0000000001031621
AUTHOR
Svetlana Saksonova
Economic Factors of Labor Migration Analysis
Population of Latvia is declining every year due to rate of natural decrease and negative rate of net migration indicators [1]. It is a topical issue since it affects stability and growth of the country.
Evaluating the Interrelationship between Actions of Latvian Commercial Banks and Latvian Economic Growth
Abstract This paper aims to evaluate the existence of the interrelationship between Latvian commercial banks’ operations on the economy, based on economic theory and the analysis of banks’ retained earnings, credit growth and economic growth trends. The existence of this interrelationship was tested using Granger causality and Johansen co integration tests. The analysis was based on quarterly data from 2001 to 2015. The study reviewed several indicators for banking developments to establish their relevance for GDP growth: credit to non-banks, non-bank deposits and bank retained earnings. This paper finds that the empirical link between bank retained earnings and GDP growth is more robust th…
Comparative Analysis of Terminology and Alternative Financing Types on the Example of Estonia
Alternative financing has gained great popularity since new market players appeared to offer new types of financing in Estonia as well as in other countries of the world. The extent of the alternative financing penetration across the population in Estonia was second highest in European countries after the United Kingdom, in 2016. In recent years, the Estonian market of alternative financing has grown and transformed, taking different complicated forms. The research therefore reveals major types of financing process of the licensed alternative financing providers of Estonia, highlighting its crucial elements, namely, possessors of funds, legal status of fundraising originators and addressees…
Measuring Returns to Education: The Case of Latvia
This paper aims to measure returns to education in Latvia and place them in context of data available in other countries. The goals of this paper are to review the literature on returns to education, highlighting the measurement challenges, and, based on the 2011 labour market survey data, estimate private returns to education in Latvia overall as well as by individual characteristics. The main findings are that returns to education in Latvia are close to the European Union average, but lower than in some emerging markets e.g. Lithuania, and that there are statistically significant differences in returns to education depending on a person’s gender, ethnicity, field of employment and locatio…
The Role of Net Interest Margin in Improving Banks’ Asset Structure and Assessing the Stability and Efficiency of their Operations
Abstract Against the background of the growing diversity of financial instruments, technological progress and increasing interconnectedness of financial institutions, ensuring the stability of the banking sector has become an important task for economic policy in every country. This paper shows that net interest margin is the most appropriate criterion for evaluating the effectiveness and stability of banks’ operations. It is superior to the return on assets in illustrating how successfully a bank manages its interest bearing assets. The author analyzes banking sectors in the Baltic countries, the Euro Area as well as the United States and their management strategies, as well as indicators …
The Principles of Creating a Balanced Investment Portfolio for Cryptocurrencies
Despite their novelty, cryptocurrencies have by now acquired certain popularity due to convenience in making payments, high speed of transactions and the application of modern technology to ensure transaction security among other things. The aim of this research is to evaluate cryptocurrencies as an investment instrument. The tasks of the research are as follows: (i) to evaluate a hypothesis about potential profitability of the cryptocurrency investment portfolio, (ii) to analyse cryptocurrency investment profitability, (iii) to assess the attractiveness of creating an investment portfolio of cryptocurrencies, and (iv) to provide recommendations to a potential investor for creating an inves…
Foreign direct investment attraction in the Baltic States
This paper considers the importance of macroeconomic factors as well as investment climate for foreign direct invest ment attraction in the Baltic states. It reviews some of the indicators for measuring the investment climate and their usefulness as indicators of strength of FDI attraction and uses the results of econometric analysis to consider relative importance of various macroeconomic factors. The results suggest that perceptions of corruption and fiscal policy are some of the more important drivers of FDI attraction. The paper also considers several measures that could improve foreign direct investment attraction in the Baltic States such as expanding the protection of property right…
Micro and Small Businesses Access to Finance and Financial Literacy of their Owners: Evidence from Latvia, Estonia and Georgia
Lack of financial literacy of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) owners/managers is often mentioned among the reasons of their financial exclusion. The main objective of the article is to verify whether the targeted group - MSMEs - access to finance and financial literacy of their owners/managers are closely linked in observed countries – Latvia, Estonia and Georgia. As a supportive objective, analysis of the relationship between financial literacy of MSMEs owners, adult literacy and the level of general education in a country is also analyzed. The research is exploratory in its nature, based on intensive literature review, analysis of the countries’ statistics and the case s…
