Search results for: national financial inclusion strategy

Authors: Jaramillo G. Maria Luisa, Turriago H. Álvaro, Thoene Ulf

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Financial inclusion has become a crucially important factor in debates on economic inequality posing challenges to the financial systems of countries around the world. Nowadays governments and banks are concerned about creating products that allow access to wide sectors of the population. The creation of banking products by the financial sector for people with low incomes tends to lead to improvements in the quality of life of vulnerable parts of the population. In countries with notable social and economic inequalities, financial inclusion is a key aspect for equitable economic growth. This study is based on the case of Colombia, which is a country with a strong record of economic growth over the past decade. Nevertheless, corruption, unemployment, and poverty contribute to uncertainty regarding the country’s future growth prospects. This study wants to explain the situation of financial exclusion and financial inclusion with respect to the Colombian case. Financial inclusion is going to be studied from the perspective of social innovation.

Keywords: Colombia, financial exclusion, financial inclusion, social innovation.

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Authors: Tasawar Nawaz

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Promotion of socioeconomic justice through redistribution of wealth is one of the most salient features of Islamic economic system. Islamic financial institutions known as Islamic banks are used to implement this in practice under the guidelines of Islamic Shariah law. Islamic banking systems strive to promote and achieve financial inclusion among the society by offering interest-free banking and risk-sharing financing solutions. Shariah-compliant micro finance is one of the most popular financial instruments used by Islamic banks to enhance access to finance. Benevolent loan (or Qard-al-Hassanah) is one of the popular financial tools used by the Islamic banks to promote financial inclusion. This aspect of Islamic banking is empirically examined in this paper with specific reference to firm’s resources, largely defined here as intellectual capital. The paper finds that Islamic banks promote financial inclusion by exploiting available resources especially, the human intellectual capital.

Keywords: Financial inclusion, intellectual capital, Qard-al-Hassanah, Islamic banking.

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Authors: Jaroslav Pavlíček

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Company strategy expresses a basic idea of how to reach company objectives. A whole range of models of strategic management are used in practice. The concept of strategic management should fulfill some basic requirements to make it applicable for both the typical, but also more specific company environment. The financial strategy plays an important role in corporate strategy. The paper develops a methodology of strategic model implementing into the category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the methodology recommends procedures while solving an up-to-date worldwide task of the definition of the company strategy and its financial strategy.

Keywords: corporate strategy, financial strategy, corporate planning

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Authors: Edward A. Osifodunrin, Jose Manuel Dias Lopes

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In Nigeria, enormous efforts/resources had, over the years, been expended on promoting financial inclusion (FI); however, it is seemingly discouraging that many of its self-declared targets on FI remained unachieved, especially amongst the Rural Dwellers and Actors in the Informal Sectors (RDAIS). Expectedly, many reasons had been earmarked for these failures: low literacy level, huge informal/rural sectors etc. This study posits that in spite of these truly-debilitating factors, these FI policy failures could have been avoided or mitigated if the principles of active and better-managed citizens’ participation had been strictly followed in the (re)design/implementation of its FI policies. In other words, in a bid to mitigate the prevalent financial exclusion (FE) in Nigeria, this study hypothesizes the significant positive impact of involving the RDAIS in policy-wide decision making in the FI domain, backed by a preliminary empirical validation. Also, the study introduces the RDAIS-focused Participatory Financial Inclusion Policy (PFIP) as a major FI policy regeneration/improvement tool. The three categories of respondents that served as research subjects are FI experts in Nigeria (n = 72), RDAIS from the very rural/remote village of Unguwar Dogo in Northern Nigeria (n = 43) and RDAIS from another rural village of Sekere (n = 56) in the Southern region of Nigeria. Using survey design (5-point Likert scale questionnaires), random/stratified sampling, and descriptive/inferential statistics, the study often recorded independent consensus (amongst these three categories of respondents) that RDAIS’s active participation in iterative FI policy initiation, (re)design, implementation, (re)evaluation could indeed give improved FI outcomes. However, few questionnaire items also recorded divergent opinions and various statistically (in)significant differences on the mean scores of these three categories. The PFIP (or any customized version of it) should then be carefully integrated into the NFIS of Nigeria (and possibly in the NFIS of other developing countries) to truly/fully provide FI policy integration for these excluded RDAIS and arrest the prevalence of FE.

