[1] Microfinance consists of broad range of financial services with microcredit, the most recognized method. Microcredit involves a financial organization making small loans to impoverished borrowers and then receiving loan repayment with interest. Providing small business development, microcredit has the potential to promote widespread social change. Besides, destitute families have the ability to raise themselves from poverty through the profits earned from their microenterprises.The successful of current large microcredit organizations can be attributed to many positive factors, which includes basic training for borrowers and incentives for repayment. As a result, microfinance operations are financially sustainable operations that are able to be run without donations. However, they are circumstances in which microcredit is not a feasible solution (communities that rely on bartering or areas with high rates of a disabling disease). In general, situations, which may cause a borrower to default, would be of concern to microfinance institutions. Additionally, a pressing concern would be with corruption of microloan providers by offering credit at dangerously high interest rates for the poor.The possible aims of this proposal are:

1. The relationship between social indicators and the access to microcredits.
2. Analyze different lending forms (individual, group and community banking) aimed at developing small business or raising families from poverty.
3. Credit score system for microcredits.
4. Analyze the efficiency of microfinance institutions (equilibrium between maximizing profits and social benefits).

REFERENCESGutiérrez-Nieto, B., & Serrano-Cinca, C. (2019). 20 years of research in microfinance: An information management approach. International Journal of Information Management, 47, 183-197.Schreiner, M. (2005, August). Can Scoring Help Attract Profit-Minded Investors to Microcredit. In Financial Sector Development Conference, Frankfurt, June 23 (Vol. 24, pp. 1-40). 

[2] Corporate failure has been extendedly studied in order to find the factors that influence the existence of companies. It is a very interesting and challenging topic since the variety of the models and theoretical frameworks that have been used show that there is no consensus to deal with these financial problems.

Over the years, many studies have analyzed the likelihood of failure for mature firms though several indicators, arriving at discordant conclusions. Nevertheless, there is a lack of studies on analyzing the relationship of financial and, especially, non-financial indicators on the probability of failure in new businesses. This is crucial because a high percentage of companies cease to exist in the first years of existence because of their fragility. New businesses lack knowledge on the entrepreneurial learning mechanism and entrepreneurial alertness condition. This weakness distinguishes new businesses from mature firms that have already passed the first stage of life. Indeed, the propensity of failure is high in new businesses and constant in time (enterprises founded in different years) and in space (new businesses in different industry sectors and countries).

The possible aims of this proposal are:

1. The association of non-financial attributes (especially corporate governance indicators) with the survival likelihood of new businesses.

2. Analyze the resilience of distressed new businesses

3. Design a corporate failure prediction model for new businesses

REFERENCES

Balcaen, S., & Ooghe, H. (2006). 35 years of studies on business failure: an overview of the classic statistical methodologies and their related problems. The British Accounting Review, 38(1), 63-93.

Ciampi, F. (2015). Corporate governance characteristics and default prediction modeling for small enterprises. An empirical analysis of Italian firms. Journal of Business Research, 68(5), 1012-1025.

Veganzones, D., & Severin, E. (2020). Corporate failure prediction models in the twenty-first century: a review. European Business Review.

[3] According to Healy and Wahlen (1999, p. 368) in which, “earnings management occurs when managers use judgment in financial reporting and in structuring transactions to alter financial reports to either mislead some stakeholders about the underlying economic performance of the company or to influence contractual outcomes that depend on reported accounting numbers”. This definition refers to the alteration of financial statements so that managers can hide information in order not to be transparent and mislead shareholders and/or outsiders. Several methods were used (accruals; real activities...). A lot of studies have focused on the relationship between earnings management (EM) with assets, management, corporate governance, access to debt (bank debt and trade credit), bankruptcy prediction… Besides, the results highlight that healthy and bankrupt firms manage their results upwards or downwards. Beyond that, the extent of results management varies from one company to another. Taking these elements into account, questions remain unresolved. The possible aims of this proposal are:

1. The firms’ behavior concerning EM. If we refer to the trade-off debt theory, is there a target in terms of results management and if so, what is the speed of adjustment towards this target and what are the main characteristics able to determine this speed?
2.  The impact of one firm's EM on another in terms of financial behaviour (access to debt and supplier credit) (contagion effect vs. competitiveness effect).
3. The relationship between the number of banks ‘multibanking’ and EM

REFERENCESHealy, P. M., & Wahlen, J. M. (1999). A review of the earnings management literature and its implications for standard setting. Accounting horizons, 13(4), 365-383.Lang, L.H., Stulz, R. M. (1992) Contagion and competitive intra-industry effects of bankruptcy announcements. Journal of Financial Economics, 32, p.45-60.Ongena S. (2000). What Detemines the Number of bank Relationships? Journal of Financial Intermediation, 9, p. 26-56.Öztekin Ö., Flannery M.J. (2012). Institutional determinants of capital strcuture speeds. Journal of Financial Economics, 103, p. 88-112.