Mikica Drenovak and Vladimir Ranković
Active portfolio management implies periodic rebalancing, i.e. a change in the structure of the existing portfolio. Rebalancing is aimed at improving the performance of the managed portfolio by adjusting it with respect to the given objective. The main objective of this research is to test two portfolio rebalancing strategies, one based on market risk and another on optimal risk-return tradeoff. We use optimal volatility or Sharpe of portfolio as a criterion for the initial portfolio allocation and rebalancing over the observed period. In order to obtain solutions that can be applied in practice, we impose rebalance triggers designed to control the portfolio turnover and corresponding transaction costs. the results suggest that the minimum volatility strategy can be accepted as an eligible investment alternative for risk adverse investors since it provides superior risk performance compared to the reference S&P 100 index and 1/n portfolio, with a relatively low level of turnover and a low rebalance frequency.
Jarosław Kaczmarek
The paper focuses on the phenomenon of a business failure and the assessment of the degree of the financial security of Polish companies, mainly industrial entities, during the period of the economic transformation (1990-2013), with special attention paid to the last economic crisis (2007-2013). With regard to the theoretical and cognitive aspects of the presented issues, attention is paid to corporate crises, the types of crises and their causes as well as the identification and quantification of the symptoms of deteriorating financial conditions. In its empirical dimension, the paper aims to measure the degree of the financial security of Polish industrial companies as well as the trends and dynamics of changes and the corresponding interdependencies. Additionally, the author presents the characteristics of industrial mezzo-structures from the perspective of their stability and the frequency of the movement of objects (changes to ranging positions). Finally, the paper confirms that the degree of financial security can be seen as a symptom of changes to macroeconomic business cycles.
Srđan M. Đinđić
of the repatriation of international income, the effects of the reallocation of international income and the effects of the current and perspective reform tendencies in the EU member countries on the achievements of international tax planning in the Republic of Serbia are valorized. By a meaningful restructuring of its global business transactions, a transnational corporation can gain an „extra” reduction in the effective tax burden, compared to the level of the tax burden standard, overlooked within the officially established procedure of international tax planning (OECD). As long as there are differences in the corporate income tax rates among the countries, there is a realistic incentive for TNCs to locate their income in low-tax countries and their expenses in high-tax countries. The actual reform tendencies in the EU have a two-sided influence on the achievements of tax planning in the Republic of Serbia, in the form of activating non-tax instruments for an improvement of the competitiveness of the Serbian industry as well as in the form of prolonging international pressure on the budget of the Republic of Serbia.
Tran Quang Tuyen
This paper has reviewed recent empirical evidence on the link between nonfarm employment, land and rural livelihoods in the context of increasing a land loss to urbanization and industrialization in some developing countries and Vietnam. It was found that while land is of great importance to a number of countries, it seems to be less important to others. Land shortage can be a positive factor encouraging rural households’ participation in nonfarm activities and improving their welfare in countries in which non-farm job opportunities are available to a large part of the population. Nevertheless, this can negatively affect rural household livelihoods in countries lacking such nonfarm jobs. In Vietnam, nonfarm employment has gained increasing importance to rural livelihoods. In addition, in peri-urban areas where more and more farmland has been lost to rapid urbanization and industrialization, nonfarm employment was found to help households reduce their dependence on farmland and improve their welfare.
Jatinder P. Singh
This article provides an evaluation of translation accounting through a logical and deductive analysis of the concepts. The relationship between the inflation of constituent countries and the methods of translation is explored. It is established that only the Current Value (Purchasing Power Parity) (PPP) Method correctly reports the effects of the inflation of both countries. The Current Rate Method fails to correctly report the effect of the subsidiary country’s inflation and the temporal method does not correctly report the parent country’s inflation. The efficacy of FAS 52 (USA) and the functional currency concept is examined. Under FAS 52, the functional currency determines the method to be adopted for translation and hence the accounts of the subsidiary that are subject to an exchange rate risk. It is, however, argued that the exchange rate risk is related to violations of Purchasing Power Parity. The degree of such violations should, therefore, form the premise on which the functional currency and translation method should be selected.
