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Ivan Marinov
BANKING CONSUMER CREDIT –
A COMPONENT OF THE “RETAIL BANKING” BUSINESS SEGMENT
Summary:
The topic of bank financing of consumption is widely discussed in the studies of a number of researchers in the field of banking. The loans by which banking companies meet the personal needs of individuals and households have long been an integral part of people's lives and have had a significant role in the economies of most countries around the world.
This paper aims to clarify the essential characteristics and specificities of banking consumer credit in Bulgaria. To implement the goal set by the author, the texts of the legal framework on consumer lending in the country are considered, and also the positions of Bulgarian and foreign authors on the definition of the term “consumer credit” and practically applied manifesta-tions of individual types of loans for current purposes, offered by commercial banks in Bulgaria.
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Rositsa Prodanova, Dimitar Kostov
ECONOMIC POLICIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION – CONCORDANCE OR DISCORDANCE?
Summary:
The series of severe global and regional crises of various nature in recent decades, as well as the erratic success of the various anti-crisis measures undertaken by the European Union raise the issue of examining the concordance among the Union's economic policies. This study examines the coordination between EU’s monetary and fiscal policy to reveal that it is weak, which can be attributed to some crisis resolution shortcomings. The reasons for this incoherence can be found both in the institutional structure of the European financial institutions and in some rigid strategies of the Union (unwillingness to pursue a common fiscal policy, frugal budget spending policies, etc.)
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Aleksandyr Ganchev
Hedge Funds – Evolution and Perspectives
Summary:
The article reviews and analyses the origins of the hedge fund sector and its development on a worldwide scale. The study reveals that hedge funds had arisen long before 1949 and shows that global financial crises do not occur due to hedge funds because the latter only exploit economic development disparities, the imperfections of financial systems, the inadequate regulatory frameworks or the inefficient financial market regulations that are already in place. The article shows that, although the development of the hedge fund industry is very sensitive to financial crises, their popularity as investment instruments has been increasing rather than decreasing since the last global economic crisis of 2008.
