Our paper addresses firm size as a driver of systematic credit risk in loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Key contributions are the use of a unique data set of SME lending by over 400 German banks and relating systematic risk to the size dependence of regulatory capital requirements. What sets our sample apart is its comprehensive coverage of the particularly rich and well developed ...

Background: Celebration of university students’ marriage ceremonies in Iran dates back to around three decades, but its positive and negative aspects require further reconsideration. This study is intended to explore those aspects in the words of university students who married during their studying at the university. Methods: In this qualitative study, a qualitative content analysis method wa...

Customary marriage (nikāḥ ‘urfī)—non-official married life of a couple—is a new phenomenon increasingly spreading throughout the Arab world. Legal and social consequences of customary marriage have led many socio-jurisprudential scholars to forbid all its varieties. The strategy has, nevertheless, failed to restrain the spread of this type of marriage. In this paper, I argue that one f...

In this paper we analyze the major determinants of university enrollment and dropout in Brazil. The econometric model consists of two simultaneous equations. The first equation determines whether the student was accepted at the university or not; the second determines students decision to dropout or not from higher education, given they were accepted at the university. Gender, age and marriage ...

This paper uses insights from behavioral economics to explain a particularly surprising borrowing phenomenon: One in six undergraduate students offered interest-free loans turn them down. Models of impulse control predict that students may optimally reject subsidized loans to avoid excessive consumption during school. Using the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), we investigate st...

Corrected authors’ contributions MN made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data, and drafted the manuscript. DA made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data. MC made substantial contributions to the inception of the study, revision of the manuscript, and is ...

incidence of adolescent pregnancy.3 Access to contraceptives has become increasingly crucial for adolescents because many are sexually active at earlier ages than in the past. During the mid-to-late 1950s, 8% of adolescent females had had intercourse by age 16. In contrast, by the early-to-mid–1980s, 21% of female teenagers had had sex by age 16. Among all adolescents in the 1990s, 50% had sex ...

This paper proposes a simple search and bargaining model of marriage. In the young age, each person starts with an endowment of financial resources and an inherited cultural orientation. They acquire a marketable human capital and optimally modify their orientation using this endowment. In the second period of their lives, a search for the right spouse and then bargaining for the household orie...