Search

The antecedents of the global financial crisis have two layers: the superstructure and the microstructure. Simply put, the superstructure refers to factors than are evident and manifested in fundamental indicators while the microstructure is the psychology or what underlies those that can be seen. This paper distills the forerunner of the crisis from its roots in the early years of the 1990 decade when the US eased its monetary policy as a response to the dotcom bubble and the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The unfolding story starts in the boom in mortgages brought about by low interest rates and a liberal loan policy, which by themselves would not have brought great financial distress if the rules of the credit market have taken effect. What turned this risky behavior into the present crisis was the bundling of mortgages by financial institutions into complex securities, such as collaterized debt obligations that were largely left unregulated. Beneath the surface is the underpinning of the crisis, the underlying market psychology characterized by greed, ignorance, herd mentality, disregard for or misuse of information, exuberance, and irrationality. Though not immune to the global financial slowdown, the Philippines has buffers that can serve it in good stead during this challenging period. Domestic demand is a major growth contributor; inflationary pressures are easing; there is policy space for fiscal stimulus; external payments position is manageable; the banking system is well-capitalized; and there is low exposure to financial strains. Still, the effects of the crisis have just reached the country and have just begun to be felt. In expectation of tougher challenges that will be faced by the real and external sectors, the country's central bank has laid out its policy thrusts for 2009. These include sustaining its primary mandate of price stability; maintaining the soundness of the financial system through greater risk management among others; and strengthening engagements with its regional peers for more collaborative action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial services industry has undergone a massive transformation in the contemporary disruptive, volatile, uncertain digital age. The study aimed To discuss the role of customer satisfaction and experience in financial services marketing in the digital world, To provide a glimpse of cyber security aspects in financial services, To give an overview of the concept of sustainable finance, To discuss the emerging sustainability aspects evolving in the finance industry and To present a summary of industry-specific initiatives to promote sustainability. The data has been collected as review papers and shown When it comes to financial services marketing in the digital world, the conversion of traditional marketing to digital marketing has forced the banks and financial services players to perceive the relative importance of customer experience to sustain in a highly disruptive, transformational, and competitive digital era. Earning customer trust and loyalty by addressing security and sustainability issues and adapting to the latest technologies is the prime focus for key financial service players. The traditional product-centric marketing strategy is outdated; the focus is now on a customer-focused marketing strategy. The current paper provides an overview of the financial services industry in the digital era, including the opportunities, challenges, and recent trends in the industry. The result emerging cyber security threats, sustainability risks, and related aspects of the financial services industry are highlighted. Significant sustainability risks faced by the finance sector in contemporary times and the industrial initiatives to promote sustainability in the finance industry have been discussed. The relevance of the "sustainable finance" theme in a digitalized world is highlighted. The importance of sustainability assurance reporting is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the essence of position paper of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) on cross-border financial services. It states that the position paper focuses on the legal and regulatory framework that governs the provision of financial services in Switzerland. It notes that the review of the cross-border activities conducted by the Swiss financial institution should also include payment services and should not be limited to asset management services.

This paper surveys and critically evaluates the literature on methods used in assessing the quality of financial services in the field of insurance coverage. The paper presents the methodological assumptions of SERVQUAL and fuzzy SERVQUAL methods. The usefulness of these methods for assessing the quality of services provided by entities from the insurance sector (taking into account the expectations of customers and service providers) was also demonstrated, on the example of insurers from Greece, Malaysia, Iran, Poland and India, using specialized software SPSS (versions 11.5 and 21), SmartPLS and LISREL 8.7 statistical package. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralised Finance or DeFi has emerged as a transformative and disruptive force within the financial industry, offering innovative financial services powered by blockchain technology and smart contracts. This paper provides in-depth knowledge of DeFi, its evolution, applications, and their adoption. It identifies the opportunities brought about by DeFi, comparing it with the traditional CeFi (Centralized Financial) system, including financial inclusion, transparency, and programmable money. It highlights the potential of applications of DeFi for decentralized lending, decentralized exchanges, and yield farming as innovative and promising avenues within the DeFi space. A SWOT analysis comparing DeFi and CeFi was performed to delve into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with DeFi. This study explored the intricate challenges and inherent risks involved in the adoption of DeFi applications, offering insights into the