Abstract The objective of this paper is to speak about the issue of independence. To reach this goal corporate governance was considered as an example of good practices that may help organizations prevent fraud. Fraud was considered under a perspective of financial engineering - dedicated to building, enabling and displaying high dividends to shareholders that were non-existent. These events defrauded public opinion on the trust in the auditor and the confidence in the companies and showed the lack of independence of the different players. It must be said that the participation in these frauds was shared, at least, by the top management, the auditors and the accounting personnel. As an immediate consequence some ethical issues and guidelines for the reinforcement of the organization′s internal control arose. As concerns the factor of independence, particular stress on the supervising and inspecting functions of the Portuguese Stock Commission –CMVM - was considered. This entity is responsible for the supervision of the listed companies but at the same time it inspects the auditor′s work for the companies in its portfolio. A benchmarking analysis with the Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden and Finland was done. This was undertaken because these countries show some relevant cultural and ethical differences and a peculiar cultural/organizational approach that should be considered.
Abstract The article focuses on the phenomenon of financial literacy of students. Financial literacy is treated as a combination of financial knowledge and the decision-making process where one has to make a choice based on experience and theory. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the essence of financial literacy, including knowledge of banking (especially of young people). For this purpose, a literature review was used. Own research complements the topic as a case study, where the author verifies whether students assess their knowledge in a way that corresponds to reality and verifies whether students need to expand their financial knowledge sorely necessary nowadays. The survey was completed by 380 students from University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszów, of both economic and non-economic field of studies. There are some unexpected results, for example the most important is that students from a financial field of studies end up with worse results than their peers from the non-financial degree programs.
This article offers an empirical analysis of determinants of inflation in 28 European economies that belonged to the transition group of countries in the end of the last century. We rely on dynamic panel methodology and find that economic and structural variables, including economic openness, unemployment, real wages, institutional effects, as well as external factors, such as prices of food and oil, determine the short-run inflationary dynamics in these countries. The obtained results also indicate that inflation rate is autoregressive in the observed period (2005-2015), confirming that contemporaneous inflation rate is determined by the entire history of these determinants. Our further investigation reveals long- term effects of the majority of these variables on price dynamics. Interestingly, distinction between the current EU and transition countries in the model does not lead to different conclusions.
This paper examines the role of main microeconomic factors on the stock prices of selected Swiss companies listed on the Six Swiss Exchange. Two basic theoretical approaches and interpretations of this relationship are frequently used. The efficient market hypothesis (Fama, 1970) assumes that stock prices already contain all the relevant information and the theory of arbitration (Ross, 1976, or Chen et al., 1986). The microeconomic factors are based on the financial situation in companies. Financial ratios, taken from the financial statements of the individual companies, are used for the analysis. In general, the study confirmed that profitability and debt ratios are the most important business factors from the prospective of impact on stock prices. The relationship between the observed variables is explored using panel regression analysis. The generalized method of moments for constructing a regression model is used. The sample period of the dataset is composed of annual data from 2006 to 2015.
Abstract International concern on bank capital and minimum capital adequacy was first raised in 1980, in the G-10 countries governors meeting at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to respond to a series of bank failures and financial instability observed in Western developed economies. Later, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) of the BIS proposed the Basel accord I, II and III in 1988, 2004 and 2010, respectively. Bangladesh Bank (BB) has introduced the ‘capital to risk weighted assets’-based approach for assessing the capital adequacy of banks in 1996 and later formally introduced the Basel framework in the early 2000s for its regulated banks. However, during Basel accord II and III implementation period (2009-2018), the banking industry accumulated huge non-performing loans which eroded its profitability. This creates a skepticism regarding any loopholes within the institutions. This paper argues that the naïve and excess reliance on External Credit Assessment Institutions (ECAIs’) credit rating in the process of adopting the Basel-type capital adequacy amounted to a risky strategy for the Bangladeshi banking industry in a sense that ECAIs allocate less efforts on accumulation of credit risk screening skills. We also document that the huge transaction cost and high coupon rate embedded within the debt instrument like the subordinated debt (sub-debt) issued by the regulated banks as Tier 2 capital might shrink the bank’s profitability and its contribution to the national exchequer. Little in the existing literature has been addressed to investigate the adoption of Basel regulations in Bangladesh from the institutional lens. This paper critically reviewed the Bangladeshi ECAIs regulations and sub-debt regulations to fill this research gap.
