Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science

Editorial: 58th issue of the Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science

Luis Chavez-Bedoya — 2024-10-10

We introduce the December edition, our 58th issue, of the Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science (JEFAS). Our journal consistently delivers outstanding publications in English twice a year, all subjected to double-blind peer-review processes.

The first paper authored by García Mata (2023) examines the relationship between age and financial stress among Mexican adults, focusing on identifying the age of peak financial stress. Using data from the National Survey on Financial Inclusion 2021, a financial stress indicator is constructed through confirmatory factor analysis and linear regression with a quadratic term. The findings reveal a quadratic relationship, with financial stress peaking at age 56, influenced by factors such as sex, marital status, number of dependents, education and region. These insights are valuable for financial product designers and policymakers aiming to enhance consumer well-being.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-11-2024-336

At what age do Mexicans suffer the most financial stress?

Osvaldo Garcıa Mata — 2024-10-10

Purpose

Needs change as people get older. Procuring resources to satisfy them can generate anguish and insecurities in consumers due to their financial situation. This study aims to analyze the relationship between age and financial stress among Mexican adults and estimate the age of their maximum financial stress.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on constructing a financial stress indicator using the confirmatory factor analysis and linear regression models with a quadratic term, employing data from the National Survey on Financial Inclusion 2021.

Findings

Results show that the relationship between age and financial stress follows a quadratic pattern, with a maximum level at age 56, which varies according to sex, marital status, number of dependents, education and regions. These findings interest financial product designers and policy developers who aim to improve consumers' well-being.

Research limitations/implications

Longitudinal studies and indicators, such as financial fragility, are needed to facilitate refining models over time.

Originality/value

There is no evidence of studies that have addressed the age of maximum financial stress in Latin America. Doing so is relevant because identifying the stages in life when adults are most vulnerable to financial stress helps assess its causes more precisely, thus mitigating its adverse effects.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-04-2023-0087

Evolution of trade and productive integration in Latin America, 1995–2015: an input-output analysis

Raul Vázquez-López — 2024-10-10

Purpose

The main goal of this paper is to examine the evolution of Latin American productive integration in terms of the regional value added incorporated in intra-regional exports of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. In addition, the study traces the trade and productive integration trajectories for each of these countries from 1995 to 2015.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the use of OECD’s global ICIO input-output tables, this paper applies the methodological framework by Wang et al. (2018) for the analysis of trade flows at the bilateral level, which allows breaking down the value of gross exports of each sector-country, depending on the origin of the value added contained in exports, as well as their use.

Findings

The estimates show very low shares of value added from regional partners in the intra-regional exports of the countries studied. Conversely, the weight of the value added incorporated in these exports by countries outside the region has increased in tandem with China’s expanding involvement in Latin America. This development, along with the downward trend in domestic value added incorporated in exports, indicates a lack of a regional integration process of any depth.

Originality/value

This article addresses an economic problem of conventional importance from a global value chain perspective using a novel methodology based on the use of global input–output tables.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-09-2022-0202

The mediating role of marketing management in the relationship between online presence and product innovation among SMEs

Allan Perez-Orozco — 2024-10-10

Purpose

This study explores the mediating role of marketing management in the relationship between online presence and product innovation among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Design/methodology/approach

The sample comprises 205 Costa Rican SMEs collected by the Global Competitiveness Project during the first half of 2019. The data were analyzed using a two-stage modeling strategy for ordinary regression models to analyze mediation effects.

Findings

Marketing management as a strategic resource or capability accounts for the relationship between online presence and product innovation performance in SMEs, meaning that online presence resources require complementary organizational capabilities in marketing management to enhance product innovation.

Originality/value

This study, grounded in the resource-based view theory, contributes to the innovation field by identifying marketing management capabilities as an intermediate strategic interaction between online presence and product innovation performance in SMEs. Thus, managers should recognize the advantages of integrating marketing management principles and tactics into online presence tools to realize the value of their products by tailoring them to their client’s needs.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-04-2022-0087

Financial technology and economic growth nexus in the East African community states

Chi Aloysius Ngong — 2024-10-10

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the causation linking financial technology to economic growth in the East African Community states from 1997 to 2019.

Design/methodology/approach

Autoregressive distributed lag is used. Gross domestic product per capita proxies economic growth, automated teller machines, point of sale, debit card ownership and mobile banking measure financial technology.

Findings

The results unveil a significant relationship between financial technology and economic growth. The findings show bidirectional causality between automated teller machine and economic growth, with unidirectional causation from economic growth to point of sales and internet banking, mobile banking and government effectiveness to economic growth. The error correction term is negatively significant, demonstrating a long-term convergence between Fintech measures and economic growth.