hype, fear, and apprehensions among governments and the masses regarding its adoption. The findings offer a nuanced understanding of the current state of DeFi, providing valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially transformed the individuals' lives, affecting various industries and accelerating digitalization in almost all activity fields. The paper presents the way in which the banking sector has adjusted the financial services features in order to help the community during the health crisis, shaping the main opportunities offered by the new COVID-19 context for the Romanian banking sector. In the same time, the paper aims to analyze the clients' perceptions of the banks' CSR actions during COVID-19 crisis, suggesting the supportive role of the banks and the increased solidarity through digitalization. The customers' expectations were addressed in correlation with a SWOT analysis applied to the most representative credit institutions by total assets. The investigation was based on a semi-structured questionnaire focused on the assessment of the CSR efforts of the banks to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, correlated with a SPSS analysis. According to the research findings, pandemic has redesigned the Romanian banking sector, being a primary starting point to rewrite the CSR strategies to improve the organizational resilience of banks. The main lines of investigation focused on how banks can cope with complex crisis by highlighting the features of the most resilient banks, expanding the use of digital banking and linking the banks' CSR approach to clients' demand for digital services after the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Carbon Peaking" and "Carbon Neutralization" is the strategic direction and key period in the current stage of ecologic civilization construction. Green finance refers to making the financial industry a guide and supervisor of other industries. Green finance will help other industries save energy and reduce emissions to achieve "Carbon Peaking" and "Carbon Neutralization" at an early date. This paper takes Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guizhou and Xinjiang provinces, which were approved as green finance reform pilot zones in 2017, as examples, and uses synthetic control method to study the constraint effect of the local carbon emissions in pilot zones. The results show that Guizhou has the best emission constraint effect. Jiangxi Province has a certain degree of emission constraint effect. Zhejiang, Guangdong and Xinjiang have no emission constraint effect. The following placebo test results show that the experiment is stable and robust. By combining the actual pilot zones policy schemes and experimental results of the five provinces, this paper concludes that the main reason for the differences in emission constraint effects of the five pilot zones are the differences in the policy selection and the different characteristics of the provinces. Based on this result, relevant policy suggestions are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the problem of hate and toxic behavior in gaming. Videogames have risen to become a dominant cultural form, seeing significant increases in players, playtime, and revenue. More people are playing games than ever before, broadening “gamers” into a highly diverse demographic. Yet this rise has been accompanied by a growing recognition of the racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of harassment taking place on these platforms. Hate within gaming creates toxic communities and takes a toll particularly on marginalized groups, raising both ethical and financial issues for the industry, who seek to address this problem in multiple ways. This paper surveys and synthesizes recent research on the topic from both inside and outside academia, laying out the problem, its manifestations, key drivers, and current responses. It concludes with a research agenda that offers a foundation for researchers, policy-makers, and companies to build from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a method to identify and formally model how the REA concept of Claims fits into our understanding and extension of the core REA concepts in work derived from early FIBO (Financial Industry Business Ontology) and now characterized as the Semantic Shed's Business Core Concept Ontology (BCO). In this exploration we determine that the notion of Claim relates to two important concepts, those of some imbalance between commitments and of the perspective on such imbalances. This paper sets out the basic concepts of REA and its later extensions by the FIBO team and the Semantic Shed community, in set theoretic concept intensions. The paper goes on to define the key concepts of imbalances and of perspectives on commitments and on imbalances. We then consider the definition of 'Claim' in REA as a terminological challenge. Some conclusions are given about where Claim fits in with the ontological terms given here and how Equity and Debt are framed with reference to these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With Covid-19 spreading across the world, many economic issues have raised. Effort is continued to support vulnerable individuals and start-ups to survive during this pandemic. Reward-based crowdfunding (RBCF) is seen as alternative sustainable finance in the Fintech industry. It allows fund-seekers to pledge an investment through RBCF platforms such as Kickstarter for funding their projects. Backers will get a reward in return. Research has shown that factors impacting the backers' behavior are crucial in determining the success of RBCF campaigns. However, there is a literature gap in providing a holistic view of these factors. Therefore, this paper aims to review and identify factors impacting backers' behavior by conducting a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Method: This paper employs the three stages in conducting the SLR. It starts with identifying the review strategy where a search string is developed. A total of 323 papers from 2012 up to 2019 from two main academic databases, i.e. IEEE Xplore