Financial Management as a Tool for Achieving Stable Firm Growth
Abstract The purpose of this study is to show that financial management in the firm is a tool for achieving stable firm growth and long-term firm stability while problems in firm financial management lead to the inability of firms to ensure sustainable growth of their value. This problem is relevant for firms in all countries. The main objectives of this paper are: to analyse dynamics of value of the largest Latvian firms, to determine the drivers of these dynamics and to establish the main problems slowing the growth of firm value, which are related to the drawbacks in financial management, and to provide suggestions for solving these problems. This study analyses financial management proc…
Some Quantitative Aspects of Stability Management Strategy in a Bank
Abstract The stability of commercial bank system is the result of balanced development, which can be characterised by equilibrium and security over a longer period of time. The history of commercial bank system development indicates that reaching and sustaining this qualitative and quantitative state requires regulations and management. One of the most important parts of commercial bank management system is correctly chosen strategy in the circumstances of a changing environment. Strategy gives a possibility to look into the future of the commercial bank, forecast its goals, areas, scale and potential operational results in relation to resource sources and expenses. Nowadays a commercial ba…
Airport Charges Policy as a Tool for Achieving Competitive Advantage in the Aviation Market
Air transportation plays an important socio-economic role, and an airport, as part of the transportation system, is a significant component of the national infrastructure. The airport is not just a provider of aviation services, whose activities are regulated by the state, but is a self-sustainable commercial complex with its own business goals and development strategy aimed at the growth and economic efficiency of operations. Strengthening its position in the Nordic region is the strategic goal of Riga International Airport. Competitive advantage in airport charges policy should contribute to the accomplishment of this strategic goal - Riga Airport should be the first choice for airport tr…
Approaches to determining optimal asset structure for a commercial bank
Every commercial bank optimises its asset portfolio depending on the profitability of assets and chosen or imposed constraints. This paper proposes and applies a stylized model for optimising banks' asset and liability structure, reflecting profitability of different asset categories and their risks as well as costs associated with different liability categories and reserve requirements. The level of detail for asset and liability categories is chosen to create a suitably parsimonious model and to include the most important categories in the model. It is shown that the most appropriate optimisation criterion for the model is the maximisation of the ratio of net interest income to assets. Th…
Socially Responsible Investing and Public Pension Fund Performance in Latvia
Currently Latvia runs a three-pillar pension system. Despite positive dynamics of change of net assets of pension schemes, investments into pension programs are not regarded as financial products that could be popular amongst the population of Latvia. This problem is one of the key social economic issues in society and therefore its solution, which should be developed with consideration of ethical principles of investment, is socially important, which is why it should be addressed by the state. The aim of this research is to consider social and economic aspects of activities of the 2nd pillar pension fund in Latvia and to identify the attitude of Latvian residents to investments into pensio…
Business valuation: classical and advanced methods
The topic chosen by the authors implies a qualitative rather than quantitative research approach. The aim of this paper is having assessed the value of a particular company using classical and advanced approaches to analyse the evaluation results obtained using different approaches and give recommendations to company managers. To achieve the aim, the following objectives were set: explore different views on the interpretation of the company as a subject of evaluation; analyse the major methods of assessing the value of companies; having gathered empirical data, assess the value of the particular company using classical and advanced methods; conduct a sensitivity analysis by considering fact…
PIE statutory audit market concentration: evidence from Latvia
The reform of EU audit legislation was adopted by the Council of the EU in April 2014. The legislation consists of an audit Directive and an audit Regulation. The Directive applies to all statutory audits; the Regulation contains specific requirements for the statutory audits of public-interest entities (PIEs). The Regulation aims both at enhancing audit quality and at promoting competition in the audit market. Mandatory rotation, together with the incentives for joint audit and tendering, as well as the prohibition of certain non-audit services to audit clients - requiring de facto that another audit firm provides these services - are examples of measures that should make the market more d…
