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Financial Inclusion and Digital Financial Inclusion of Forcibly Displaced Persons: Strategies and Challenges
Get PDFForced displacement poses a challenge to development. It displaces men, women, and children from their places of residence, making them strangers in another community and country. In the host country, they often lack legal identity. As a result, they cannot access basic formal financial services because financial service providers won’t serve them without formal legal identification. This puts forcibly displaced persons in a vulnerable situation. Financial inclusion for forcibly displaced persons, if it can be achieved, can give them access to basic financial services, which they can use to build resilience and cope with the humanitarian crises that accompany forced displacement. This study identifies some strategies to increase financial inclusion for forcibly displaced persons. It also highlights some challenges that may be encountered in advancing financial inclusion for forcibly displaced persons. The insights offered in this article are useful for development policymaking. It is also useful to academics, policymakers, and practitioners involved in activities, projects, or programs that are aimed at restoring the livelihoods of vulnerable people
Government Subsidy for Student Loans, Human Capital Accumulation and Economic Development
Get PDFDevising effective economic policies that promote investment in human capital is essential for economic development. Government subsidy for student loans is often discussed as one of the various policy instruments that support human capital accumulation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between a government's subsidy rate for student loans and economic growth from a theoretical perspective. This study also considers how changes in life expectancy and the labor force population affect economic growth. To address these issues, we construct an overlapping-generations model with uncertain lifetime. Our model suggests that increasing the government's subsidy rate for student loans promotes economic growth. Moreover, there is a positive relationship between improved life expectancy among individuals with sufficient investment in human capital and economic growth. Furthermore, a decline in the labor force population decreases economic growth, even when negative peer effects are predominant in human capital formation
State-Contingent Optimality: A Principle for Portfolio Selection
Get PDFThis paper explores a normative framework for portfolio selection, the Principle of State-Contingent Optimality (SCO), recasting the classic challenge of finding a single, robust portfolio as a problem in the geometry of distributions. The objective is formulated as minimizing the expected divergence between a portfolio’s realized return distribution and a state-dependent, ideal target across all possible market conditions. By employing a metric like the Wasserstein distance, this approach moves beyond simple moments to compare the full shape and character of outcomes, aiming to identify a strategy that is holistically resilient to an uncertain future.
We acknowledge that the principle, in its purest form, rests on profound idealizations: a Platonic target distribution, a knowable state-space, and the validity of ensemble averaging. Rather than treating these as insurmountable barriers, we frame them as explicit signposts for a structured research program. The framework is therefore offered as a theoretical lens, one that cleanly separates the philosophical act of defining investment goals from the mathematical task of achieving them. In doing so, our hope is to provide a more principled way to critique existing methods and guide future inquiry toward truly robust financial solutions
Transaction Process, Seigniorage Channel, and Monetary Effectiveness in Flexible Price Economy
Get PDFEmbedding seigniorage and transaction process into the RBC model, this paper proposes a new monetary economy, seigniorage channeled monetary economy, briefly SCME, in which monetary shocks can affect the real variables effectively and persistently in flexible price conditions. The mechanism of the effectiveness is the resource occupation effect of money issuance, in other words, money is a public goods and new money issuance is a form of taxation. The preliminary applications of SCME have clearly explained some notable puzzles or hotly debated issues in empirical studies, such as the price puzzle, the missing liquidity effect, the best inflation rate, the negative movement of hours under a positive technology shock, and the Friedman rule. In addition, we obtained interactive pricing, origin of money market interest rate, the best money market interest rate, and the best tax rate (in other words, the best government debt level) in this paper, and there is no forward guidance puzzle in SCME. Because resource allocation in the unique equilibrium of SCME is Pareto optimal, which is starkly different from the existing theories' sub-optimal result for the monetary and fiscal economy, a profound consequence of SCME is that it is a proof of the Invisible Hand Conjecture of Adam Smith in the economy with tax and money
An Overview of Zimbabwe’s Political and Economic Track 1980-2020
Get PDFZimbabwe has undergone remarkable political and economic changes since its liberation from British colonial rule in 1980. The first years after independence were characterised by optimism and progress. However, the nation also faced a plethora of hurdles, including political instability, economic decline and social unrest. Over time, the political environment became increasingly repressive. One cannot help but say that ZANU-PF as a whole has failed to meet the needs of Zimbabwean citizens. Zimbabwe continues to struggle with economic hurdles, political volatility, policy gaps, misgovernance, corruption, soaring inflation, unemployment and the need for sustainable reforms. The transition from colonialism to post-colonialism was characterised by violence and politicised identities, leading to false starts and repetition in the political landscape over the years. The situation in Zimbabwe is best described as from the gutter to the sewer. The Mnangagwa regime, which took over from Mugabe has made the situation worse for the citizens of Zimbabwe. Despite the holding of elections in 2018 and 2023, the political landscape in Zimbabwe remains tumultuous, characterised by intricate power struggles and counter-plots within the ruling party, ZANU-PF. The prevailing political culture has evolved into a labyrinthine and violent milieu, surpassing even the tumultuous nature witnessed during Mugabe's tenure. It is evident that the Mnangagwa regime is an outgrowth of Mugabeism, with the so-called Second Republic failing to effectuate a definitive departure from the Mugabe era.Munangagwa has not only failed to demilitarise the state, but has exacerbated militarisation, officially integrating the military into the nation’s political fabric
Using Random Forest Machine Learning to Identify Homes at High Risk from Wildfires in California Counties
Get PDFWildfires driven by extreme winds, such as the Camp Fire in 2018 and the Eaton and Palisades fires in 2025, account for a large share of structure losses due to wildfires in California. Because these types of events are relatively rare, their risks are difficult to estimate using conventional simulation techniques. This study explores the use of the Random Forest machine learning algorithm as an alternative method for estimating wildfire risk to structures. Environmental variables are estimated for 57,000 structures destroyed in wildfires in California and for 6.2 million unburned structures with the potential for wildfire exposure. A Random Forest model, trained on both the burned and unburned structures, identifies which variables are most effective in distinguishing between the two and which unburned structures belong in the High-Risk category.