Keywords: Citizens’ participation, development, financial inclusion, formal financial services, national financial inclusion strategy, participatory financial inclusion policy, rural dwellers and actors in the informal sectors.

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Authors: Yosia Mulumba, Klaus Schmidt

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Financial Inclusion is considered a key pillar for development in most countries around the world. Access to affordable financial services in a country’s economy can be a driver to overcome poverty and reduce income inequalities, and thus increase economic growth. Nevertheless, the number of financially excluded populations in developing countries continues to be very high. This paper explores the role of Financial Technology (Fintech) as a key driver for achieving financial inclusion in developing countries post the COVID-19 pandemic with an emphasis on four East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda. The research paper is inspired by the positive disruption caused by the pandemic, which has compelled societies in East Africa to adapt and embrace the use of financial technology innovations, specifically Mobile Money Services (MMS), to access financial services. MMS has been further migrated and integrated with other financial technology innovations such as Mobile Banking, Micro Savings, and Loans, and Insurance, to mention but a few. These innovations have been adopted across key sectors such as commerce, health care, or agriculture. The research paper will highlight the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) that are behind MMS, along with numerous innovative products and services being offered to the customers. It will also highlight the regulatory framework under which these innovations are being governed to ensure the safety of the customers' funds.

Keywords: Financial inclusion, financial technology, regulatory framework, mobile money services.

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Authors: B. Frączek

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The paper analyses the usage of the Internet by university students in Visegrad Countries (4V Countries) who study economic fields in their formal and informal financial education and captures the areas of untapped potential of Internet in educational processes. Higher education and training, technological readiness, and the financial market development are in the group of pillars, that are key for efficiency driven economies. These three pillars have become an inspiration to the research on using the Internet in the financial education among economic university students as the group of the best educated people in finance. The financial education is a process that allows for improving the level of financial literacy. In turn, the financial literacy it is the set of financial knowledge, skills, awareness and patterns influencing the financial decisions. The level of financial literacy influences the level of financial well-being of individuals, determines the scale of saving of households and at the same time gives the greater chance for sustainable and more predictable development of the financial market with the positive impact on economy. The financial literacy is necessary for each group of society but its appropriate level is desirable especially in respect of economics students as future participants of financial markets as well as the experts and advisors in financial decision making. The low level of financial literacy is the great problem of many target groups in both developing and developed countries and the financial education is seen as the best way of improving this situation. Also the financial inclusion plays the special role in enhancing the level of financial literacy in the aspect of education by practice as well as due to interrelation between level of financial literacy and degree of financial inclusion. Despite many initiatives under financial education, the level of financial literacy is still very low. Scientists still search for new ways of solving this problem. One of the proposal is more effective usage of the new technology in financial education, especially the Internet, because of the growing popularity of e-learning and the increasing number of Internet users, especially among young people who are called the Generation Net. Due to special role of the university students studying the economics fields for the future financial markets, students of four universities from Visegrad Countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) were invited to participate in the survey. The aim of the article is to present the level and ways of using the Internet technology in financial education and indicating the so far unused or underused opportunities.

Keywords: Financial education, financial inclusion, financial literacy, usage of Internet in education.

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Authors: Barbora Chmelíková

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Financial literacy is a widely discussed topic on the national and international level by governments, organizations and academia. For this reason, this study analyses financial knowledge, financial behavior, and financial attitudes of students of finance. The aim of the paper is to determine whether the financial literacy of university students studying finance differs from the level of financial literacy in selected OECD countries. The research was conducted at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. The empirical study comprises questions related to several aspects of financial literacy, such as financial knowledge, personal finance behavior, or decisionmaking. The results indicate that improvement in financial literacy of university students is still required, even though their major is finance related.

