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The abstract is available here: https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/o:1637745

Promoting entrepreneurship in Morocco among young people has been a challenge for some years of economic and social problems, especially after the events of the Arab Spring. Several programs have been set up by the government for young entrepreneurs. Thus, faced with the large number of credit applications solicited by these young entrepreneurs, banks are obliged to resort to artificial intelligence techniques. For this purpose, the aim of this article is to propose a decision-making system enabling the bank to automate its credit granting process. It is a tool that allows the bank, in the first instance, to select promising projects through a scoring approach adapted to this segment of young entrepreneurs. In a second step, the tool allows the setting of the maximum credit amount to be allocated to the selected project. Finally, based on the knowledge of the bank's experts, the tool proposes a breakdown of the amount granted by the bank into several products adapted to the needs of the entrepreneur.

Credit limit variability is a crucial aspect of the consumption, savings, and debt decisions of households in the United States. Using a large panel, this paper first demonstrates that individuals gain and lose access to credit frequently and often have their credit limits reduced unexpectedly. Credit limit volatility is larger than most estimates of income volatility and varies over the business cycle. While typical models of intertemporal consumption fix the credit limit, I introduce a model with variable credit limits. Variable credit limits create a reason for households to hold both high interest debts and low interest savings at the same time, since the savings act as insurance. Simulating the model using the estimates of credit limit volatility, I show that it explains all of the credit card puzzle: why around a third of households in the United States hold both debt and liquid savings at the same time. The approach also offers an important new channel through which financial system uncertainty affects household decisions.

The Arab Spring is a clear indicator of the urgency of achieving inclusive growth and ensuring job creation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where private sector development is still hindered by limited access to credit. Following Kiyotaki and Moore's (1997) seminal model, we apply a novel methodological approach to a unique data set of MENA firms to estimate credit limits and their impacts on capital accumulation. Notably, we find higher credit limits in countries where the Arab Spring erupted than in other MENA countries and that their marginal effect on capital accumulation has been statistically and economically significant.

This Selected Issues paper on Bulgaria investigates possible driving forces behind the investment boom based on cross-country evidence. The diagnosis of the drivers behind the investment boom is important as it is key to assessing Bulgaria’s economic prospects, vulnerabilities, and policy challenges. The available evidence is less than clear-cut, but broadly suggests that the investment boom reflects to a large extent a one-off reassessment of Bulgaria’s riskiness as an investment location. The paper also investigates why Bulgaria’s GDP growth rate did not respond more strongly to the investment boom.