The six environmental variables found to be the most important in identifying High-Risk structures are:
· the annual Red Flag Warning hours (RFW)
· the average Energy Release Component (ERC)
· the Wildland Urban Interface Zone (WUI)
· the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
· the annual number of downslope wind events (DW)
· the proportion of sustained winds of 20 mph or greater on high fire danger days (SW20)
By adjusting the maximum tree-depth parameter, the Random Forest model is calibrated to produce a state-wide percentage of High-Risk structures of 12% in order to match estimates by the California Department of Insurance (CDI). The CDI estimates are based on a weighted average of insurance industry risk models. Although the Random Forest model matches the CDI estimates for the percentage of High-Risk structures at the state level, the percentage by county differs significantly from the CDI numbers. The largest reductions in the percentage of High-Risk structures occur in the Central Sierra counties of Tuolumne and Mariposa ( -48% and -34% respectively). The largest increases occur in Mono County in the Eastern Sierras (+53%) and Ventura County in Southern California (+42%).
Wind characteristics appear to be the primary reason for the differences in county risk ratings. Counties with fewer Red Flag Warning hours, fewer downslope wind days, and a smaller proportion of winds above 20 mph tend to have a smaller percentage of High-Risk structures than estimated by the CDI
Public perception of environmental problems in Central Asia: results from the Life in Transition survey
Get PDFEnvironmental problems negatively affect air quality, biodiversity, and socio-economic life in Central Asia. The problems have a slow, gradual, and intense nature; therefore, detecting or following changes in human experience is challenging. This manuscript uses the Life in Transition dataset to analyse climate change awareness and willingness to mitigate among populations from Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Our findings confirm that public perceptions of environmental problems differ, showing the highest concern about air pollution, waste, species loss, temperature, natural disasters, and the spread of disease in Uzbekistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. However, awareness or concern about environmental problems in Tajikistan is relatively low. Although people are ready to contribute to climate change mitigation, citizens from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are less willing to contribute. From a policy point of view, understanding societal concerns about climate change and considering willingness to contribute are important to implementing the climatic policy
Green finance, fossil energy, and institutional factors in the context of sustainable development
Get PDFGiven the importance of the global issues of climate change and environmental pollution in sustainable development, this study aims to investigate whether there is a connection among green finance, fossil energy, and institutional factors, considering the significance of a transition to renewable clean energy from fossil energy in sustainable development. For this purpose, the effects of fossil energy on the S&P green bonds are compared by considering and ignoring institutional quality as an interaction term in various oil shocks, using the threshold structural vector autoregression (TSVAR) technique for the US in 2012-2019. The findings indicate that the sensitivity of green bonds to oil shocks is limited to short-term periods. Institutional factors make this sensitivity more persistent, extending into the medium and long term. These results highlight the significance of institutional quality in the development of green bonds, especially when the oil market and the large amount of money circulating into it create grounds for corruption, the role of administrative integrity, legal structures, and government policies becomes more prominent. Hence, the integrity and quality of institutional factors, which includes corruption incentives, democratic accountability, government stability, bureaucracy as well as law and orders, should be taken into account in policymaking
Literature Review on New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC)
Get PDFThis paper revisits the theoretical and empirical evolution of the Phillips Curve through the lens of modern New Keynesian macroeconomics. While the traditional unemployment–inflation relationship has long been viewed as unstable, recent advances attribute its variability to the interaction of expectations, nominal rigidities, and structural features such as openness and imported marginal costs. The review synthesizes key developments in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve, including forward-looking price setting, hybrid indexation, sticky-information dynamics, and small open-economy extensions. Empirical evidence across advanced, emerging, and transition economies reveals substantial heterogeneity in slope, persistence, and the relative weight of backward- and forward-looking components, particularly across tranquil and recessionary periods. The findings highlight that the Phillips Curve is conditional rather than structural, with inflation dynamics fundamentally shaped by the credibility of monetary policy, the structure of expectations, and the sensitivity of marginal costs to domestic and external shocks
Comment on Raputsoane’s Analysis of Regional Differences in Governance of Mining Companies
Get PDFRaputsoane (2025) analyzes governance standards for mining companies worldwide using a cross-sectional regression to estimate differences between South Africa and the rest of the world. The article starts with S&P Global Ratings’ Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) score as a proxy for governance. It compares it to a series of company-specific parameters, including market capitalization, average share price over the prior year, return on equity, return on assets, a variable to reflect required disclosure, and a variable to reflect additional information provided by each company beyond legal requirements. The empirical results show that better governance is correlated with greater disclosure, but other variables do not show a statistically significant correlation with governance. The positive correlation between governance and market cap suggests larger companies are subject to greater scrutiny, but the estimate is not statistically significant. These results lead to valuable discussion about governance outside the mining firm, including government standards