What Influences Rice Farmers’ Choices of Credit Sources in Côte d’Ivoire? An Econometric Analysis using the Multinomial Conditional Logit Model

In Côte d’Ivoire, the low participation of smallholder farmers in the credit market remains a matter of concern. This study examines the key determinants of rice farmers’ participation in the credit market. We use a Multinomial Conditional Logit model to consider the characteristics related to the use of different credit sources. A total of 588 rice farmers were randomly sampled from seven rice areas. Our findings reveal that gender, age, education level, experience in rice farming, rice plot size, lowland rice farming, extension contact, membership of a farmer-based organization, marketing of paddy rice, and off-farm income significantly influence the use of different credit sources. While credit requirements such as saving plus collateral, kinship/friendship, membership, favoured client, loan maturity, and the distance between borrowers and lenders are credit source-specific variables that significantly determine rice farmers’ choices between different credit sources. These empirical results show that in addition to farmer-specific variables, policymakers should consider the characteristics of credit sources for developing a credit market suitable for smallholder farmers.

Fintech Entry, Firm Financial Inclusion, and Macroeconomic Dynamics in Emerging Economies

Financial inclusion is strikingly low in emerging economies. In only a few years, financial technologies (fintech) have led to a dramatic expansion in the number of non-traditional credit intermediaries, but the macroeconomic and credit-market implications of this rapid growth of fintech are not known. We build a model with a traditional banking system and endogenous fintech intermediary creation and find that greater fintech entry delivers positive long-term effects on aggregate output and consumption. However, greater entry bolsters aggregate firm financial inclusion only if it stems from lower barriers to accessing fintech credit by smaller, unbanked firms. Decreasing entry costs for fintech intermediaries alone has only marginal effects in the aggregate. While firms that adopt fintech credit are less sensitive to domestic financial shocks and contribute to a reduction in output volatility, greater fintech entry also leads to greater volatility in bank credit, thereby introducing a tradeoff between output volatility and credit-market volatility.

BORROWING ALTERNATIVES FOR HOUSEHOLDS IN LITHUANIA: CURRENT SITUATION, TRENDS AND CHALLENGES

Purpose – to analyse the main borrowing alternatives available to Lithuanian households and the credit market as a whole, focusing on its peer-to-peer (P2P) segment, the forecast of its growth, and possible challenges. Research methodology – the research methods applied were scientific literature analysis, statistical data analysis, comparative analysis, correlation-regression analysis, linear trend forecasting method. Findings – the prevailing borrowing alternative for Lithuanian households still remain bank credits. Besides, borrowing from P2P market is becoming more and more popular. Although the macroeconomic environment for all the credit market segments is the same, the P2P segment is developing significantly faster. If this trend remains unchanged, the whole credit market is likely to face challenges, such as the growth of overdue loans, insolvent customers, the rising share of non-performing-loans (NPL), etc., that may affect its overall stability. Research limitations – the empirical study relies on the country’s macroeconomic indicators that influence household borrowing. Such factors as borrower’s age, income level, marital status and others were not taken into account in this study. The forecast of the P2P segment growth of the consumer credit market and comparison with its banking segment is based on the analysis of 4 years of real monthly statistics for both segments. Practical implications – the performed analysis and its results can be useful for the future research within the household borrowing trends, especially in Peer-to-Peer platforms, and specifically for the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance and other institutions that regulate the credit market, as it provides information on modern borrowing trends and the challenges it might bring. Also, for P2P platforms themselves, planning and further developing their activities and adjusting lending conditions with the aim to attract higher-quality customers. Originality/Value – household borrowing, the credit market and the P2P platforms are widely analysed by both academics and financial institutions, such as central banks. However, it is mainly limited to the analysis of statistical data and does not pay attention to possible market development issues. This study focuses on the analysis of the growth trends of the P2P market and the potential challenges that may arise thereafter.

