cells have to be designed with few stacked transistors. Our study shows that acceptable performance in terms of static-noise margins is obtained for a constrained set of cells, for which a maximum of 2-stacked transistors are allowed. In this set we include master-slave registers. We report results for medium complexity designs which include a 25kgates notch filter, a 20kgates 8051 compatible core, and 4-combinational/4-sequential ISCAS benchmark circuits. In this work the maximum frequency attainable at each supply for a wide variation of voltage is studied from 150mV up to nominal voltage (1.2V). The sub-VT operation is shown to hold the minimum energy-point at roughly 0.29V, which represents a 2X energy-saving compared to the near-VT regime. Although energy-efficiency peaks in sub-VT for the circuits studied, we also show that in this ultra-low VDD the circuit timing and power suffer from substantially increased variability impact and a 30X performance drawback, with respect to near-VT.

INTRODUCTION. Although seldom a mainstream topic in social work, the financial functioning of individuals and families plays a central role in well-being. The time is right to better understand the workings of low-income families, especially in this uncertain economic climate. Matched savings program called Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) provide a context for investigating how low-income parents save and accumulate assets. IDAs offer a unique means for a systematic study of the saving strategies used by low-income individuals and how the decision to save may create hardships for themselves and their families. There is still a pressing need for more research that can help clarify parental saving strategies, the factors facilitating or impeding saving, and the potential hardships low-income savers face. Of critical importance to the field is research that helps to better understand what sacrifices low-income parents make when they have made the decision to secure a better future for their families. METHODS. The sample is 150 savers from a statewide matched savings program. This study is a secondary analysis of telephone survey and administrative data. Bivariate and multivariate statistical tests were conducted to test six hypotheses. The variables of interest are saving strategies, saving supports, and hardships. RESULTS. Parents who have a history of saving use significantly more helpful saving strategies than respondents without a saving history. Parents who have a history of saving experience less severe hardship than parents who do not have a history of saving. Also, married parents experience fewer hardships than non-married parents. Minority parents experience significantly less intense saving supports than non-minority parents. There was not a relationship between the number of helpful saving strategies and the age of the saver. A relationship was not found between the saver's age or number of children and the number of hardships experienced.