Procedia Economics and Finance最新文献

For years, traditional finance has always presumed that investors are rational in their decision making process in the stock market about risk return trade-offs and maximizing utility. However, behavioral finance studies revealed that human beings do not behave as rationally as economists suppose as their decisions at times are affected by their psychological feelings. Numerous studies from ASEAN, Middle East and Western countries have in fact established that psychological factors do have relationships and impacts on the decision making of investors in their stock markets. In light of this, this research attempts to bridge the gap of the differences in terms of geographical location and demographic profile between Malaysia and other countries by examining the impact of the psychological factors on investors’ decision making in the Malaysian stock market. Questionnaires are distributed to a sample size of 200 investors in the Klang Valley and Pahang areas aged between 18-60 years who are involved in the Malaysian stock market. The findings show that overconfidence, conservatism and availability bias have significant impacts on the investors’ decision making while herding behavior has no significant impact on the investors’ decision making. It is also found that the psychological factors are dependent of individual's gender. The results of this research are mostly consistent with the evidences in previous studies. This study, hopefully, will help investors to be aware of the impact of their own psychological factors on their decision making in the stock market, thus increasing the rationality of investment decisions for enhanced market efficiency.

The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between institutions and macro-economic performance in terms of developing countries. For this purpose, for a period covering the years 2000-2011 through the use of 23 institutional structure variables in the study, the relationship between the institutional structure and macro-economic performance is investigated in sampling countries where 38 developing countries take place by using the ‘Panel Data Analysis’ method. The results of the analysis reveals that institutional structure indicators such as the integrity of the law system, regulations on trade barriers, restriction of foreign investments, the share of the private sector in the banking system and employment-dismissal variables have a positive effect on the macro-economic performance of the developing countries. On the other hand, according to the analysis results, variables such as judiciary independence, government expenditures, transfers and subsidies, civil freedoms, the black market exchange rate, collective bargaining and military tutelage (political stability) have been seen to have a negative impact on the macro-economic performances of developing countries.

This study aims to analyze the profitability in Islamic Banks and Conventional Banks in Malaysia. The study uses the period of the year 2006 to until the year 2011. In methodology, this research using T-Test Model, Regression and Correlation. Meanwhile, data are collected from the Bursa Malaysia and bank website in Malaysia. This study finds that Islamic Banks are more profitable than Conventional Banks whereas Total Loan to Total Asset for Islamic bank is higher than Conventional bank. Based on Regression test, for Conventional Banks, ROE is an influence profitability of Conventional Bank.and for Islamic Banks, ROA and ROE are significant factor that influence profitability. Based on Correlation test, ROE is an influence profitability of Conventional Bank and for Islamic Banks, ROA and ROE are significant relationship with independent variable which is Total Equity to Total Asset.

There are fewer women prefer the engineering fields compared to men. Many obstacles are existed which suspend women from the engineering, and examinations of three of them is the aim of this study. The obtained findings from the literature review results and based on the related studies held in Turkey and other countries, it has been tried to analyze the three obstacles: the existence of male-dominated organizational culture at work, the existence of the presence of lack of job satisfaction at work, and the existence of the work-family conflicts, that are confronting women in entering and remaining in engineering occupations. In the application part of this research, via the findings from the literature, the survey covers 112 women employees graduated from the engineering domain. The research was done particularly in the city of Istanbul, Turkey. From the answers of the participants, it has been attempted to find out their views, feelings and opinions about the existence of the three barriers are mentioned above, according to their demographic peculiarities. The finding are showed that these reasons, which are the existence of the men-dominated organizational culture, the presence of lack of job satisfaction, and the work-family conflict are existed and confronted women from entering and remaining in engineering occupations.

This study aims to identify the factors that shape the Generation Y to adopt renewable energy. Four independent variables are used i.e. environmental concern, consumer belief, consumer knowledge, and relative advantages of renewable energy. A total of 200 respondents from one of the Malaysian Government-Linked University are used in this current study. Moreover, descriptive, reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity using Partial Least Square (PLS) are mainly used to analyse the data. The results indicate that environmental concern and relative advantages of renewable energy have significantly influence the adoption of renewable energy. However, consumer belief and consumer knowledge are insignificant with renewable energy adoption among Generation Y.

This paper identifies and codifies the main European Maritime clustering preconditions and obstacles according to their significant features, associated with increase of Productivity, Innovations and Competitiveness. The work systematizes features of preconditions specific to Maritime clustering. These features are combined into constructive groups of preconditions in accordance with the impact of preconditions on the increase of Productivity, Innovations and Competitiveness. The obstacles of Maritime clustering are indicated as barriers on the increase of Productivity, Innovations and Competitiveness.

The study on customer complaining behaviour has received significant attention over the past decades. Generally, customers expect a fair treatment for the investments made in a relationship with the organisation. Hence, perceived unfairness will create an impression that they have been betrayed, and thus motivate them to complain as a way of expressing dissatisfaction. In extreme cases, they might opt for aggressive complaining to compensate unfairness. In this study, the term aggressive complaining will be replaced by customer voice retaliation (CVR). Based on previous literatures, a framework was developed to measure CVR which consist of three constructs. The aim of this study is to verify the construct for a new CVR framework. Rasch analysis was used to examine reliability for both respondents and items. It should give us the list of items that should be included in measuring the CVR constructs. Sample used for the study were 27 for pre-testing, and 66 for the pilot study. Respondents consisted of subscribers who had experienced dissatisfaction, and had to some extent performed complaining behaviour. From the pre-test analysis, item polarity indicates that all items were measuring in the same direction. Similarly, the summary statistic from the pilot study indicated that item reliability and item separation was 0.95 and 4.39 respectively, while for person reliability and person separation was 0.95 and 4.6 respectively. However, the result from the pilot test for model Unidimensionality suggested the existence of a secondary dimension which was a possible contributor to multicollinearity problem. This indicates that items for measuring CVR needs to be reviewed and instrument construct validity call for further refinement.

The pension systems of the post-Soviet space, which had in the background one of the best in the world USSR PAYG (pay-as-you-go) basis, currently continue to evolve and improve. Some of the countries have made major pension changes, while others start their first reforms. How implemented various pension reforms impact on the retirement benefits and wealth of pensioners: pensions, their indexation, pension ages, and life expectancy?

In this article we consider the results of pension reforms on the example of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, which entered three different pension models: PAYG, fully-funded, and mixed, respectively. We found that PAYG pension system is more suitable and beneficial now for pensioners. However, the advantages of other pension models may appear in the future due to demographic and economic reasons.

After the period of financial liberalization, the activities of firms can create signals for financial and macroeconomic environment and the relationship between financial and macroeconomic variables can be captured by firm-based empirical evidence. From this point of, we employ panel least squares method to investigate the interactions between the balance sheets accounts of US firms in biotechnology, telecommunications and transportation sectors. Our results expose that the technology level is not sufficient to promote the activity of firms and their liquidity. It is also revealed that the number of employee positively affects the cash account whereas the property account does not have a significant impact on cash. According to our estimations, we suggest that an optimal empirical framework should be derived to capture the microeconomic origins of macroeconomic developments in terms of effects of total productivity shocks in those sectors.