Improving the Methodology for Assessing the Effectiveness of Economic Entities in Modern Conditions

Modern conditions impose special requirements to the assessment of economic entities. Efficiency is an important parameter of the activity of any business. The present research involved a critical analysis of standard methods for assessing the effectiveness of both domestic and foreign practices. The analysis revealed a need to apply new approaches to business efficiency assessment because the standard approach is not systematic and its indicators repeat themselves. The article offers a new conceptual methodological approach to understanding the term efficiency. The new methodological concept is hybrid in nature and includes classical economic, financial, and institutional methods. It also adopts some methods and approaches from management and natural sciences. The authors built a comprehensive model for assessing the effectiveness of an economic entity in modern conditions. It is based on the idea that the optimal methods are those that do not use relative indicators. This model includes three levels of indicators: standard, qualitative, and synergistic. The new approach is systemic and corresponds to modern economic environment, which resolves the issue of relative performance indicators.

PERCEPTIONS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN MALAWI: A COUNTRY CONTEXT UNDERSTANDING OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Entrepreneurship is considered a strategy for economic development, but other scholars found that it does not bring economic growth in developing countries. Although entrepreneurship has multiple perspectives, there is a lack of knowledge about prevailing perceptions and activities undertaken in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this study was to measure the perceptions of entrepreneurship in Malawi to have country context knowledge of the concept that guides what is undertaken as entrepreneurship. A cross-sectional survey of 337 enterprise owners and managers was undertaken using a questionnaire. Participants were requested to provide their top-of-the-mind definitions of entrepreneurship and activities their enterprises had undertaken which were considered entrepreneurial. Analyses of definitions and activities undertaken were used to draw out perceptions of entrepreneurship. The study found that starting and managing one's own business for profit, creating jobs, and being self-employed is the prevailing understanding of entrepreneurship in Malawi. The study further found low innovation among enterprises. Although the perceptions found reflect classical economic perspectives, they are inadequate to ignite economic development because of a lack of focus on innovation. The findings imply that understanding a concept is important in practice. Therefore, stakeholders are encouraged to appraise their knowledge about entrepreneurship to align with theories where entrepreneurship is the driver of business growth and economic development. Further studies are required on the relationships between perceptions of entrepreneurship, activities undertaken, and economic development to advance entrepreneurial knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Contribution of Lionel Robbins’ essay to economic psychology

Nowadays economic psychology is a field of science that has serious potential to compete classical economic theories. Many contemporary authors are interested in the discipline which is proved by the variety of emerging branches of economic psychology. Some of them are economists, other psychologists, but a small percentage of them have both economic and psychological education. This pattern explains some serious misunderstandings in the scientific literature in the field. The lack of understanding of both sciences at the same time leads to extremes in the conclusions, which in turn are not accepted as universally valid by economists and psychologists. Мoreover, the literature on the subject written by economists and psychologists seems very different. Economists attach more importance to the results of economic choice, while psychologists analyze primarily the causes for it. However, the connection between the two disciplines is indisputable. Despite the variety of branches of economic psychology, it is worth paying attention to the first work in the field written by an economist, which gives fundamental answers that modern scientists seem to miss. Lionel Robbins essay represents an extraordinary balance between the economic and the psychological issues, united in an ideal symbiosis.

Testing the Role of Contextual Deliberation in the Compromise Effect

Many phenomena of preference construction demonstrate a violation of the rationality premise in classical economic theories. One of the most well-known examples of preference construction is the compromise effect. This puzzling anomaly can be rationalized by contextual deliberation (i.e., endogenous information retrieval/acquisition that can partially resolve utility uncertainty before choice). In this research, we investigate the empirical validity of this explanation by performing falsification tests for its necessary predictions and identifying it from other potential accounts. We conduct five experiments with more than 1,000 participants and show that the compromise effect can be positively mediated by response time and cannot be eliminated by context information, but it can be moderated by manipulating the level of deliberation (i.e., time constraint, preference articulation, task order). These findings are consistent with the predictions of the theory of contextual deliberation. We also show that, on average, contextual deliberation (as proxied by response time) can uniquely account for about half of the total compromise effect. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis

Relationship Between Selected Macroeconomic Variables and the Financial Performance of Investment Banks in Kenya

Currently, investment banks in Kenya are facing a lot of challenges due to persistence losses. However, the available studies are inadequate to aid investment banks in overcoming these challenges in Kenya due to mixed findings, resulting in rising uncertainty on equity investments’ performance, leading to massive losses among investment banks.  This study, therefore, sought to model the relationship between inflation, GDP, interest rates, exchange rates, and financial performance of investment banks. Arbitrage pricing theory, Modern portfolio theory as well as classical economic theory (flow-oriented model) was used. A causal research design was adopted. The study found that inflation has negative significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. Also, GDP has positive and significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. Interest rate was also found to have negative and significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. In addition, exchange rate has negative significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. The study therefore recommends any investor including financial investors to methodically analyze inflation trends and understand how it affects the company’s financial performance. Investors must also be in a position to predict the future concerning inflation changes.