Fan Yuxian, Yuan Xiaoling, He Songke
This paper represents a study on the dynamic influence of electricity investment on economic growth, which is based on the data from 1953 to 2012, by using the ADF test, the Granger test, the VAR model, the IRF (Impulse Response Function) model and the VEC model. In this research, other factors such as more fixed-asset investment and labor force are involved in the explanatory variables. The results are used to forecast the scenarios of economic growth on different electricity investment projects. The results indicated that electricity investment can strengthen economic growth in a short time when there is a steady equilibrium relationship in the long run. The positive impulse response of economic growth to electricity investment will last for four years. The contribution of electricity investment to economic development has been increasing year by year. The scenario analysis means that an S-shaped electricity investment is better than other investment projects in the promotion of economic growth.
Biljana Jovković
The independent auditor expresses his or her opinion on financial reports, whose primary role is to reduce the asymmetry of information between insurance companies’ management and the existing and potential investors. Through reducing the information risk of the presented financial reports, audit provides the safer making of investment decisions of the users of these reports. In order for this basic function of audit to realize, it is necessary that auditors should collect sufficient pieces of evidence by applying adequate and relevant examination techniques. The goal of this paper is to point at the specific position of audit when an insurance company is a client, and in this regard, at a need for the differentiation of the priorities of individual audit objectives as well as the necessity of the customization of the implemented evidencecollection techniques implemented in an audit engagement with an insurance company simultaneously respectfully referring to the prescribed ordinary procedures imposed by the professional regulation. In the paper, an attempt has been made to comprehensively analyze the effectiveness of individual evidencecollection techniques for the purpose of proving the achievement of each individual objective of the audit as well as their different applicability in the examination of certain balance-sheet positions in financial reports of insurance companies.
Milan Kostić
The concept of the relevant market is very important for the competition policy. The assessment of the market power of the economic entities operating on a relevant market depends on the market size. The relevant market has two dimensions – the production and the geographic ones – hence, there are a relevant product market and a relevant geographic market. The purpose of the paper is to show the possible ways of determining the relevant market boundaries, in an explicit and systematic way, by applying appropriate tests, and on the example of the specific Serbian market. In the paper, two important tests to determine the boundaries of the market have been applied: the Price Correlation Test and the Goods Physical Movement Test (the Elzinga-Hogarty test). The tests are very useful in situations where researchers only possess secondary data and want to determine the boundaries of the market based on them. The disadvantages of the tests, which of course exist, do not diminish their importance; therefore, they are very useful and recommended for determining the scope of the market.
Katja Crnogaj, Karin Širec
High-growth companies, gazelles, are responsible for stimulating economic growth and development through extreme growth rates (employment, income, assets, value-added etc.). Consequently, exploring highgrowth companies may offer valuable insights into promoting dynamic entrepreneurship in contemporary society. In this paper, we are examining high-growth companies and their socio-economic contribution through a company’s size, because the size dimension is an important characteristic affecting the level of employment and making important contributions to employment growth. Based on the national ranking of the 500 fastest-growing companies, based on the income statement data (sales growth in the 5-year period), we compare the gazelles with the average of all Slovenian companies. The findings provide evidence of the gazelles’ considerable contribution to employment and the creation of an added (new) value. Company growth can also be measured on the basis of other parameters and therefore, in one part of our analysis, we limit the use of the measures to the relative employment growth – the DaBeg index. The results have shown that the growth patterns among the companies are very heterogeneous and that innovative fast-growing companies make a valuable socio-economic contribution. As such, gazelles require effective supportive measures of government policies, aimed at encouraging and promoting growth-oriented entrepreneurship.
Nebojša Janićijević
In this paper, the causal relationship between certain dimensions of a national culture and certain organizational change strategies are analyzed. The paper uses two of the four dimensions of national culture, identified by G. Hofstede: the power distance and masculinity–femininity ones. On the other hand, the four organizational change strategies have been differentiated: the coercive strategy, the normative-reeducative strategy, the rational-empirical strategy and the creative strategy. The identified dimensions of national culture and the identified organizational change strategies differ from one another with respect to the same criteria: the distribution of power and task orientation versus people orientation. Based on this fact, it is possible to establish eight hypotheses about a causal relationship between certain types of national cultures and certain organizational change strategies.