Keywords: Financial literacy, financial behavior, personal finance management, university students.

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Authors: Birol Yildiz, Abdullah Yalama, Metin Coskun

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Many studies have shown that Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been widely used for forecasting financial markets, because of many financial and economic variables are nonlinear, and an ANN can model flexible linear or non-linear relationship among variables. The purpose of the study was to employ an ANN models to predict the direction of the Istanbul Stock Exchange National 100 Indices (ISE National-100). As a result of this study, the model forecast the direction of the ISE National-100 to an accuracy of 74, 51%.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks, Istanbul StockExchange, Non-linear Modeling.

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Authors: Simeon Karafolas, Maciej Woźniak

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Mostly of public financing programs at national and regional level are funded from European Union sources. EU can participate directly to a national and regional program (example LEADER initiative, URBAN…) or indirectly by funding regional or national funds.Funds from European Union are provided from EU multiannual financial framework form which the annual budget is programmed. The adjusted program 2007-2013 of the EU considered commitments of almost 1 trillion Euros for the EU-28 countries. Provisions of the new program 2014-2020 consider commitments of more than 1 trillion Euros. Sustainable growth, divided to Cohesion and Competitiveness for Growth an Employment, is one of the two principal categories; the other is the preservation and management of natural resources.Through this financing process SMEs benefited of EU and public sources by receiving grants for their investments. Most of the financial instruments are available indirectly through the national financial intermediaries. Part of them is managed by the European Investment Fund.The paper focuses on the public financing to SMEs by examining case studies on divers forms of public help. It tries to distinguish the efficiency of the examined good practices and therefore try to have some conclusions on the possibility of application to other regions.

Keywords: DIFASS, financing, grants, SMEs.

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Authors: M. Ward, J. Franz, B. Adkins

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The lack of inclusive housing in Australia contributes to the marginalization and exclusion of people with disability and older people from family and community life. The Australian government has handed over the responsibility of increasing the supply of inclusive housing to the housing industry through an agreed national access standard and a voluntary strategy. Voluntary strategies have not been successful in other constituencies and little is known about what would work in Australia today. Findings from a research project into the voluntariness of the housing industry indicate that a reliable and consistent supply is unlikely without an equivalent increase in demand. The strategy has, however, an important role to play in the task of changing housing industry practices towards building more inclusive communities.

Keywords: Australia, housing, inclusion, voluntary, industry

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Authors: Muhammad Naveed, Yang Caixia

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The need for national space legislation is pivotal, particularly in light of the fact that in recent years space activities have grown immensely both in volume and diversity. Countries are progressively developing capabilities in space exploration and scientific discoveries, market their capabilities to manufacture satellites, provide launch services from their facilities and are looking to privatize and commercialize their space resources. Today, nations are also seeking to comprehend the technological and financial potential of the private sector and are considering to share their financial burdens with them and to limit their exposures to risks, but they are lagging behind in legal framework in this regard. In the perspective of these emerging developments, it is therefore, felt that national space legislation should be enacted with the goal of building and implementing a vibrant and transparent legal framework at the national level to hasten investments and to ensure growth in this capital intensive - highly yield strategic sector. This study looks at (I) the international legal framework that governs space activities; (II) motivation behind making national space laws; and (III) the need for national space legislation. The paper concludes with some recommendations with regards to the conceivable future direction for national space legislation, in particular space empowered sub-areas for countries.

Keywords: International conventions, national legislation, space faring nation, space law.