Research limitations/implications

The governments should effectively enact and implement policies that protect investments in financial technologies to boost economic growth in the East African Community countries. The government should reduce taxes on financial technology equipment and related services. The use of automated teller machine, debit card ownership and internet banking should be encouraged through cashless transactions. Financial institutions should adopt cashless operation policies to encourage the use of financial technologies.

Originality/value

Research results on the bond between financial technology and economic growth are not conclusive. These studies demonstrate that technological innovations are double edged-swords, with both positive and negative sides. The results are conflicting; some reveal positive relationships, while others show negative links. Hence, research is required to fill the lacuna.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-01-2022-0009

Stock splits and reverse splits in the Brazilian capital market

Daniel Werner Lima Souza de Almeida — 2024-10-10

Purpose

This study aims to evaluate the presence of abnormal returns due to stock splits or reverse stock splits in the Brazilian capital market context.

Design/methodology/approach

The event study technique was used on data from 518 events that occurred in a 30-year period (1987–2016), comprising 167 stock splits and 351 reverse stock splits.

Findings

The results revealed the occurrence of abnormal returns around the time the shares began trading stock splits or reverse stock splits at a statistical significance level of 5%. The main conclusion is that stock split and reverse stock split operations represent opportunities for extraordinary gains and may serve as a reference for investment strategies in the Brazilian stock market.

Originality/value

This study innovates by including reverse stock splits, as the existing literature focuses on stock splits, and by testing two distinct “zero” dates that of the ordinary general meeting that approved the share alteration and the “ex” date of the alteration, when the shares were effectively traded, reverse split or split.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-08-2021-0168

Islamic banks' contribution to Indonesia districts' economic growth and poverty alleviation

Junaidi Junaidi — 2024-10-10

Purpose

This research investigates the Islamic banks’ intermediation role (e.g. branches and deposits) in financing. It also examines how financing contributes to the regions' economic growth and poverty alleviation as a predictor and mediator variable.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 297 observations were extracted from 33 Indonesian districts and 14 Islamic banks during the period 2012–2020. Fixed-effect regression analysis was used to examine variable’s interactions.

Findings

The empirical results indicate that Islamic banks have adopted a channelling role towards redistributing capital from lender to borrower. Besides, there are crucial roles in developing economies and reducing poverty at the district level. This study also reinforces the critical role of financing in mediating the relationship between branches and deposits as predictor variables and GDP and poverty as outcome variables.

Research limitations/implications

The current study was limited to Indonesian Islamic banks and the district’s perspective. Future research needs to cover sub-districts and other poverty measurements (e.g. human education and development perspectives), including conventional and Islamic banks. It can help practitioners, regulators and researchers observe the dynamic behaviour of the banking sector to understand its role in the economic and social fields.

Practical implications

Bank managers and regulators should promote branches, deposits and financing. It also enlightens people about the essential role of Islamic banks and their fundamental operations in business and economics.

Originality/value

This study contributes to economic literature, bank managers and local governments' decision-making processes by developing and testing an economic growth and poverty model.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-06-2021-0097

Short-term effects of productive credit, savings and money demand on Ecuador’s economic growth, 2006–2020

Armando Urdaneta Montiel — 2024-10-10

Purpose

This paper aims to determine causal relationships between the level of productive credit, real deposits and money demand – all of them in real terms – and Gross National Product between 2006 and 2020.

Design/methodology/approach

The vector autoregressive technique (VAR) was used, where data from real macroeconomic aggregates published by the Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE) are correlated, such as productive credit, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, deposits and money demand.

Findings

The results indicate that there is no causal relationship, in the Granger sense, between GDP and financial activity, but there is between the growth rate of real money demand per capita and the growth rate of total real deposits per capita.

Originality/value

The study shows that bank credit mainly finances the operations of current assets and/or liabilities. In addition, economic agents use the banking system mainly to carry out transactional and precautionary activities.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-03-2023-0081

Does capital efficiency influence economic growth in Bangladesh? Application of the Harrod-Domar model

Sakib Bin Amin — 2024-10-10

Purpose

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of capital efficiency on the economic growth of Bangladesh using the Harrod-Domar (H-D) model.

Design/methodology/approach

We use annual data from 1980 to 2019 for this paper. Three steps are taken in the data analysis. First, to check the existence of a unit root, we use the augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test and to determine co-integration among the variables, we use the Johansen-Juselius co-integration test. Next, for long-run estimation, we use the dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) estimator. The sensitivity of the long-run estimations is further checked by the fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) estimators. Lastly, we use the Granger causality test to determine the long-run causality among the variables.