Assessment of bank financial health in Latvia
Financially strong, trustworthy and reliable banks form the basis of every economy and are a vital precondition for the stable economic development of every country. The financial health of banks is important for different stakeholders, including bank clients, correspondent banks, state and others. Therefore, lack of appropriate measures for bank financial health can cause a number of risks for the bank stakeholders. Traditionally the assessment of bank financial health and reliability is done by the international rating agencies as Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. These ratings are widely recognized worldwide; however, due to different reasons ratings assigned by the international rat…
Concentration Dynamics in the Market for Audit of Public Interest Entities in Latvia
This paper studies the dynamics of concentration levels in the market for audit of public interest entities (further PIEs) in Latvia from 2016 to 2018. This is important to identify initial effects on concentration and the likely consequences of the new EU statutory audit legislation (i.e. Directive 2014/56/EU and Regulation 537/2014) entered into force in June 2016. This paper relies primarily on the analysis of the annual reports of Latvian PIE audit firms and their associates and computes some key measures describing concentration – the Herfindahl-Hirschman index and concentration ratios CR1 or CR4. It also analyses market concentration in different categories of PIEs, notably banks. The…
Evaluation of internal audit activity effectiveness in risk assessment of anti-money laundering area: a case of “Latvian Bank N"
Due to recent AML violation cases occurred in financial institutions within Baltic States (Estonian Danske Bank, ABLV Bank AS and Versobank AS) and expressed concerns on Banks’ Internal Audit activity within AML area, the author sees the necessity for assessment of Internal Audit activity within AML area in order to determine the level of adequacy of AML regulatory changes within the risk assessment and potential gaps in risk assessment of AML area. The research focuses on AML compliance with the constantly evolving and increasingly more complicated regulatory requirements and evaluation of organizational part of IA activity using an example of a Latvian Bank N. The aim of this research is …
Cryptocurrency as an Investment Instrument in a Modern Financial Market
This paper considers the development of attractive strategies featuring cryptocurrency assets, considering their costs and potential risks. The object of analysis in this paper is cryptocurren- cy as an investment instrument. The main hypothesis of the research is that modern portfolio theory can be applied to cryptocurrency investments to design an investment portfolio with appropriate risk and profitability characteristics. The authors of the paper: (i) place crypto- currencies in the context of modern financial market and financial technology development; (ii) develop assessment criteria for determining attractiveness of individual cryptocurrencies; and (iii) develop recommendations for …
Comparative analysis of the European Union crowdfunding service providers regulation and regulatory barriers for crowdfunding in the Baltic States
The issue of conflicting national frameworks on crowdfunding and dispersed structures of investors and products has drawn significant attention in the European Union. Some Member States introduced national rules to regulate their crowdfunding platforms, while others left some aspects of the activity unregulated. This variation of national licensing, diverging definitions of business models and application of existing EU legislation are considered to contribute to crowdfunding market fragmentation. Some surveys demonstrate that crowdfunding regulatory heterogeneity in the Member States negatively affects the market. In the paper, this heterogeneity is revised on the example of Latvia, Lithua…
Factors influencing premiums and discounts for control in assessing the value of a business
The issues of establishing the amounts of premiums and discounts for control in determining the value of a shareholding and the factors influencing this are among the fundamental problems of business valuation. This is due to the fact that the amount of control premium can significantly affect the market value of an evaluated business or a shareholding. The relevance of this paper lies in the fact that the results obtained in the course of the study can be used to further deepen the understanding of the influence of the degree of control on the valuation of a business (valuation of a shareholding), its characteristics, and factors affecting the size of the control premium. This contributes …
Small business in a small country and the role of government (the case of Georgia)
Problem statement: The value of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for a national economy is recognized all over the world. Georgia is not an exception. Georgian government has declared the importance of the creation of a strong private sector in strategic documents - “Socio-Economic Development Strategy of Georgia – Georgia 2020” (2014) and “For a Strong, Democratic and United Georgia” (2015), first of all. In line with country’s general strategy - to achieve economic growth through private sector development - more proactive reforms to develop entrepreneurship, start-ups and build a competitive SME sector have been developed and special program -“SME Development Strategy 2016-2020”…