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Authors: Mohammed Sani Abdulai

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Ghana’s Public Financial Management reforms have been going on for some two decades now (1997/98 to 2017/18). Given this long period of reforms, Ghana in 2019 is putting together both a Public Financial Management (PFM) strategy and a Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) strategy for the next 5-years (2020-2024). The primary aim of these dual strategies is assisting the country in moving beyond reforms to consolidation and sustainability. In this paper we, first, examined the evolution of Ghana’s PFM reforms. We, secondly, reviewed the legal and institutional reforms undertaken to strengthen the country’s key PFM institutions. Thirdly, we summarized the strengths and weaknesses identified by the 2018 Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessment of Ghana’s PFM system relating to its macro-fiscal framework, budget preparation and approval, budget execution, accounting and fiscal reporting as well as external scrutiny and audit. We, finally, considered what the country should be doing to achieve its intended goal of PFM consolidation and sustainability. Using a qualitative method of review and analysis of existing documents, we, through this paper, brought to the fore the lessons that could be learnt by other developing countries from Ghana’s PFM reforms experiences. These lessons included the need to: (a) undergird any PFM reform with a comprehensive PFM reform strategy; (b) undertake a legal and institutional reforms of the key PFM institutions; (c) assess the strengths and weaknesses of those reforms using PFM performance evaluation tools such as PEFA framework; and (d) move beyond reforms to consolidation and sustainability.

Keywords: Public financial management, public expenditure and financial accountability (PEFA), reforms, consolidation, sustainability.

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Authors: Hans Lödén

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This article discusses superordinate national identity as a means for immigrants integration into democratic polities. It is suggested that a superordinate national identity perceived as inclusive, by immigrants and by the native population, would be conducive to such integration. Command of the dominant language of society is seen as most important of the inclusive criteria. Other such criteria are respect of the country's political institutions and feelings of belonging to the country where you live. The argument is supported by data, showing a majority in favour of inclusive criteria for 'Swedishness', from a recent study among 1000 secondary school students of 'Swedish' and non-'Swedish' backgrounds.

Keywords: Democratic state, exclusion, immigration, inclusion, superordinate national identity, Sweden.

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Authors: Muhammad Suryanegara, Dendi Wijayatullah, Dadang Gunawan

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We review a knowledge extractor model in constructing 3G Killer Applications. The success of 3G is essential for Government as it became part of Telecommunications National Strategy. The 3G wireless technologies may reach larger area and increase country-s ICT penetration. In order to understand future customers needs, the operators require proper information (knowledge) lying inside. Our work approached future customers as complex system where the complex knowledge may expose regular behavior. The hidden information from 3G future customers is revealed by using fractal-based questionnaires. Afterward, further statistical analysis is used to match the results with operator-s strategic plan. The developments of 3G applications also consider its saturation time and further improvement of the application.

Keywords: 3G Killer Applications, Knowledge, Telecommunications Strategy.

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Authors: Wisdom G. Dube, Talent Makoni, Tasiana K. Nyadzayo, Namukolo M. Covic

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Vitamin A deficiency is a public health problem in Zimbabwe. Addressing vitamin A deficiency has the potential of enhancing resistance to disease and reducing mortality especially in children less than 5 years. We implemented and adapted vitamin A outreach supplementation strategy within the National Immunization Days and Extended Programme of Immunization in a rural district in Zimbabwe. Despite usual operational challenges faced this approach enabled the district to increase delivery of supplementation coverage. This paper describes the outreach strategy that was implemented in the remote rural district. The strategy covered 63 outreach sites with 2 sites being covered per day and visited once per month for the whole year. Coverage reached 71% in an area of previous coverage rates of around less than 50%. We recommend further exploration of this strategy by others working in similar circumstances. This strategy can be a potential way for use by Scaling-Up-Nutrition member states.

Keywords: Coverage, Strategy, Supplementation, Vitamin A.

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Authors: Isaias Ramirez, Jose Luis Silva, Carlos Gonzalez, Gustavo Candelaria, Jose Pepe Rasgado, Carlos Carrillo

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This paper presents the experience in an eLearning training project that is being implemented for electrical planning engineers from the national Mexican utility Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) Distribution. This modality is implemented and will be used in the utility for training purposes to help personnel in their daily technical activities. One important advantage of this training project is that once it is implemented and applied, financial resources will be saved by CFE Distribution Company because online training will be used in all the country; the infrastructure for the eLearning training will be uploaded in computational servers installed in the National CFE Distribution Training Department, in Ciudad de Mexico, and can be used in workplaces of 16 Distribution Divisions and 150 Zones of CFE Distribution. In this way, workers will not need to travel to the National Training Department, saving enormous efforts, financial, and human resources.

