Financial economists usually assess market efficiency in absolute terms. This is to be viewed as a shortcoming. One way of dealing with the relative efficiency of markets is to resort to the efficiency interpretation provided by algorithmic complexity theory. We employ such an approach in order to rank 36 stock exchanges, 37 individual company stocks, and 19 US dollar exchange rates in terms of...

This paper discusses beta and sigma convergence of commercial, savings, and cooperative banks in the Eurozone from 1999 to 2012. For this purpose, concepts of the growth and efficiency convergence literature are consulted and GMM, fixed effects models, and OLS are applied. Convergence is analyzed by calculating two efficiency metrics – data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier ana...

There is little evidence that the expansion of microfinance has reduced poverty, but is instead increasingly associated with problematic multiple borrowing at high interest rates and high levels of debt and default. We develop a model that rationalizes these outcomes-if entrepreneurs cannot commit to exclusive borrowing from a single lender, expanding financial access by introducing multiple le...

Recent literature in empirical finance is surveyed in its relation to underlying behavioral principles, principles which come primarily from psychology, sociology and anthropology. The behavioral principles discussed are: prospect theory, regret and cognitive dissonance, anchoring, mental compartments, overconfidence, overand underreaction, representativeness heuristic, the disjunction effect, ...

The prices of financial futures contracts can be interpreted as forecasts of the spot rates, which will apply at the final delivery date of that contract. Financial futures contracts have been traded daily since the early 1980s and provide a substantial bank of data to test the forecasting efficiency of such contracts. Tests are carried out to examine whether the interest rates implied by the f...

XBRL is a computer language add-on that facilitates the rendering of financial information. Its development has been accompanied by claims that XBRL will, among other things, lead to continuous reporting and eliminate financial reporting differences including differences between jurisdictional GAAP. These discussions have largely ignored the literature on voluntary disclosures and earnings mana...

We model a financial market in which companies engage in strategic financial reporting knowing that investors only pay attention to a randomly drawn sample from firms’ reports and extrapolate from this sample. We investigate the extent to which stock prices differ from the fundamental values, assuming that companies must report all their activities but are otherwise free to disaggregate their r...

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While many firms have used advancements in information and communication technology to optimize their supply chain and primary processes, there is still a substantial efficiency potential associated with financial processes. In this paper, a conceptual framework for a systematic financial chain management is developed. Based on this, an empirical survey with the Fortune 1,000 enterprises of Ger...

Financial Statement of a company is a reflection of the operational and financial position of a company. The comparative analysis of two companies similar in nature, size, work, location and objectives etc., facilitates an understanding of the operational and financial soundness of the companies. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is aiming for rapid industrialization in its economy. Sahara Petrochemi...