Role of Financial Intermediaries in Economic Development

Financial intermediation is defined as the process which had been carried out by the financial intermediaries as the middleman between the borrower (spender) and lender (saver) to smooth the flow of the fund. Financial intermediation called the process of using indirect finance in the financial system, which the primary route to transfer funds from lender to borrower. Those savers who have the surplus money will deposit their funds in the financial institution, which will lend those funds to borrowers such as business firms, households, government, or foreigners who shortage of funds. Financial intermediaries are that financial institutions such as commercial banks, finance companies, or merchant banks.… Read the rest

Impact of Financial Management Practices on Organizational Performance

Financial Management is the deliberate management of planning and organizing of financial activities. It applies the basic management principle to control the flow of funds and properly utilizes financial resources. It sets the financial goals by properly analyzing the available data. The common methods to carry out financial activities like accounting and budgeting are considered to be the financial management practice. Financial management practices is the discipline dealing with the financial decisions for long and short-term goals to ensure the return on capital exceeds the cost without taking an excessive financial risk. It clarifies the efficient financial management practices and is used in the business to respond to another business environment.… Read the rest

Earnings Management Practices and Techniques

What are earnings and what is earnings management? Simply stated, earnings are the accounting profits of a company. Stakeholders (current or potential providers of debt and equity capital, employees, suppliers, customers, auditors, analysts, rating agencies, and regulators) use earnings to make important financial decisions. Many investors view earnings as value relevant data that is more informative than cash flow data. Others have suggested that current earnings are better predictors of future cash flows than are current cash flows. In the US, these profits are derived using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) – a system based on the accrual method, which measures the performance and position of a company by recognizing economic events regardless of when cash transactions occur.… Read the rest

Prospect Theory in Behavioral Finance

The Prospect Theory was originally conceived by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and later resulted in Daniel Kahneman being awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. The work by the authors is considered as path breaking in behavioral finance. They introduced the concept of prospect theory for the analysis of decision making under risk. This theory is considered to be seminal in the literature of behavioral finance. It was developed as an alternative model for expected utility theory. It throws light on how individual evaluate gain or losses. The prospect theory has three key aspects.

  1. People sometimes exhibit risk aversion and sometimes risk loving behaviors depending on the nature of the prospect.
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An Introduction to Behavioral Finance

Traditionally, economics and finance have focused on models that assume rationality. The behavioral insights have emerged from the application of insights from experimental psychology in finance and economics.

Behavioral finance is relatively a new field which seeks to provide explanation for people’s economic decisions. It is a combination of behavioral and cognitive psychological theory with conventional economics and finance. Inability to maximize the expected utility (EU) of rational investors leads to growth of behavioral finance within the efficient market framework. Behavioral finance is an attempt to resolve inconsistency of Traditional Expected Utility Maximization of rational investors within efficient markets through explanation based on human behavior.… Read the rest

Altman Z-Score Formula – Corporate Bankruptcy Prediction Model

The financial failure of a company can have a devastating effect on the all seven users of financial statements e.g. present and potential investors, customers, creditors, employees, lenders, general public etc. As a result, users of financial statements as indicated previously are interested in predicting not only whether a company will fail, but also when it will fail e.g. to avoid high profile corporate failures at Enron, Arthur Anderson, and WorldCom etc. Business failure is defined as the unfortunate circumstance of a firm’s inability to stay in the business. Business failure occurs when the total liabilities exceeds the total assets of a company, as total assets is consider a measure of productivity of a company assets.  … Read the rest