Keywords: Moodle, eLearning, corporate training, electrical planning engineer.

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Authors: Ashraf Khalil, Salam Abdallah, Khalil Al-hilo, Ebere Iroadu

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Financial literacy is one of the key factors needed in making informed financial decisions. As businesses continue to be more profit driven, more financial and economic intrigues arise that continue to put individuals at the risk of spending more and more without considering the short term and long term effects. We conducted a study to assess financial literacy and financial decision making among Emiratis. Our results show that financial literacy is lacking among Emiratis. Also, almost half of respondents owe loans to other peoples and 1/5 of them have bank loans. We expect that the outcome of this research will be useful for designing educational programs and policies to promote financial planning and security among Emiratis. We also posit that deeper and more informed understanding of this problem is a precursor for developing effective financial education programs with the aim of improving financial decision- making among Emiratis.

Keywords: Financial literacy, loans, financial planning, Emiratis.

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Authors: Ali Hajiesmaeili, Mehdi Rahimi, Ehsan Jaberi, Amir Abbas Hosseini

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The purpose of this study is investigating the influences of logistics performance on organizational performance including both marketing & financial aspects, and showing the financial impacts of selecting the right marketing and logistics priorities in line with their supply chain type, and also giving the practitioners an advance identification of their priorities and participation types of supply chain, and the best combination of their strategies and resources in this regard. We made use of the original model’s questionnaire to gather all expert’s data and also SPSS and AMOS Ver.22 to analyze the gathered data. CFA method was also used to test whether a relationship between observed variables and their underlying latent constructs exists. Supply chain strategy implementation leads to logistics performance improvement, and marketing performance will be affected as well. Logistics service providers should focus on enhancement of supply chain performance, since logistics performance has been considered as a basis of evaluation of supply chain management strategy. Consequently, performance of the organization will be enhanced. This case is the first research made in Iran that analyzes the relationship between Logistics & Organizational performance in Home Appliances and Home Entertainment companies.

Keywords: Logistics, organizational performance, supply chain, supply chain strategy.

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Authors: Marie Paseková, Jiří Strouhal, Lehte Alver, Arturs Praulinš

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During last decades is widely discussed the international harmonization of financial reporting. This harmonization is also affected by national tax systems in analyzed countries. This paper provides some evidence on current national tax systems in selected countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The linkage of accounting profit as a tax base might decrease the administrative burden for majority of SMEs, which are the most important engine of each national economy.

Keywords: International harmonization, tax system, SMEs, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia

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Authors: Jan Sedlacek

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The paper focuses on the implementation phase of the strategy of the European Union and the national strategy of the Czech Republic to promote academic and research staff with the potential to produce results that provide innovation useful for economic growth. It deals with the use of financial resources of the Operational Program Education for Competitiveness at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. The author presents an example of two strategic projects in the field of human resources – Excellence in Human Resources as a Source of Competitiveness and New Excellence of Human Resources. The subject of this paper is the potential contribution of newly recruited postdoctoral within these projects for the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and its internal environment.

Keywords: EU funds, public universities, human resources, results of research, funding.

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Authors: Young Sik Kim, Tae Kwon Ha

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This article considers the problems of economic growth and Russian energy strategy. Also in this paper, the issues related to the economic growth prospects of Russian were discussed. Russian energy strategy without standing Russia`s stature in global energy markets, at the current production and extraction rates, will not be able to sustain its own production as well as fulfil its energy strategy. Indeed, Russia’s energy sector suffers from a chronic lack of investments which are necessary to modernize its energy supply system. In recent years, especially since the international financial crisis, Russia-EU energy cooperation has made substantive progress. Recently the break-through progress has been made, resulting mainly from long-term contributing factors between the countries and recent international economic and political situation changes. Analytical material presented in the article is intended for a more detailed or substantive analysis related to foreign economic relations of the countries and Russia as well.

