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This paper aims to describe the prevalent forms of intimate partner violence (IPV), and the factors associated with IPV among women and men living in the two migrant communities of Baglung district, Nepal. 357 adult women and men were enrolled following a family model, interviewing young married women with daughter-in-law status in the home, their husbands, and mothers-in-law and fathers-in-laws using an electronic questionnaire. Random effects regression modelling compared men and women, as well as young married women with daughter-in-law status and older women with mothers-in-law with status. 28.6% of women had ever experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner compared to 18.2% of men ever perpetrated these forms of violence against their wives. Being older, male controlling behaviour and poor relations with husband increased women’s IPV in their lifetime while perceptions that the mother-in-law is kind were protective. Being ashamed of being unemployed and childhood trauma were associated with men perpetrating IPV in their lifetime. Borrowing money or food increased young married women’s lifetime IPV risk while mother-in-law cruelty and male control increased older married women’s lifetime IPV exposure. Factors associated with IPV in the past year among men were being younger, job seeking, experiences of childhood trauma and depression exposure among men while difficulty accessing money for emergencies, holding inequitable gender attitudes, and depression was associated with women’s increased IPV exposure. Unemployment stress, holding inequitable gender attitudes and mother-in-law kindness were associated with young women’s increased IPV risk and hunger, mother-in-law cruelty and depression with older women’s IPV risk. There is a need to critically challenge harmful social and gender norms by using approaches that are sensitive to young married women’s position and unequal gender relations in the family. IPV prevention interventions need to employ a holistic approach that combines changing social and gender norms and improving socioeconomic conditions of women living in migrant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the international reserve accumulation behavior of emerging and developing economies facing "keeping‐up‐with‐the‐Joneses" externalities. I first document empirical evidence for a significant Joneses effect, which has been particularly persistent in Asia and Latin America since the late 1990s. This peer‐pressure motive could encourage excess reserve hoarding, providing a rationale for cooperation. I then develop a theoretical model of the borrowing economy featuring the Joneses effect and the interdependence between reserves and domestic capital investment. Numerical results show that international cooperation can effectively internalize negative externalities associated with competitive reserve hoarding and induce welfare‐enhancing resource allocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microlending has grown rapidly and now benefits around 250 million people globally, half who would otherwise not have access to credit. Use of social credit systems for microlending risk assessment is most pronounced in Asia, as most Western countries tightly regulate personal information available to lenders. In most of the developing world, geography, social structure, disease, climate and culture have a much stronger influence on credit risk and borrowing than do governmental and corporate systems. In this study, we obtained 784 loan contracts with 3577,912 personal communications and locations. Exploratory analysis found loan default depends on social network structure; graph analysis indicated that those who were likely to default tended to communicate with other likely defaulters. Detailed tests were equivocal, suggesting that social network communication structure provided little additional information to predict default, and may even add noise to the data. Our tests strongly supported the importance of location and proximity to particular sorts of landmarks on the potential for default. Proximity to some landmarks, e.g. city hall, moving companies and train stations, were associated with lower loan default. Others, such as parks, stadiums and bus stations, were correlated with a higher loan default. We restructured our tests based on risk-return versus loan default effect with little change in results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the spillover effects of the United States’ unconventional monetary policy (i.e., quantitative easing programs adopted during 2008–2014) on the Asian credit market. Focusing on cross-border bank lending, we employed firm-level loan data with regard to the syndicated loan market and measured the international bank lending channel through changes in the United States dollar-denominated loans extended to Asian borrowers. We found that the growth of dollar credit in Asia increased substantially in response to the quantitative easing in the US financial market. The results of this study confirm the existence of the bank lending channel in Asia and emphasize the role of credit flows in transmitting financial conditions. The article also provides new evidence of cross-border liquidity spillover in the syndicated loan market. We found that the overall spillover effect was large but differed significantly in Asia by types of borrowing firms, financing purposes, and loan terms at different stages of the quantitative easing programs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a global credit cycle outlook as of November 2015. Topics discussed include the affirmation of the global growth forecast of 2.5% for 2015 and 2.7% for 2016, the cautious loosening with near-term downside risks in world corporate credit standards, and the possible static or decline in the world gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in 2016. Also noted is the continued tightening of credit standards in the emerging markets (EM) of Asia and Latin America.