An investigation of cognitive skills and topics development within finance programmes: a UK perspective

Finance is an important subject in many accountancy and other undergraduate programmes. The technical competencies in this area are covered under the QAA benchmark in finance (2007). However, the benchmark does not rigidly lay down the curriculum and competencies it expects students to acquire; universities are free to teach the subject from a variety of perspectives. In this paper the subject specific knowledge and skills emphasised in finance subjects in accounting undergraduate programmes in the UK are examined. Learning outcomes from module handbooks/unit specifications from ten universities in the UK are used to gauge and analyse what cognitive skills and topics are emphasised. This research finds that universites should include higher level cognitive skills in order to meet the demands of the changing environment. It is also evident that funding and sources of capital is the most important topic in the curriculum

Sovereign debt and the cost of migration: India 1990–1992

In this paper we look at the Indian financial crisis of 1990–1992 that included three credit rating downgrades of two notches each in the short space of 9 months. We measure to what extent India’s financial difficulties were the result of conditions prevailing on the international capital markets at the time, reflected in changes in the risk-free international term structure of interest rates, and to what extent they were linked to credit risk specific to the country’s political environment and its economic and financial management as reflected in the three ranking migrations. (In the credit risk literature, migrations refer to changes in credit rating in the sense that a country “migrates” from a rating of A2, for example, to a rating of Baa3.) We find that most of the changes in Indian Eurobond prices over the period were due to conditions on the international capital markets. Migration effects were surprisingly small. Interestingly, our results show that there are no maturity, currency or bond specific effects of migration on percentage changes in the bond prices. However, when we measure the cost of migration in terms of basis points on the yield to maturity, we find that migration is relatively more costly for shorter maturities. Averaging over all bonds, the first migration added about 106 basis points to the bonds’ yields to maturity while the third migration added about 42. The second migration was very small and not statistically significant, indicating that it was anticipated by the markets and priced in the first downgrade

Gearing of Chinese listed companies

This paper studies the determinants of gearing of 558 Chinese listed companies between 2007 and 2012. The Least Square Dummy Variable (LSDV) model is employed to investigate the influence of related variables on gearing. Explanatory variables include: profitability, size, growth opportunity, tangibility, liquidity, non-debt tax shield, percentage of tradable shares, proportion of top ten share- holders holding, tax rate and uniqueness while controlling for firm factors and industry effects. Two measures are used to measure gearing: total debt ratio and long-term debt ratio. Our results have interesting implications for corporate capital structure on other fast developing nations as well

Old wine in new bottle?

Senior Lecturer in Finance from the University of Lincoln’s Business School, Dr Geeta Lakshmi, considers last night’s Mansion House Speech by the new Chancellor, George Osborne

The etymology of sovereign crises and the random walk

The last decade, it appears, has spawned a new generation of sovereign crises called the liquidity crises (for example in India, Asian Tigers, Russia and Turkey). These are quite different from debt crisis (such as those in Mexico, Indonesia and Sub Saharan Africa), where repayment is impossible or near impossible. Unlike the chronic problems beset by debt crises, liquidity crises are maladies which can affect the rich and the comparatively well-heeled. They are characterised, as the name suggests, by lack of cash and can strike quite suddenly but are often cured by simple injections of cash given by a global agency or supranational under conditions and warranties. Debt crises on the other hand linger and painfully drag on

Micro-businesses' contributions to territorial capital: visiting different research approaches

This paper is part of an ongoing research. Throughout it, different approaches to link micro-businesses activities with the development of territorial capital are visited. Five vignettes are provided to illustrate how these research approaches operate. Reflecting on each approach provides practical implications about the building and maintenance of some of the collective resources associated to ‘territorial capital’. Adding on previous economists’ understandings of territorial capital, this paper identifies an alternative research procedure that suggests how to develop and maintain some elusive dimensions of territorial capital, such as social, relational and human capital, and cooperation networks

Making friends with windmills: building territorial capital

The role of community engagement in the development of sustainable territorial capital and territory-based governance is explored. The aim is firstly, to describe the development of a community that started in 2006 in a Nottinghamshire village1 and secondly, to identify what might be learned. The latter is argued to take the form of research principles. The challenges to the development of the community included the coordination of the variety of purposes of the participants. The central tenet of the research principles is the initiation of sustainable interactions that support the improvement of individual life. The principles differ from those of traditional research, but they are shown to belong to the same class as the latter. In the example a sustainable support system was described that enhanced individual activities without the need for a collective preference or some individual’s dominance