Keywords: Russia, Energy strategy, Economic growth, Cooperation.

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Authors: Zhenkun Wang, Simon S. Gao

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Using a scoring system, this paper provides a comparative assessment of the quality of data between XBRL formatted financial reports and non-XBRL financial reports. It shows a major improvement in the quality of data of XBRL formatted financial reports. Although XBRL formatted financial reports do not show much advantage in the quality at the beginning, XBRL financial reports lately display a large improvement in the quality of data in almost all aspects. With the improved XBRL web data managing, presentation and analysis applications, XBRL formatted financial reports have a much better accessibility, are more accurate and better in timeliness.

Keywords: Data Quality; Financial Report; Information; XBRL

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Authors: Laura de Zwaan, Tracey West

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There is a sustained observable gender gap in financial literacy, with females consistently having lower levels than males. This research explores the knowledge and experiences of high school students in Australia aged 14 to 18 in order to understand how this gap can be improved. Using a predominantly qualitative approach, we find evidence to support impacts on financial literacy from financial socialization and socio-economic environment. We also find evidence that current teaching and assessment approaches to financial literacy may disadvantage female students. We conclude by offering recommendations to improve the way financial literacy education is delivered within the curriculum.

Keywords: Financial literacy, financial socialization, gender, maths.

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Authors: Abdel Aziz, Hadia H.

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Since the 1980s, banks and financial service institutions have been running in an endless race of innovation to cope with the advancing technology, the fierce competition, and the more sophisticated and demanding customers. In order to guide their innovation efforts, several researches were conducted to identify the success and failure factors of new financial services. These mainly included organizational factors, marketplace factors and new service development process factors. They almost all emphasized the importance of customer and market orientation as a response to the highly perceptual and intangible characteristics of financial services. However, they deemphasized the critical characteristics of high involvement of risk and close correlation with the economic conditions, a factor that heavily contributed to the Global financial Crisis of 2008. This paper reviews the success and failure factors of new financial services. It then adds new perspectives emerging from the analysis of the role of innovation in the global financial crisis.

Keywords: Financial innovation, global financial crisis, lessons learned from global financial crisis, success factors in financial innovation.

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Authors: Andrea Paltrinieri, Alberto Dreassi, Stefano Miani, Alex Sclip

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The financial crises caused a collapse in prices of most asset classes, raising the attention on alternative investments such as sukuk, a smaller, fast growing but often misunderstood market. We study diversification benefits of sukuk, their correlation with other asset classes and the effects of their inclusion in investment portfolios of institutional and retail investors, through a comprehensive comparison of their risk/return profiles during and after the financial crisis. We find a beneficial performance adjusted for the specific volatility together with a lower correlation especially during the financial crisis. The distribution of sukuk returns is positively skewed and leptokurtic, with a risk/return profile similarly to high yield bonds. Overall, our results suggest that sukuk present diversification opportunities, a significant volatility-adjusted performance and lower correlations especially during the financial crisis. Our findings are relevant for a number of institutional investors. Long term investors, such as life insurers would benefit from sukuk’s protective features during financial crisis yet keeping return and growth opportunities, whereas banks would gain due to their role of placers, advisors, market makers or underwriters.

Keywords: Asset allocation, asset performance, sukuk, zero beta asset.

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Authors: Sinee Sankrusme

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Boon Rawd Brewery is a beer company based in Thailand that has an exemplary image, both as a good employer and a well-managed company with a strong record of social responsibility. The most famous of the company’s products is Singha beer. To study the company’s marketing strategy, a case study analysis was conducted together with qualitative research methods. The study analyzed the marketing strategy of Boon Rawd Brewery before the liberalization of the liquor market in 2000. The company’s marketing strategies consisted of the following: product line strategy, product development strategy, block channel strategy, media strategy, trade strategy, and consumer incentive strategy. Additionally, the company employed marketing mix strategy based on the 4Ps: product, price, promotion and place (of distribution).