Relationship Between Selected Macroeconomic Variables and the Financial Performance of Investment Banks in Kenya

Currently, investment banks in Kenya are facing a lot of challenges due to persistence losses. However, the available studies are inadequate to aid investment banks in overcoming these challenges in Kenya due to mixed findings, resulting in rising uncertainty on equity investments’ performance, leading to massive losses among investment banks.  This study, therefore, sought to model the relationship between inflation, GDP, interest rates, exchange rates, and financial performance of investment banks. Arbitrage pricing theory, Modern portfolio theory as well as classical economic theory (flow-oriented model) was used. A causal research design was adopted. The study found that inflation has negative significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. Also, GDP has positive and significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. Interest rate was also found to have negative and significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. In addition, exchange rate has negative significant influence on financial performance of equity investments among investment banks in Kenya. The study therefore recommends any investor including financial investors to methodically analyze inflation trends and understand how it affects the company’s financial performance. Investors must also be in a position to predict the future concerning inflation changes.

Sustainability Issues of Women Street Vegetable & Flower Entrepreneurs in Goa: Need for State Interventions

In the wave of globalisation and the neo-classical economic doctrine of ‘market expansion and state compression’, the footprints of women street entrepreneurs are fast disappearing from our economy. The women street entrepreneurship provided a wonderful opportunity for inclusive growth narratives in rural areas among the economically and socially challenged sections. The advent liberalisation–privatisation–globalisation (LPG) process robbed even the public space available to the women street entrepreneurs in Goa 1 especially, the women and their death-knell became louder and clearer with every passing day.

MODELING THE INFLUENCE OF THE STRUCTURE AND QUALITY OF ASSETS ON THE PROFITABILITY OF A COMMERCIAL BANK

In modern conditions, the methods of classical economic analysis are not enough to solve the problem of bank stability. This requires the development of methods and tools to analyze the current situation in the bank and to develop sound management decisions aimed at ensuring the stability of the bank. The article notes that the analysis of the influence of the structure and quality of assets on the profitability of commercial banks is an important step for assessing the financial position and reliability of a bank, and a method is proposed for constructing a model of the dependence of bank’s profitability on the factors that determine it. The scientific sources were the works of Russian and foreign researchers in the field of modeling and characteristics of the banking system, financial stability of credit institutions, assessment of the creditworthiness of potential borrowers, system organization and information technology. The article uses the methods of economic analysis, differential calculus and mathematical statistics, as well as the achievements of the main scientific schools dealing with the problems of economic and mathematical modeling and economic analysis of banking. In order to determine the most significant economic factors affecting the profitability of commercial banks, generalization of the theoretical, methodological and applied aspects of studies devoted to the study of the influence of the structure and quality of assets on the profitability of commercial banks was carried out, and a correlation and regression analysis was made. The model presented in the article can be used to predict changes in the profitability of Russian commercial banks and to predict promising directions for growth in profit and profitability of the bank.

Pluralist Economics as a Democratizing Force: A Review Essay about The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics and Democratizing the Economics Debate: Pluralism and Research Evaluation

The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics and Democratizing the Economics Debate: Pluralism and Research Evaluation, two recently published books about heterodox economics and its role in broader academic and policy discourses, serve as an antidote to some recent popular narratives equating economics and economists with policies that are inherently pro-market, anti-regulation, and based in neoclassical theories. These texts illuminate challenges in current economic discourse about (1) the place of economic pluralism, (2) the role economics and economists should play in guiding policy relative to other social science disciplines, and (3) the consequences of the reliance of policy-makers on economists that train at the most elite institutions that are likely to recommend a narrow band of policies informed by a restricted range of economic theories. The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics, edited by Tae-Jee Ho, Lynne Chester, and Carlo D’Ippoliti, presents positive visions for new questions that heterodox economists are researching, alternative explanations for global economic dynamics, and a counter-narrative to the notion that economists are bound to propose neoliberal policies based on neoclassical and new classical economic theories, and that economic analysis must demonstrate causality using different statistical methodologies to validate its rigor. Carlo D’Ippoliti’s Democratizing the Economics Debate examines the dialectical process by which economic rankings prioritize economic work informed by a narrow range of theories, and serve as a springboard for economists studying and working at the most elite institutions to land in powerful government advisory positions. D’Ippoliti highlights the stakes for governments that continue to hire economic policymakers from these top-tier programs with limited demonstrated curiosity in theories that might be considered heterodox, and the benefits for the economics discipline as a whole for better engagement with pluralist economics writ large.