Vol. 11 No. 6(J) (2019)

Since mouse-tracking paradigm came under the spotlight two decades ago, by providing mouse cursor trajectories, it has been applied by behavioral scientists to a variety of topics to help understand realtime psychological state when people are faced with multiple choices. In this article, we provide a comprehensive, documentation of experimental economics studies with mouse-tracking paradigm. Among these studies, some focus on measuring choice uncertainty including subject uncertainty, temporal uncertainty, and probabilistic uncertainty; the rest are concerned with economic games including bargaining games and social dilemma games. Why and how these works employ mouse-tracking technique in their experiments is elaborated in detail. Finally, limitations of mouse-tracking paradigm are discussed, and research opportunities are proposed. Basic know-hows are appended as a general guide for interested readers.

The main purpose of this study is to apply a detailed financial ratio analysis on the firms that have declared concordat, to determine which kind of financial ratios predict the more successful preliminary estimations and to form a model according to the findings obtained and to apply this model to the firms operating in Borsa Istanbul construction sector. For this purpose, the last 5 years' financial statements of the two companies whose shares are traded on Borsa Istanbul and declared concordat are analyzed by the ratio analysis method. As a result of the analysis, it was found out that the ratios that gave the strongest concordat signal are the liquidity and financial structure ratios. According to the results of the analysis, a model that can be used for the general of the companies is proposed by giving weight to each rate type. In order to test these findings, the model is applied to the financial statements of three companies operating in Borsa Istanbul construction sector and financial ratio scores of firms are calculated over the years. According to the results of the analysis, it is found that the financial situation of the construction firms is much better than the ones of the firms that has declared concordat. However, when the construction firms are compared with each other, it can be stated that YYAPI is lagging behind others in terms of financial performance.

This study aims to assess the impact and spill over effects of the United States (US) Quantitative Easing (QE) to South Africa. Using an event-study analysis on daily data spanning from 25/11/2008 – 12/12/2012 for selected QE dates, the study finds that US Treasury bills fall by 106 basis points on average during QE1, rise by 9 basis points and 8 basis points during QE2 and QE3, respectively. For South Africa, government bonds fall by 61 basis points on average during QE1, 9 basis points during QE2 and 2 basis points during QE3. This leads to the conclusion that UMPs boost the economy in the short run but hurt the economy in the long run, especially when targeting inflation, and used extensively. Therefore, policymakers should concentrate on the overall financial system to measure the financial risk, and thus consistently strengthen macro prudential orientation.

This study seeks to explore the influence of culture on the investment decisions of Ghanaians. It is motivated by the perception that Ghanaians show no enthusiasm for long-term investments or life insurance products. To explore this problem, we used a random sampling, quantitative cross-sectional technique to administer a set of questionnaires to a cross-section of 120 Ghanaians residing in the City of Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions were used as the theoretical framework to guide the study. The results showed that Ghanaians prefer short-duration risk-free investments to long-duration risky investments. Ghanaian investors are not aggressive in gathering and analyzing financial information before making investment decisions. Their investment decisions are influenced by others, intuition, comfort and security, and their belief systems, rather than rational analysis of information, and risk-reward relationships derived from financial models. The use of intuition and information passed on from relatives, family members and others in making investment decisions paves the way for cultural factors to influence investment decisions. We conclude that cultural values have significant influence on the investment decisions of Ghanaians. The study seeks to motivate investors to examine and broaden their cultural awareness to enable them develop financial plans to achieve their investment goals. We recommend that to overcome negative cultural influence on investment decision making, financial education should be vigorously pursued to broaden financial literacy.

The study provides an analysis of the relationships between shadow banking, bank liquidity and monetary policy rate in emerging economies. It is aimed at broadening knowledge on the effects of shadow banking on monetary policy transmission. Furthermore, the study seeks to analyse the impact of changes in bank liquidity on the growth of the shadow banking sector. We employ panel VAR technique to analyse the dynamics of monetary policy, shadow banking and bank liquidity using data for 15 emerging economy countries. We find that a contractionary monetary policy shock results in a decrease in shadow banking and a decrease in bank liquidity. We also find that a positive shock in bank liquidity increases shadow bank growth and a positive shock in shadow banking also increases bank liquidity. The results point to complementarity between shadow banking and bank liquidity; close interconnectedness between the two sectors; and the dominance of risk-taking in emerging economies. We suggest coordination between monetary policy and prudential regulation to improve the potency of monetary policy.