and ScienceDirect were retrieved. After applying the quality assessment criteria, 33 papers were qualified for the analysis. Thematic analysis was then applied to thematically categories the identified factors. Results: A large set of factors was identified in the literature. Identified factors were classified under nine main themes. These themes are Team Characteristics, Project Characteristics, Social Influence, User Generated Content, Risk, Distrust, Upfront Marketing, Environment Readiness, and Backers Motivation. Conclusions: This paper contributes theoretically by comprehensively identify factors impacting backers' behavior toward using RBCF. The findings also contribute empirically, particularly to the fund-seekers, to help them understand what factors might impact the backer's behavior and enhance their chances of designing a successful campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most banking institutions are inadequately prepared for the ongoing integration of technology, including the digitalization of financial services, the advent of the Metaverse, and the emergence of Web 3.0. While other sectors are making strides in navigating virtual environments, financial institutions appear to be trailing. Concurrently, the nascent ecosystem of the Metaverse presents promising opportunities for businesses and industries, potentially revolutionizing economic models, governance frameworks, and ethical paradigms. This study aims to contribute to the emerging discourse on the provision of financial services within the Metaverse. The paper envisages virtual reality's future financial services landscape using a scenario-based technological foresight approach. This research is the first attempt to map the comprehensive landscape of financial services in the Metaverse, both in the present context and the foreseeable future. The paper delineates the economy of the Metaverse, its key sectors, and its enablers. It overviews the initial experiences with virtual financial services and proposes potential prospects for financial institutions operating within the Metaverse. This study, therefore, serves as a foundational reference for understanding the evolving dynamics of financial services in the virtual realm. • The study analyzes of the Metaverse economic and financial landscapes. • The study defines key features of meta-economy. • The study explores financial institutions' pioneering efforts in virtual reality. • The study offers technological foresight for financial services perspectives in the Metaverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate publications' metadata, in terms of sources, authors, countries, affiliations, and keywords, relating fintech with the COVID-19 pandemic using a bibliometric approach. We conducted a bibliometric analysis by employing VOSviewer application as the tool. The published documents were extracted from the Dimensions.ai website by filtering keywords "Fintech" and "COVID-19" in their titles or abstracts. 266 documents were retrieved as the dataset from January 2020 to May 2022 with none in previous years. The majority of publications were in the form of articles (n=166 or 62.4%). The most prolific university in this study was Amity University (n=6), while the most prolific country was Indonesia (n=34). The most productive country, Indonesia, occupied the last position of nine most cited states within the dataset. SSRN Electronic Journal was the most cited source with 349 times. We found that research in Indonesia was more concerned to the relationship of COVID-19 with SMEs and people's financial condition, while research in India and China was more concerned to the development of technology implemented within financial services. This study provides broader picture of COVID-19-related fintech research during the pandemic period which may be beneficial for academics and researchers to carry out further studies in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of climate change is experienced all over the world. The effort to mitigate the impact continues to be made in a wide range of sectors, including the financial industry. The concept of sustainable investment in the financial services industry is one of the strategies to address climate change. However, sustainable investment is not limited to national jurisdictions. At the regional levels organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have also established definite guidelines. The EU has adopted hard law in the form of regulations on sustainability disclosure and taxonomy that facilitate sustainable investment. ASEAN has also introduced soft law in the form of the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance. The purpose of this study is to examine and provide a comparison of the regulation of sustainable investment in both regional organisations that have distinct integration characteristics. This paper argues that the distinctive characteristics of integration have an influence on the choice of legal instruments and their binding force on member states. The comparative study revealed that both the EU and ASEAN adopt the common principles of environmental protection and climate change mitigation. However, the EU and ASEAN have different ways of defining these principles in their respective legal instruments. In addition, the research also reveals that the different choice of legal instruments also has an effect on the advantages and limitations of implementing sustainable finance. Finally, this study proposes that the EU and ASEAN share a common vision in the implementation of sustainable finance in line with the growing economic relations between the two regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all studies that tested the J-curve phenomenon, used trade data in only goods. Trade in service has received no attention until recently when one study tested the symmetric and asymmetric J-curve hypothesis using financial and insurance service data between the U.S. and its major partners. In this paper we add to this new literature by testing the symmetric and asymmetric J-curve effect using China's service