Based on a survey of households in 10 Central Eastern European and Western Balkan countries, this paper presents new and unique evidence on which households have savings and how they save.
... See More + The paper shows that the percentage of savers is low, and savings are frequently informal. Formal savings are dominated by bank savings, and participation in contractual and capital market savings is very low in comparison to high-income countries. Poor households are significantly less likely to have any savings; income also has an effect, albeit smaller, on the choice of formal versus informal savings. With a high density of bank branches in Central Eastern European and Western Balkan countries lack of physical access to banks does not explain the lack of formal savings. Lack of trust in banks reduces the probability of formal savings, especially bank savings.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8751 FEB 19, 2019
Since the introduction of the KiwiSaver scheme in New Zealand in 2006, several countries have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, voluntary funded pension systems with automatic enrollment features.
... See More + Since most of the literature has focused on countries with the common law tradition, including the United Kingdom and the United States, this note analyzes cases of countries with the civil code tradition, including Turkey, Poland, the Russian Federation, Chile, Brazil, and the Province of Quebec in Canada. This sample includes mostly emerging economies, with reforms at different stages, from those that have already been completed to those that are about to start discussions in their parliaments. Although they are not a substitute for necessary parametric reforms, automatic enrollment schemes offer the possibility of improvements in future retirement income for a significant part of the labor force. This note stresses that the paternalistic approach of automatic enrollment schemes imposes a great degree of responsibility on governments and requires careful consideration of the design of the system, including the industrial organization of the pension fund industry and default investment strategies. Sufficient time and resources for preparing communication and educational campaigns has played a key role in achieving high rates of participation.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8726 FEB 05, 2019
The objective of the Low-Income Housing Finance Project for India is to provide access to sustainable housing finance for low income households, to purchase, build or upgrade their dwellings.
... See More + The restructuring will reallocate SDR 1.97m (SDR 1.31m from component 1 and SDR 0.66m from component 3) to the refinancing line (component 2). This will essentially amount to an allocation of the entire IDA financing of SDR 66.09 m to component 2 of the Project which originally was envisaged to be SDR 64.12m. The financing for components 1 and 3 will be supported through counterpart financing by NHB.
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This paper assesses the impact of media sentiment on international equity prices using a dataset of more than 4.5 million Reuters articles published across the globe between 1991 and 2015.
... See More + Media sentiment robustly predicts daily returns in both advanced and emerging markets, even after controlling for known determinants of stock prices. But not all news sentiment is alike. A local (country-specific) increase in news optimism (pessimism) predicts a small and transitory increase (decrease) in local returns. By contrast, changes in global news sentiment have a larger impact on equity returns around the world, which does not reverse in the short run. Media sentiment affects mainly foreign -- rather than local -- investors: although local news optimism attracts international equity flows for a few days, global news optimism generates a permanent foreign equity inflow. Our results confirm the value of media content in capturing investor sentiment.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8649 NOV 19, 2018
The development objective of the Housing Finance Project for Rwanda is to expand access to housing finance to households and to support capital market development in Rwanda.
... See More + It has two project components. First component, Provision of Long-term Finance to Expand Housing Finance includes a Line of Credit (LoC) to support the provision of housing loans by Rwandan financial institutions; and Second component, Technical Assistance and Implementation Support is to strengthen the enabling environment for affordable housing and financing through technical assistance (TA) and capacity building.
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Blending funds from private investors with concessional funds from donors and philanthropic sourceshas a strong potential to scale up investment in lower-income countries and thereby acceleratedevelopment.
... See More + The use of blended concessional finance is already prevalent in lower-income countriesrepresenting over 70 percent of IFC’s commitments. Recent strategies from development financeinstitutions including the World Bank Group indicate that the relative share of lower-income countries in the global mix of blended concessional finance will increase further. Scaling up engagements in lower-income countries requires solutions tailored to local contexts, as well as the deployment of the whole spectrum of development finance tools, including advisory work, regulatory dialogue and reform, and a mix of blending instruments encompassing both pricing and risk mitigation features.
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