Author: Philip Lane

Title: Mobile Banking Initiatives in South Asia: Preliminary Thoughts
Speaker: Veronica Cacdac Warnock, Darden Business School, University of Virginia, Senior Lecturer and Batten Fellow
Date: Monday 24th of October 2011
Time: 1-2pm
Venue: IIIS Seminar Room, 6th Floor of the Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin

SHORT BIO:
Veronica Cacdac Warnock is Senior Lecturer and Batten Institute Fellow at the Darden Business School of the University of Virginia (UVA).  Her research focuses on housing finance and inclusive banking. She has served as academic consultant for organizations including the National Association of Realtors, the World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements, and has held visiting positions at the Asian Institute of Management and the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. She is currently advisor to “Housing Finance in Latin America and the Caribbean”, a research project at Inter-American Development Bank, and to ShoreBank International’s consulting projects supporting new Mobile Banking for the Poor ventures of commercial banks in Pakistan and Bangladesh.  At Darden, she co-teaches Markets in Human Hope, a course in which students form private ventures to directly address global development problems.  She has also taught urban economics and development courses at UVA. Previously, she was Director/Senior Economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association (of America) and Research Associate at Haver Analytics.  Dr. Warnock received her Ph.D. in Economics from Fordham University and her A.B. in Economics from Ateneo de Manila University.

This speech by Ben Broadbent is a good explanation of the economics of how real depreciation is important in the rebalancing of the UK economy.  Essay question: compare and contrast to the adjustment mechanism inside a monetary union.

This new Central Bank technical paper by Colin Bermingham and Thomas Conefrey seeks to establish the relation between external demand shocks and mortgage delinquencies in Ireland.

This week saw the final agreement on the new EU Economic Governance package.

The overview is here.

The details are here.

Box 1.1 in the European REO covers labour market institutions.  Relative to most European countries, Ireland comes across as having good labour market institutions.  The box highlights one exception – the high unemployment benefit replacement rate for long-term unemployed.  Note: the figure is based in 2008-2009 data and takes the average of net replacement rates over 60 months of unemployment for four family types and two earning levels (67 percent and 100 percent of average worker earnings), including social assistance. The box notes that Ireland’s replacement rate is relatively low at one-year duration but benefits are stable over time, making them higher than average over a fiver-year period.