In one of his publications Aristotle states ”All human beings by their nature desire to know” [Kraut 1991]. This desire is initiated the day we are born and accompanies us for the rest of our life. While at a young age our parents serve as one of the principle sources for knowledge, this changes over the course of time. Technological advances and particularly the introduction of the Internet, have given us new possibilities to share and access knowledge from almost anywhere at any given time. Being able to access and share large collections of written down knowledge is only one part of the equation. Just as important is the internalization of it, which in many cases can prove to be difficult to accomplish. Hence, being able to request assistance from someone who holds the necessary knowledge is of great importance, as it can positively stimulate the internalization procedure. However, digitalization does not only provide a larger pool of knowledge sources to choose from but also more people that can be potentially activated, in a bid to receive personalized assistance with a given problem statement or question. While this is beneficial, it imposes the issue that it is hard to keep track of who knows what. For this task so-called Expert Finder Systems have been introduced, which are designed to identify and suggest the most suited candidates to provide assistance. Throughout this Ph.D. thesis a novel type of Expert Finder System will be introduced that is capable of capturing the knowledge users within a community hold, from explicit and implicit data sources. This is accomplished with the use of granular computing, natural language processing and a set of metrics that have been introduced to measure and compare the suitability of candidates. Furthermore, are the knowledge requirements of a problem statement or question being assessed, in order to ensure that only the most suited candidates are being recommended to provide assistance.
This note starts with a short review of the economic literature on philanthropy. Next, it provides some estimates of philanthropic giving in advanced and middle-income economies and discusses how innovative financial instruments can leverage charitable giving. The note concludes with a discussion of the controversial aspects of philanthropic activities.
Creditor countries and international organizations continue to disagree whether Greece should receive additional official debt relief, and if so how much. This paper first shows that these disagreements can be attributed to competing assumptions about Greece's future capacity to repay, particularly about economic growth and the fiscal primary balance. It next evaluates the plausibility of alternative primary balance assumptions using international evidence about fiscal adjustment experiences. It concludes that primary balance paths required to make Greece's debt sustainable are not plausible and that Greece will therefore require additional debt relief. Finally, the paper shows that the debt relief measures suggested by the Eurogroup in May 2016 (albeit with significant caveats on whether they will in fact be granted or not) could be sufficient to address Greece's sustainability problem, provided the Eurogroup is prepared to accept both very long maturity extensions on European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) debt (to 2080 and beyond) and interest deferrals that could lead to a large rise in EFSF exposure to Greece before it begins to decline. If the Eurogroup wishes to avoid the latter, it will become necessary to either (1) extend the scope of the debt restructuring, (2) lower the interest rates charged by the EFSF significantly below current predictions, or (3) extend European Stability Mechanism (ESM) financing beyond 2018 and delay Greece's return to capital markets for a protracted period.
Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. We provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods. Using a theoretical model, we show that an elected official, whose aim is to maximise re-election chances, would exert higher effort in providing public goods when private citizens undertake collective action and coordinate their voluntary contributions towards the same goods. This effect occurs although government and private contributions are assumed to be perfect substitutes. Using first-hand data on SHGs in India, we test the predictions of the model and show that, in response to collective action by SHGs, local authorities tackle a larger variety of public issues, and are more likely to tackle issues of interest to SHGs.
Identity is an important determinant of economic behavior. A limitation of the existing literature is the focus on one identity dimension at a time. We show that the multiplicity of identity dimensions matters for economic behavior and that neglecting it may lead policy makers to overlook important, unintended effects of economic policies. We exploit the randomized nature of political reservations for women in India to show that a policy designed along one identity dimension (gender) alters the distribution of the benefits of this policy along another one (caste). We propose an important variation in gender norms across caste groups as a plausible mechanism.
The paper shows that international government borrowing from multilateral development banks is countercyclical while international government borrowing form private sector lenders is procyclical. The countercyclicality of official lending is mostly driven by the behavior of the World Bank (borrowing from regional development banks tends to be acyclical). The paper also shows that official sector lending to Latin America and East Asia is more countercyclical than official lending to other regions. Private sector lending is instead procyclical in all developing regions. While the cyclicality of official lending does not depend on domestic or international conditions, private lending becomes particularly procyclical in periods of limited global capital flows. By focusing on both borrowers and lenders' heterogeneity the paper shows that the cyclical properties of international government debt are mostly driven by credit supply shocks. Demand factors appear to be less important drivers of procyclical international government borrowing. The paper's focus on supply and demand factors is different from the traditional push and pull classification, as push and pull factors could affect both the demand and the supply of international government debt.
The impact of institutional quality on the exchange rate-export relation is assessed in a panel of 33 countries and quarterly time period of 1991Q1 - 2016Q3. Empirical estimation is conducted in 2 steps. As a first step, using panel DOLS, FMOLS and PMG estimation techniques, it is confirmed that a negative and significant relation between exchange rates and exports exists. The estimation suggests that in the countries under study, 1% appreciation of the real effective exchange rate leads to, approximately, 0.55% decrease in total exports on average, holding other variables constant. In a separate cross-sectional estimation using simple OLS, some empirical evidence has been found to prove that institutional quality positively affects the exchange rate elasticity of exports. Also it has been shown that in oil exporting countries institutional quality has a greater impact on exchange rate-export link, compared to oil importers. But these results are only weakly significant and are not robust to the use of other proxy variables.
Over the last decade, the economic linkages between Switzerland and the rest of the world have been transformed. First, merchanting and the chemical industry account for an increasing share of international trade, with chemicals exports expanding robustly in recent years despite the European crisis and the strong Swiss franc. Second, the nature of international financial integration has changed. While private investors drove Switzerland's financial flows and net foreign assets before the financial crisis, the foreign reserves accumulation by the Swiss National Bank has been playing a major role since. Third, asset prices and foreign exchange movements led to substantial capital losses in foreign assets which fully absorbed the surplus on the current account. Finally, the crisis has weakened the role of foreign trade as an engine of growth and narrowed it across sectors.
We revisit the public banks debate, survey the theoretical arguments and test the robustness (and expand) the existing empirical evidence. While we find some support for the view that public banks do not allocate credit optimally, we also report indicative evidence that they exert a positive influence on private bank efficiency, and may contribute to reduce credit procyclicality. Ultimately, we find that the recent criticism to public banks has generally been based on inconclusive cross-country evidence. More specific bank-level research is still needed to substantiate a case for or against public banks in developing economies.
