Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

To test the usefulness of the Beneish model, we use a unique, not publicly available database from the Financial Administration of the Slovak Republic, aggregating the results of all on-site financial inspections conducted by this authority during 2015 – 2019. This database is paired with firm-level accounting data from the Registry of Financial Statements and the Business Register to obtain additional corporate governance data. Our results indicate that (a) the performance of the Beneish model is inferior for the Slovak data; (b) there are several significant financial variables with statistical and economic significance, but their relevance is conditional on the industry group; and (c) corporate governance indicators appear to be more relevant preventive factors of fraudulent behavior, especially foreign ownership, female CEO and corporate social responsibility.

We investigated the link between stock returns of automobile companies, Fama French factors, and behavioral attention, represented by demand for a selected car brand belonging to an automobile company. Using Google search activity, we focus on the impact of searches about car brands on 17 automobile companies from 2004 to 2020. We concluded that even though general intuition provides positive results, negative historical events can result in a fall in prices in some cases. Dieselgate, an event specific to this industry, engulfed the affected company and resulted in an EU-wide scandal; however, the increase in interest did have not the same effect on automobile companies based in other countries.

The main purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of institutional quality on FDI inflows in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries by using the panel autoregressive distributed lag of pooled mean group (ARDL-PMG) over the period 1996 – 2017. The results reveal that institutional quality is an important factor attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) over the long term to countries with low quality of institutions. In the short term, in contrast, the relationship is not significant. Institutional quality does not play any significant role in attracting FDI to the countries with sound institutions in either long or short terms. When considering components of institutional quality, property rights have the greatest impact on FDI flows. Finally, when considering a non-linear relationship between institutional quality and FDI inflows, we find diminishing returns of institutional quality on FDI flows for the whole sample. This paper contributes to the literature by considering both the different individual aspects of institutional quality and a broad composite measure of institutional quality in order to analyse their impact on FDI inflows. Additionally, the study applies the CS-ARDL method as a robustness check, in addition to the ARDL-PMG. The scope of this study is limited as it only examines the impact of institutional quality on overall foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, rather than analysing sector-specific FDI flows.

The paper examines the relationship between bank lending activity and economic-policy uncertainty, using data from 1998 to 2018 for 7,844 banks from the European Union (28). Our findings demonstrate a negative impact of European uncertainty on bank lending. Importantly, we observe heterogeneity within the EU. While the impact on Western European countries is statistically significant, this effect has not been confirmed for Central and Eastern European Countries. This heterogeneity is also evident using different model specifications.