Findings

The long-run co-integration test validates the co-integrating relationship among the variables. DOLS estimations reveal that the economic growth of Bangladesh is negatively associated with the incremental capital output ratio (ICOR), validating the notion that capital efficiency matters for achieving higher economic growth. On average, an increase in ICOR by a unit tends to reduce economic growth in the long term by 0.75 percent. Our results also reveal no significant relationship between savings and economic growth when the model is extended. Finally, causality results indicate unidirectional causality between ICOR and economic growth.

Practical implications

Based on the results obtained, we argue that the enhancement of capital productivity could bring efficiency because ICOR is an inverse of capital productivity. Since Bangladesh’s capital productivity is considerably low compared with other neighbouring countries, it is suggested that firms should gradually move towards technological advancement and enhance economies of scale, etc. in the long run. Moreover, policies in favour of continuous skill development programmes could be highly effective in increasing capital productivity given that capital follows a vintage structure.

Originality/value

This is the first paper to analyse the economic growth pattern of Bangladesh using the traditional H-D model by incorporating variables such as savings and ICOR and also by relaxing the assumption of time-invariant (i.e. fixed) data of the variables. Moreover, this paper extends the traditional H-D empirical model by introducing key indicators and time breaks for Bangladesh’s economy through a stepwise regression process.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-06-2021-0096

A comparative analysis of consumer credit risk models in Peer-to-Peer Lending

Lua Thi Trinh — 2024-10-10

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to compare nine different models to evaluate consumer credit risk, which are the following: Logistic Regression (LR), Naive Bayes (NB), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Random Forest (RF) and Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending.

Design/methodology/approach

The author uses data from P2P Lending Club (LC) to assess the efficiency of a variety of classification models across different economic scenarios and to compare the ranking results of credit risk models in P2P lending through three families of evaluation metrics.

Findings

The results from this research indicate that the risk classification models in the 2013–2019 economic period show greater measurement efficiency than for the difficult 2007–2012 period. Besides, the results of ranking models for predicting default risk show that GBDT is the best model for most of the metrics or metric families included in the study. The findings of this study also support the results of Tsai et al. (2014) and Teplý and Polena (2019) that LR, ANN and LDA models classify loan applications quite stably and accurately, while CART, k-NN and NB show the worst performance when predicting borrower default risk on P2P loan data.

Originality/value

The main contributions of the research to the empirical literature review include: comparing nine prediction models of consumer loan application risk through statistical and machine learning algorithms evaluated by the performance measures according to three separate families of metrics (threshold, ranking and probabilistic metrics) that are consistent with the existing data characteristics of the LC lending platform through two periods of reviewing the current economic situation and platform development.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-04-2021-0026

ESG and financial performance via uncertain mining technology: do Multilatinas contribute to the sustainability of the region?

Carlos Alexander Grajales — 2024-10-10

Purpose

This paper proposes a methodology based on an uncertain mining technology that identifies the linguistic relationships of ESG and its components with a financial performance metric to help the sustainability diagnosis of a region, specifically Latin America.

Design/methodology/approach

First, based on a relevant dataset of companies in a region, a procedure is formulated whereby an uncertain mining technology extracts the mathematically significant linguistic relationships of ESG and its components with a financial performance metric. Second, a knowledge management process is designed based on the linguistic summaries obtained from the mining process. As a final step and drawing upon the two preceding processes, a diagrammatic system of signals is proposed for diagnosing the sustainability of the region as contributed by its companies.

Findings

After this methodology is instantiated on a group of Multilatinas, it is observed that their sustainability contributions to the region are limited and that none of the identified linguistic relationships between ESG and the financial performance metric are favorable for the region.

Originality/value

This is the first proposal of its kind and it can be applied to any region of the world to assess the financial performance of its companies regarding their ESG commitments. In addition, it enables the region to comprehensively monitor compliance with the 2030 SDG agenda.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-02-2024-0040

Understanding determinants of outward foreign direct investment: the role of economic policy uncertainty, institutional quality, and globalization

Fevzi Ölmez — 2024-10-10

Purpose

This research aims to investigate the role of the economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in the outward FDI (OFDI) of the United Kingdom (UK) by considering the institutional quality (IQ) and globalization level of the host country as contextual factors.

Design/methodology/approach

The UK’s OFDI to its twenty partners is analyzed by using the factor augmented model for the 2005–2019 period.

Findings

The results show that the EPU of the host country has a negative and significant effect on the UK's OFDI. Furthermore, the findings surprisingly illustrate that the globalization level of the host country has a negative and significant impact on the UK's OFDI. In terms of IQ, this study indicates that, while government effectiveness and regulatory quality have a negative and significant influence on the UK's OFDI, the rule of law has a positive and significant effect on the UK's OFDI.

Originality/value

This will be one of a few studies considering OFDI in the scope of EPU. Also, the contradicting results of the study add unique perspectives to the literature about the relationship between OFDI, globalization, and IQ.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JEFAS-05-2023-0143