Keywords: Beer, Boon Rawd Brewery Company, Marketing Strategy.

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Authors: Abigail Qian Zhou

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Since China has entered an era of mass tourism, there has been a fundamental change in the way Chinese people approach and perceive the image of other countries. With the advent of the new media era, social networking sites such as Sina Weibo have become a tool for many foreign governmental organizations to spread and promote their national image. Among them, the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) was one of the first foreign official tourism agencies to register with Sina Weibo and actively implement communication activities. Due to historical and political reasons, cognition of Japan's national image by the Chinese has always been complicated and contradictory. However, since 2015, China has become the largest source of tourists visiting Japan. This clearly indicates that the broadening of Japan's national image in China has been effective and has value worthy of reference in promoting a positive Chinese perception of Japan and encouraging Japanese tourism. Within this context and using the method of content analysis in media studies through content mining software, this study analyzed how JNTO’s Sina Weibo accounts have constructed and spread Japan's national image. This study also summarized the characteristics of its content and form, and finally revealed the strategy of JNTO in building its international image. The findings of this study not only add a tourism-based perspective to traditional national image communications research, but also provide some reference for the effective international dissemination of national image in the future.

Keywords: National image, tourism, international communication, Japan, China.

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Authors: Barbora Chmelíková

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Making sound financial decisions is an essential skill which can have an impact on life of each consumer of financial products. The aim of this paper is to examine decision-making concerning financial matters and personal finance. The selected target group was university students majoring in finance related fields. The study was conducted in the Czech Republic at Masaryk University in 2015. In order to analyze financial decision-making questions related to basic finance decisions were developed to address the research objective. The results of the study suggest gaps in detecting best solutions to given financial decision-making questions among finance students. The analysis results indicate relation between financial decision-making and own experience with holding and using concrete financial products.

Keywords: Financial decision-making, financial literacy, personal finance, university students.

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Authors: Hsiu-Pi Lin, Wen-Chen Huang, Hui-Fang Chen, Yan-Pin Ke

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a new trend of business governance. Few research studies on CSR published in Taiwanese academia, especially for medical settings, we were interested in probing the relationship of CSR and financial performance in medical settings in Taiwan. The results illustrate that: (1) a time delay effect exists with a lag between CSR effort and its performance in the hospital foundation, (2) input into the internal domains of CSR will be helpful to improve employee productivity in the hospital foundation, and (3) input into the external domains of CSR will be helpful in improving financial performance in the hospital foundation. This study overviews CSR in the medical industry in Taiwan and the relationship of CSR and financial performance. Discussions of possible implications from the study results are applied to consult the CSR concept that will be transferred into a business strategy for the organization manager.

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), financialperformance, hospital foundation,

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Authors: K. N. C. Njoku, Chinwendu Best Eleje, Christian Chukwuemeka Nwandu

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One of the problems facing most insurance companies is how best the burden of paying claims to its policy holders can be managed whenever need arises. Hence there is need for the insurer to buy a reinsurance contract in order to reduce risk which will enable the insurer to share the financial burden with the reinsurer. In this paper, the insurer’s and reinsurer’s strategy is investigated under the modified constant elasticity of variance (M-CEV) process and proportional administrative charges. The insurer considered investment in one risky asset and one risk free asset where the risky asset is modeled based on the M-CEV process which is an extension of constant elasticity of variance (CEV) process. Next, a nonlinear partial differential equation in the form of Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equation is obtained by dynamic programming approach. Using power transformation technique and variable change, the explicit solutions of the optimal investment strategy and optimal reinsurance strategy are obtained. Finally, some numerical simulations of some sensitive parameters were obtained and discussed in details where we observed that the modification factor only affects the optimal investment strategy and not the reinsurance strategy for an insurer with exponential utility function.

Keywords: Reinsurance strategy, Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equation, power transformation, M-CEV process, exponential utility.

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