trade with rest of the world. We find support for the J-curve effect in six out of 12 service industries, symmetric in some and asymmetric in some others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this research paper is to provide an accessible framework for understanding blockchain technology, banking bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The global financial services sector is undergoing significant transformations due to the impact of FinTech revolution. FinTech industry includes a series of innovative technologies based on powerful analytical tools, advanced algorithms, software applications, big data analytics processing, high resolution e - trading softwares, powerfull charting tools, data - driven trading platforms, portfolio tracking on real - time data. Sustainable development of FinTech industry is necessary for the maintenance of functional financial system, especially in the context of globalization. Moreover, this research paper provides a relevant overview on FinTech. The financial system is an essential component of economic growth and macroeconomic stability, especially in the context of globalization. FinTech innovations provide potential advantages for all financial services users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain technology may decrease transaction costs, promote decentralised platforms and build distributed trust, paving the road to new business models. In the financial sector, blockchain technology approves the progress of more innovative, boundless and clear decentralised financial services. Decentralised financial services can broaden financial encompassment by promoting open access and innovation. By scraping out several restrictions, they reveal new opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators. A year ago, the whole value locked in DeFi (Decentralised finance) systems was almost $600 million, and by May 2021, it was about $88 billion. The frantic development of the ecosystem requires newcomers to understand its basic characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the advances of decentralised finance, classify current business models, and outline potential challenges and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determinants of the over-indebtedness of inhabitants in particular municipalities in the Czech Republic. We draw on the theory of regional segmentation of financial markets, which foresees credit rationing in peripheral regions and empirically investigate the role that attractiveness of potential banking clients may play in the level of over-indebtedness in particular regions. We assume that regions with a higher concentration of non-bankable people suffer from a low concentration of bank services as the banks are not interested in serving people who do not meet their credit requirements. The findings from testing our empirical model indicate that regions with a higher level of non-bankable people have a higher concentration of over-indebted inhabitants. Our paper thus contributes to the nascent empirical verification of the theory of regional segmentation of financial markets. In conclusion, our policy recommendation – to support a socially-oriented financial industry, which could fulfil a niche in peripheral financial markets – could help in the battle against the pandemic of over-indebtedness and repossessions with its all negative consequences. • Regions with a higher number of financially excluded people have a higher concentration of over-indebted inhabitants. • The density of the banking servicing is negatively associated with the occurrence of financial difficulties. • A financial industry with a programme of social outreach should be supported in peripheral regions to help fill the credit gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of selected macroprudential policy instruments on financial stability. We focus on six euro area economies (Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands) over sixteen quarters (from 2015 Q1 to 2018 Q4) by using the research method of panel econometrics. The following three banking sector aggregate balance sheet variables exhibit the expected impact on credit growth and cyclical fluctuations of the economy: common equity tier one ratio, coverage ratio, and interconnectedness ratio. Moreover, common equity tier one ratio, loan-to-deposit ratio, and leverage ratio exhibit the expected impact on house price growth. Based on our empirical findings, a case can be made for the usage of carefully crafted macroprudential policy instruments that target selected financial and macroeconomic variables with the ultimate goal of attaining the stability of the financial system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs an evaluation index system for the development level of inclusive finance from four dimensions: the availability of financial services, the degree of utilization of financial services, the depth of financial services, and the sustainability of financial services. We use the standard deviation modified G1 combination weighting method to determine index weight and measure the development level of inclusive finance in China's 31 provincial administrative regions. The research results show that the overall level of development of inclusive finance in China is quite different, and the development of various regions is unbalanced. We should focus on increasing the depth of use of financial services and promote the sustainability of inclusive finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of enterprises and regions, this paper selects the relevant data of 192 listed companies in China from 2015 to 2019, establishes a static analysis model DEA to evaluate the pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency and comprehensive efficiency of the new generation of high-tech industry financial support; At the same time, the dynamic analysis model DEA Malmquist is established to evaluate the change of financial support efficiency of the new generation of high-tech industry. The results show that: at the enterprise level, the overall efficiency of financial support