Pawned Horses: Risk and Liability in Fourteenth Century German Small-Credit Market

Many Jewish-Christian credit transactions relied on pawns as collateral, which presumably eliminated the risk in the case of debtors’ default. However, keeping and maintaining certain pawns involved particular risks that further complicated these transactions. This paper focuses on live pawns, specifically horses, where the safekeeping of the animal involved far greater difficulties and risks than with other valuable objects that were pawned with Jews. By tracing how legal norms and practices addressed some of the unique risks attached to receiving horses as pawns, this article will outline the expectations both Jews and Christians had when engaging in credit transaction secured by horses. Relying on responsa literature, urban legislation, and court cases from the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, this analysis will discuss some of the complications relating to liability over live pawns, with the goal of demonstrating how a specific type of pawn, and its unique risks and benefits, reflects previous assumptions and expectations regarding risk and trust.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Consumer Credit Market in V4 Countries

The aim of this article is to analyse and assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the consumer credit market in the countries of the Visegrad Group (V4, i.e., the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary). There is no doubt that the pandemic has determined the amount of household debt due to consumer credit in the V4 group, and thus the question arises of how the pandemic affects the propensity of households to take out loans and the propensity to lend to them, and therefore whether it affects both the behaviour of borrowers and lenders. The study used the time series and multiple linear regression methods. The results of the study show that the Covid-19 pandemic has determined the level of household debt in the V4 group and is not indifferent to household decisions regarding taking out consumer loans. Although the research is preliminary, it has contributed to some extent to a better understanding of household indebtedness at a time of turbulence and instability resulting from health factors in V4 countries. In the future, this research will serve as the basis for future research on the phenomenon of household indebtedness in other countries.

Is Group Lending a Collateral for Informal Credit?

This article explores how participation in microfinance programs affects informal credit conditions. Using data on the rural credit market of Andhra Pradesh, I provide evidence that group lending participants obtain lower interest rates from the informal credit market. This result can be explained by two main factors. On the one hand, due to joint liability, group lending clients have high incentives to monitor each other, which implies a reduction in the agency costs for moneylenders. On the other hand, as microfinance borrowers are required to invest the credit in income generating activities, they face a lower default risk. Taken together, these two mechanisms may explain why microcredit borrowers are perceived as less risky by informal lenders. Overall, the findings suggest that moneylenders benefit from the duality in the market, thus providing empirical support to recent theoretical research hypothesizing that there is a complementarity relationship between formal and informal credit suppliers.

Legal Instruments to Support Borrowers (Consumers and Entrepreneurs) in Connection with the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland, and Vietnam

The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions introduced in 2020 in many countries on economic activity and gainful employment have in many cases, reduced the incomes of individual households. As a result, the actual ability to meet credit obligations has declined, particularly for those who have lost their jobs or livelihoods. The COVID-19 pandemic has become a significant challenge for economies, national authorities, and entrepreneurs, including borrowers. This article aims to analyse the legal regulations in Poland, and Vietnam, introducing instruments to support borrowers, consumers, and entrepreneurs, in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors will present the legal basis for the instruments to support borrowers provided in the studied countries, indicate their legal nature, forms, and conditions of using them. They also compare legal solutions introduced in connection with the pandemic aimed at mitigating its adverse effects on borrowers in Poland, and Vietnam, to indicate whether cultural differences and differences in legal systems, as well as individual approaches to the domestic credit market, affected the choice of legal instruments for supporting borrowers in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, or not.

A complicated puzzle: spinsters, widows and credit in Sweden (1790–1910)

This article aims to retrace the extent of single women's engagement in the credit market. To this end, it relies on a series of more than 1,900 probate inventories drawn up between 1790 and 1910 in the two Swedish cities of Gävle and Uppsala. These two cities represent an ideal case study, because the process of industrialisation and economic development resulted in two differently structured credit markets. The research centres initially on the problem of studying women's agency from probate inventories. It analyses the main characteristics of spinsters and widows as they emerge from the sources and compares them with married women. Subsequently, the article analyses how marital status shaped women's economic lives, affecting how they participated in the credit market. For this purpose, it focuses specifically on banking and peer-to-peer exchanges (in particular, promissory notes). Spinsters favoured more conservative strategies relying more often on the services provided by banks, while widows seemed to have played an additional, and more significant, role as lenders in peer-to-peer networks. The study also confirms that unmarried women were only rarely active as borrowers.