Keynote Speaker

Prof. Christophe Schinckus

School of Business and Management, RMIT Vietnam, HCMC

Financial Innovation as a potential force for a positive social change:

The challenging future of Social Impact Bonds

Abstract

Since the last financial crisis, financial innovation has been called into question because it generated complex financial assets detached from economic reality. More precisely, the development of very abstract contracts ballooning subprime mortgage market would be at the origin of the last crisis. Financial creativity can produce severe consequences but it can also drive socio-economic changes favourable to the society. This talk presents social impact bonds as a telling example of a financial innovation that could potentially contribute to a significant improvement of society. These assets are used to fund social programs such as helping homeless people, rehabilitating prisoners or supporting early interventions with underprivileged people. By redesigning social programs through market-based solutions, SIBs enhanced transparency of expenditures made by government, they can help to stabilize economic activity and they can contribute to the self-realization of disadvantaged people. This presentation reconsiders finance through the lens of the financial and ethical implications of these new assets. By combining usual aspects of finance with social welfare, social impact bonds imply new practices but also a new way of thinking the concept of return.

Profile

Following completion of his PhD in Financial Economics at the University of Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne (2009), Prof. Schinckus held a postdoctoral fellowship in Canada (University of Quebec at Montreal). Afterward, he combined the position of visiting scholar at the London School of Economics with a position of Assistant Professor in Finance at the University of Leicester in the UK. Christophe became Associate Professor in Finance in the same university in 2014.

Christophe also holds a MSc in Business Engineering from University of Liege (Belgium), a MA in Economics from the University of Paris; an MA in Philosophy of Sciences from the University of Louvain (Belgium) as well as an MSc in Financial Risk Management and a BSc in Computer Sciences. Prof. Schinckus is now finishing his second PhD in Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, UK. His research interest focuses on interdisciplinary in financial economics and more precisely, social finance, behavioural finance and econophysics (physics applied to finance). He recently published a book at Oxford University Press on the topic. He published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journal and still regularly published papers in journals in which he also has several editorial\reviewer roles. Prof. Schinckus is a member of the National Board of Reviewers for the British Economic and Social Research Council.

In parallel to his academic activities, Prof. Schinkcus also collaborate as a research consultant for private companies, such as JPMorgan, Suez Gaz de France etc. and he recently worked with the African Development Bank and the NRF (National Research Foundation from the Government of South Africa).

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Keynote Speaker

Prof. Pham Hoang Van

Hankamer School of Business , Baylor University

The Short and Long Run Effects of Debt Reduction: Evidence from Debt Relief Under the Enhanced HIPC and the MDR Initiatives

Kelsey Gamel (Baylor) & Pham Hoang Van (Baylor)

Abstract

High debt depresses productive investment in a number of different ways. ‘Debt overhang’ exists when government revenue must service debt at the expense of investment in infrastructure and education. High outstanding debt also keeps market interest rates high crowding out private investment. Risk of default also reduces incentives to invest or creates adverse selection in the mix of investments. This paper estimates the value of the benefits to debt reduction by evaluating the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative launched by the IMF and World Bank in 1996 the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) extension in 2005. The initiatives included a decision point and a completion point which were reached by individual countries at different times. We applied a time-shifted difference-in-differences strategy to evaluate the effects of this intervention. We found that debt relief increased capital investment as much as 1.63% in the short run and 5.79% in the long run. However, there was no effect on foreign direct investment. Output and school enrollment increased both in the short and long run but household consumption did not.

Profile

Prof. Pham Hoang Van achieved SM, SB, Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He also got PhD in Economics at Cornell University. Now, Prof. Van is Graduate Program Director and Professor of Economics at Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University.

His research interest focuses on Economic Development, International Trade, Retail as a Trade Platform, Technology Change, Developing Country Labor Markets, Immigration, Corruption, Applied Theory, and Applied Microeconomics. He has taught Economic Development (U,G), International Economics, Economics of Information, Game Theory, Price Theory at popular universities. He published more than 20 papers in peer-reviewed journal and still regularly published papers in journals in which he also has several editorial\reviewer roles. Prof. Van is a member of the Editorial Board for high ranking journal such as American Economic Journal, Applied Economics, American Economic Review, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, Economic Journal, Economics and Politics.

Van parallel received many awards and grants in his long-life research such as Baylor Young Researcher Award (2010), Mayo McBride Global Scholar (2012), Walmart Foundation Research Grant to Evaluate the Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of the Summer Feeding Programs in Texas (2014).

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