is still at a low level, and the development is not stable, but the overall performance of the enterprise is good in the technical efficiency of financial support, and there is great volatility in the scale efficiency. At the regional level, the eastern region is the best in both the static and dynamic aspects of financial support efficiency, the western region is the second in the static aspect, and the central region is the second in the dynamic aspect. However, the development trend of the three regions is the same, that is, fluctuating development, and the overall trend is good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates access to financial services in American communities. It analyzes the access gap that the young and poor face relative to more economically advantaged and older groups in society. The paper uses data from the World Bank's Global Financial Inclusion survey to create a multi-dimensional index of financial access and estimates a menu of quantitative models to gauge financial inclusion. Results show that young and poor people face substantial gaps in access to financial services when compared with older people, higher income individuals, more educated people, and individuals who are less vulnerable to future economic shocks. These findings expand understanding of the challenges that young and poor people face in U.S. financial markets and provide insights that can inform financial and social policies for greater financial inclusion and more sustainable communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid developments of financial technology (fintech) and the unbundling of financial services have given rise to greater collaboration between financial institutions and fintech innovators. Such collaboration takes four major forms: Third-party service relationships, data-sharing arrangements, regulatory experiments, and industry consortia. Each type of collaboration presents certain risks or governance issues to the consumers, the participating firms, and the financial market as a whole, and hold different ramifications for the existing regulatory regime. This paper argues that a novel regulatory approach is needed to help the regulators continuously identify, evaluate, and address the issues as these fintech-era collaborations deepen. This paper proposes that with the proper use of supervisory technology (SupTech), regulators can turn current initiatives, such as industry sandboxes, into supervisory control boxes to effectively regulate fintech-era collaborations and shift current practices into a new paradigm of technology-enabled regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The paper introduces an approach to analyse future competitive dynamics. • We combine scenario analysis with business war gaming. • The paper reports on the application in the financial industry. • We discuss the value of the approach. Abstract The deliberate exploration of how the future competitive landscape may evolve is critical to uncovering threats and opportunities for firms that seek to improve their core businesses and advance to a superior position in the markets of the future. While techniques such as business wargaming can effectively support this process, such techniques can benefit from placing competitive considerations within a broader future landscape shaped by geopolitical, social, technological and economic forces. Scenario planning allows for the exploration of interactions across multiple external forces to create a rich set of narratives on how the future may unfold. This paper will discuss the potential of combining scenario planning and business wargaming to enable strategists to anticipate moves and countermoves and foresee their consequences. We use a real-life case study to illustrate how a scenario-planning exercise can guide the crucial stage of selecting relevant future competitors of a firm prior to engaging in a business-war-gaming exercise. We then introduce what we term the prospective competitive strategy process to guide the analysis of potential competitive dynamics, emphasizing the synergies between scenario planning and business wargaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile payment Blockchain technology can potentially disrupt the banking and financial industry if they can't reap the benefits of future technology. Today, most of the banks want to turn into blockchain technology for fraud reduction, secure, faster transaction, lower cost, improved data quality, KYC, smart contracts, Payments, and trading platform. In this paper, we proposed a new conceptual framework for using mobile payment blockchain which can eliminate the banks and financial authorities concerns and adopt the customers (both merchants and retails) needs for faster, safe, cheaper, real-time and secure payments that also eliminate the need of the intermediary parties to approve and reconciliation the transaction. The framework reduces the operational risk as all the transactions are transparent and unalterable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The relative speed of implementing energy transition policies has implications on countries' domestic political economy. • Late decarbonising countries face higher risks for economic instability and decreased competitiveness. • Once lagging behind, feedback cycles make it even harder for late decarbonizing countries to catch up. • Uneven transition patterns increase tensions between early and late decarbonising countries. Uneven access to low carbon finance and technology may give rise to energy transition frontrunners and laggards. This article offers a first conceptualization of the risks of an uneven energy transition and its implications for the international political economy and corroborates those with an empirical investigation of elite risk perceptions in the energy industry and finance sector. The multi-method approach combines descriptive survey data with a multinomial logistic regression testing for different expert risk perceptions between sectors, complemented by a set of qualitative interviews. The findings suggest that uneven transition