Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

This paper analyses the determinants of financial risk attitudes and portfolio allocations as established by large-scale surveys in developed countries. After a literature review the paper proceeds with an analysis of two large-scale surveys on financial risk attitudes and the ownership of financial products in Slovakia. Risk attitudes are examined via a stated and revealed preference over portfolio allocations. Two dependent variables were used to test assumptions on investment choices: subjective financial risk tolerance (expressed via stated preferences over hypothetical portfolios) and objective risk tolerance (expressed via the actual share of risky investments out of the total financial assets). The standardised regression coefficients indicated that the risk attitudes seemed to be the most important predictors of both subjective and objective risk tolerance, followed by perceived and actual experience with financial investments. Socio-demographic variables (gender, age, education) had a relatively lower impact on portfolio allocations.

In this study, we estimate the size of capital flight and its spillover effect on domestic investment in selected European economies during the 2006 – 2016 period. The results based on the fixed effects ordinary least squares method suggest that capital flight has an adverse impact on investment in the economies included in our sample. As a robustness check, we also use the system generalized method of moments (GMM). Our results based on a mix of emerging and advanced economies are fairly similar with previous studies based on emerging economies alone (Yalta, 2010) and developing economies (Ndiaye, 2009).

The paper analyses the effects and measures the intensity of economic co-operation that Serbia has achieved with the member countries of the Visegrad Group (V4 Group) from 2000 until today. The starting hypothesis is that the common cultural and historical heritage, the geographical proximity of the market and the common experience of the economic transition process can be an incentive for the development of economic cooperation between Serbia and the countries of the V4 Group. A gravity econometric model Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator was used to test the hypothesis. The results of the research confirm a significantly positive impact of the GDP of Serbia and the observed countries, a significantly negative impact of distance and a significantly positive effect of the neighbourhood on bilateral trade flows. Predictors related to the quality of institutions also have a significant positive effect on increasing bilateral trade cooperation between Serbia and the V4 Group.

Recently, the popularity of building savings has grown. Many people thus are faced with selecting a suitable product. Unfortunately, most clients sign a contract with the bank holding their current account and/or other products. In this simplified manner of choosing, customer’s preferences are often unnecessarily suppressed. To eliminate this, or to select the building savings most appropriate to customer’s needs, a complex user-friendly multi-criteria evaluation procedure is proposed. This approach can consider, as opposed to other well-known methods, all requirements and conditions of a building savings selection. The application power of the proposed concept is illustrated using real situations that can occur on the Czech market. Two most frequent types of client are specified (primarily oriented to a deposit return, and getting a loan). Besides “standard” situations, some more specific cases (a non-traditional savings period of nine years, or building savings for children) are also studied in order to have a greater impact of study to the practice with this product. For each savings strategy, the most suitable building savings is selected. Subsequently, the results are compared and analysed.

Identification and specification of the key attributes influencing the considerations about implementation of a future cross-border merger or acquisition (M&A) are the main objective of the paper. Based on the views of managers from 165 international corporations located in 45 EEA countries that had previously been the subject of a cross-border M&A, significant attributes relating to their experience from its implementation were extracted. By means of the Principal Component Analysis with Varimax Rotation, three key attributes of implementation of a potential M&A process were extracted and labeled as Aims, Concerns, and Reasons. The content specification of the individual attribute items, as well as the basic parameters of the AFM&A (Attributes of Future Mergers and Acquisitions) methodology – Eigenvalues, Cronbach’s alpha values, and percentage of the variance explained, and the results of an analysis of differences in the assessment of the extracted factors by managers – are further presented in the proposed contribution. In terms of the gender-based differences, female managers scored higher in the Concerns attribute, whereas male managers reached higher scores in the attribute of Reasons, which represents the importance they attach to these attributes in terms of a future cross-border M&A process.