Financial Literacy and Financial Distress on Financial Wellness among Public University Students in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is currently grappling with its most severe economic crisis, marked by a scarcity of foreign currency, impending debt payments, inflation, and shortages in essential goods. The crisis has disproportionately affected the younger generation, impacting their education and businesses. Public university students, in particular, face challenges with rising costs of living and educational materials. This study aims to investigate the influence of financial literacy and financial distress on the financial wellness of public university students in Sri Lanka. While existing literature abroad explores these factors, there is a research gap in understanding their combined impact on financial wellness in the Sri Lankan context. The theoretical framework incorporates Prospect Theory, Behavioral Life-Cycle Theory, and Self-Efficacy Theory. Primary data collection involved survey questionnaires distributed randomly among Sri Lankan public university students, with 122 responses analyzed using EVIEWS and Excel. The results indicate a strong positive relationship between financial literacy and financial wellness, highlighting the positive impact of financial knowledge on overall financial well-being. Conversely, while there is a negative relationship between financial distress and financial wellness, it is not statistically significant. However, when considering the combined effect, there is a significant impact of both financial literacy and financial distress on financial wellness. Overall, the study reveals that public university students in Sri Lanka exhibit higher financial literacy and effective financial management, contributing to their resilience during the economic crisis. The findings emphasize the importance of addressing both financial literacy and distress for comprehensive financial wellness among this demographic

COVID-19 Outbreak and Industry Reactions: Evidence from Colombo Stock Exchange

Moving along history, it can be identified that the human race has experienced many types of challenges which did have the capacity to decide human existence or extinction from the beginning. Some of these challenges were created by humans by themselves like world wars and some were created by natural forces like natural disasters and deadly viruses.Recently COVID-19 has taken place as a rapidly spreading virus by causing more than two million deaths and more than 95 million cases around the world as being the sixth global pandemic creating considerable influence to different industries such as agriculture, health and transportation in the world. The propose of this study is to identify the impact of COVID-19 on the performance of the industries in Sri Lanka. Using the two events and the event study methodology it is found that industry groups such as automobiles, materials, health care and equipment, household and personal care products are the significantly positively affected industries where industries like insurance and transportation have been negatively affected in Sri Lanka. As per the real business-cycle theory these fluctuations in the industries consider as business cycle fluctuations and the efficient response to exogenous changes in the real economic environment. Hence this impact does not last long, investors and the government can recover quickly with the implementation of effective monetary policies and investment diversification