patterns increase the risks of economic instability and decrease the competitiveness of 'late decarbonizers'. Feedback cycles might impede the latter to catch up, with potentially severe consequences for global equity and international tensions. Countries particularly in the Global South are exposed to higher transition risks than technology-leading economies of the Global North. With this, the paper highlights the importance of relative timing for the implementation of energy transition policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individualization is a process that adapts a service or product to the needs of specific individuals. This process is a key element in recommender systems and is applied to establish innovative services for technological solutions in the financial industry. For this purpose, a self-perfecting model for managing individualized investment portfolios is built, through which segmentation and evaluation of users are performed and for each of them a set of investment portfolios is recommended. This paper presents the process of recommending a portfolio of investment instruments, individualized according to the individual preferences of clients, methodology for its construction, and results of the approbation. Examples are shown of individualized portfolios, as well as a comparison of the main measures of the recommended portfolios in the respective clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a pressing issue that is disrupting the economic systems through financial and monetary impairment. The extent is more severe in the frontiers markets and compliance with the COP26 agenda is the only recourse for low-income economies. The banks play a critical role in such countries to finance business operations and incorporating sustainability practices in asset liability management can ensure financial resilience. In this paper, we assess if climate change has any impact on the mortgage portfolio and deposit mobilization of the banking sector. Using a comprehensive sample of 175 banks across twenty-three frontier markets and employing data between 2011 and 2021, we found that climate risk is negatively associated with mortgage exposure and deposit growth. We argue that the impact on mortgages is via physical risk while for deposit mobilization the pressure emanates from transitional factors. The results remained robust even after differentiating the banks into big and small categories suggesting that climate change is bringing in risks that will impact the financial sector without any discrimination. The paper has important implications for both transitional and physical risks related to climate change. • Climate risk is negatively associated with mortgage exposure and deposit growth. • The mortgage growth is constrained due to physical risks. • The transitional pressures impede deposit mobilization. • Compliance with COP26 declarations is the way forward for frontier economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present a profile of middle-school-age youth who participated in a week-long experiential residential camp focused on helping campers learn about and interact with money, personal finance topics, and mainstream financial service providers. Based on pre- and post-test data, it was determined an experiential real-world camp experience can increase the financial confidence and goal-setting abilities of young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Collected Papers of Zagreb Law Faculty / Zbornik Pravnog Fakulteta u Zagrebu is the property of Sveuciliste u Zagrebu, Pravni Fakultet and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Rural finance plays a central role in the rural economy. The development level of rural finance affects the economic development of rural areas. my country's rural finance is obviously underdeveloped, and the existing promotion mechanism can be improved with the help of the financial data center network. This paper designs a rural financial service promotion mechanism based on the data center network. In order to deal with the problem of limited base station resources and difficulty in meeting user access requirements in rural environments, this paper adopts a cooperative transmission mechanism based on mobile devices. For the data center, in order to make full use of the multipath bandwidth of the data center network, the existing research mostly adopts the load balancing algorithm based on link awareness. However, these studies did not consider the non-uniform nature of data center network traffic size distribution. To this end, this paper designs a Utilization-aware Load balancing algorithm based on Flow Classification (UALBAFC). The algorithm analyzes traffic characteristics on the basis of realizing congestion awareness, and uses different strategies to allocate paths for large and small flows to achieve the best match between network traffic characteristics and the advantages of routing methods. In this paper, the simulation experiment evaluation of UALBAFC algorithm is carried out. The experimental results show that, compared with the existing schemes, the method in this paper can better realize the load balancing of the data center network in the data center network with unbalanced traffic size distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile phones have not only changed the way people communicate, but have also become an important tool for financial services. The question arises whether these financial services should be provided by a mobile network operator or not. Therefore the goal of this paper is to analyse the opportunities and threats for mobile network operators to provide financial services. The paper concludes that one of the major decision factors is the regulatory framework. If mobile network operators have to establish a bank in order to provide financial services then many advantages and synergies that could be derived from the core competences of the network operator will be lost. Synergies can be used if the mobile network operator can receive a licence as financial service provider, but not as a bank. However, if this is not possible it would be better for mobile network operators to partner with existing banks or similar institutions in order to use existing competitive advantages in the best way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial services organisations spend a significant amount of their IT budgets maintaining legacy systems. This paper identifies the characteristics of legacy systems and explores why such systems are so costly to maintain and support. Three models for the assessment and management of legacy system costs are examined and a new meta-model that addresses differences between the existing models is proposed. The new meta-model is then applied to a large UK financial services company - FinCo. Input data for the new meta-model are provided by the company’s senior business and IT executives and the results compared with the firm’s actual legacy system management plans. The paper concludes by identifying improvements the company should make to these current legacy system management plans and its longer-term strategy for managing legacy systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of regional economies within multi-location firm networks, and the development effects stemming from such integration, is recognised as a critical but deeply complex research area (Dicken and Malmberg, 2001). In this paper, with Edinburgh’s asset servicing activities providing an empirical context, a conceptual framework is developed that points to an initial suite of mechanisms that may underpin the firm-territory nexus. By doing this, a revised perspective on how territorial and network embeddedness overlap, is given. Recognising the heterogeneous nature of head office-branch and subsidiary relationships - which asset servicing functions are ultimately inscribed in - this paper shows how the local economic and institutional contexts present in Edinburgh mesh and jostle with the co-ordinating dynamics of the global financial services sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether Nigeria witnessed considerable savings mobilization amidst financial sector reforms from 2007 to 2015 using the estimation method of Autoregressive Distributed Lag. Unlike previous papers in this area that mostly focused on interest rates liberalization thesis, this paper goes deeper by looking at financial reforms across money, capital and foreign exchange markets. The estimation results show that there are still structural rigidities in the money, foreign exchange and equity markets nexus. In that, the following variables that proxy financial sector reforms namely treasury bill yield, interest rate spread, market capitalization ratio and currency in circulation ratio (which proxy technological modernization of payment systems) all went against a priori expectation. However, financial reforms had one success story in credit/loans advances to private/public sectors (financial deepening) which posted its correct economic sign. In sum, except for the financial deepening variable it can be safely concluded that financial reforms in Nigeria is yet to positively impact savings mobilization. The regulatory and reform authorities must show effectiveness in reforms implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of financial inclusion has gained increased attention, on the background of international frameworks and policies devoted to inclusive societies, inclusive financial systems, sustainable and inclusive growth. However, existing literature and practice lack a generally accepted, reliable and easy to interpret quantitative measure of financial inclusion. The novelty of our paper relies on developing a financial inclusion index, comprising an updated set of indicators which account for current developments of the financial industry and the continuous diversification and complementarity of financial products people have access to. It is the first study comprising all the 28 EU countries and covering a large, recent time horizon (2008-2013). The index has been computed for each year considered and a ranking has been provided to comparatively assess the evolution of a given country on the financial inclusion scale. Our findings revealed that one-third of EU countries show moderate financial inclusion, while the remaining ones depict low financial inclusion, with different degrees of severity. A constant presence at the bottom limit of financial inclusion, in each of the six years, has been Romania. This result reflects a reality, namely the lack of official concern from authorities and financial institutions in respect of monitoring, measuring and stimulating financial inclusion. We believe that the index proposed in this paper could act not only for assessing the degree of inclusion at a given moment of time, but also as a tool for monitoring and signaling the imperative involvement of regulators, financial institutions and civil society in designing and implementing policies and programs for enhancing inclusive financial products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of self-sovereign identity in online privacy. Online privacy has been based on passwords protecting us through third party applications owning credentials. Biometrics and dual-factor authentication were introduced to increase privacy protections in centralized authentications. Federated identification provided less centralization for authentication. The latest generation of identity management introduces self-sovereign identity, using blockchain to create an independent digital identity. Identity began with centralized certification from state authorities providing official certification, such as the driver's licenses and birth certificates. Digital identity began with centralized organizations overseeing the validity of IP addresses and domain names. Soon to follow, user accounts and passwords grew to be defined personal identification. Self-sovereign identity uses decentralized identifiers (DIDs) to enable verifiable, decentralized digital identity and ties users to identities and certified credentials using blockchain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]