Materialization of Behavioral Finance and Behavioral Portfolio Theory: A Brief Review

This study introduces the emergence of behavioral finance (BF) and behavioral portfolio theory (BPT). BF research dives the conventional suppositions of projected value optimization with coherent investors in proficient enjoinments. There are two major component of BF which are “way of people’s thinking†(cognitive approach) and “when markets will be incompetent†(arbitrage limits). Behavioral portfolio theory describes investor’s behavior, how they divide their wealth into portfolio mental account’s layers (MAL) parallel of their ambitions. The development of BF study has stimulated due to the incapability of conventional structure to explore several pragmatic models

A Study of Casual Relationship of Job Design and Employee’s Behavior

Some factors other than higher salaries, compensation benefits and conducive workplace seem to have strong impact on employee’s performance i.e. organization citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior.  Purpose of this study is to examine the impact of job design elements i.e. job enlargement, job enrichment and job rotation on employee’s organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior in the banking sector of Faisalabad and extent to which this relationship is mediated by motivation. Data was collected from 170 frontline managers of banks. After analysis of data, it was found that that there is a positive and significant relationship between job enlargements, job enrichment on OCB while negative and significant relationship between job rotation and OCB. Negative and significant relationship between job enlargement and CWB, negative but insignificant relationship between job enrichment and CWB while positive and significant relationship was found between the job rotation and CWB. Motivation was partially mediating the relationship between job enlargement, enrichment, rotation and organizational citizenship behavior, while motivation was partially mediating the relationship between job rotation and counterproductive work behavior. This study enhances the existing literature of job design and contributes to research by finding how job design influences the OCB & CWB.&nbsp

Growth Prospects and Customer Expectations in Islamic Banking

Islamic Banking has gained enormous popularity in Pakistan in a short span of time and still has a huge potential to grow in the market. Many Conventional Banks having Islamic Banking windows and a few full-fledged Islamic banks are striving hard to remain alive in the stiff competition for market share, resulting in more banking choices for the customers. Still there is lot to be achieved and the whole banking system has to get rid of the curse in the form of Riba, which has strongly been denounced and prohibited in the Holy Quran. Islamic Banks at the moment hold merely 9.4% of the whole banking Market which is far below than desired. In this study, an attempt will be made to analyze the growth trends in the Islamic banking and its implications for the society and the economy in particular. Customers’ perceptions & expectations and certain myths regarding Islamic banking will also be captured during the study. This will not only help us in understanding the potential and opportunities available in the industry but also give an idea that what the customers want and expect from Islamic banking. Moreover, the study will also add to the latest pool of knowledge on the subject. There seems a dearth of updated quality research on the matter and this will serve as an important reference and latest work on Islamic Banking in Pakistan

An Interaction between Firm Strategy, Capital Structure and Firm’s Performance

The study tries to determine the association among corporate strategy, social structure and firm performance. In this regard, the monetary reports of 78 companies listed in Karachi Stock Exchange since 2007 to 2014 were scrutinized. In this research, firm strategy (sales growth, liquidity) and capital structure (debt ratio) were used as sovereign variables, and firm performance (return on equity, return on assets, free cash flow for the firm, free cash flow per share) were functional and are used as dependent variables, so to study the affiliation between corporate strategy, capital structure and firm performance within a 8-years period from 2007 to 2014. Secondary data has been used to test the hypotheses; single variable linear regression method was used and their significance was evaluated using Statistics T (t-test) and F (Fisher). The study results indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between sales growth variables and two types (among four types) of performance criteria in the study, namely return on equity and return on assets. And there is a positive significant relationship between firm liquidity and three criteria of firm's performance in the study namely return on equity, free cash flow per share and return on assets. Also, debt ratio has a positive significant relationship with free cash flow for firm and a negative significant relationship with return on assets

Impact of Financial Management Practices on SMEs Profitability with Moderating Role of Agency Cost

The importance of Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) towards economic development and growth is considerable. Some SMEs are facing difficulties to their development due to the lack of financial resources and management experience. The objective of this study is to check the relationships of financial management practices on profitability of small and medium enterprises and also to check the impact of agency cost on this relationship. This study consists of data analysis of two hundred SMEs from Faisalabad Pakistan. The study used primary data predominantly. SPSS 23 is used for descriptive analysis and Structural Equation Model (SEM) through Partial Least Square (PLS) 3 for hypothesis testing. The findings of this study indicate the presence of positive relationship between financial management practices and SMEs profitability but agency cost as a moderator has no effect on this relationship. The study strongly recommends higher adherence to financial management practices. Policy makers, developments partners, owners, and managers of SMEs may use these findings for sustainability of their business in Pakistan

Impact of Financing on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Profitability with Moderating Role of Islamic Finance

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the very significant for the development of economy of the country, grasp the attention of government and policy makers in developed as well as in developing countries. SMEs in Pakistan have their vital role in economic growth. Therefore, it is essential that SMEs have right to use sources of finance. The study used the quantitative approach that was accomplished by survey questionnaires. Two hundred SMEs and seventy bank branches were selected in Faisalabad region in Pakistan, to get response on questionnaires about their financing patterns and effects of Islamic financing as moderator in their fixed assets, set up and current assets financing. The study showed that fixed assets, set up and current asset financing have positive relation with the growth of SMEs and Islamic modes of financing was not behaved as moderator in Faisalabad city in Pakistan

A Multifactor Model of Banking Industry Stock Returns: An Emerging Market Perspective

The purpose of this study is to examine the stock returns variation to specific macroeconomic and industry variables by applying multi-factor model. The firms of banking industry were selected for this study on the basis of data availability, profitability and performance on the Karachi Stock Exchange. The data for the selected firms and economic variables obtained for the period of 10 years. Descriptive statistics performed for the temporal properties and GARCH model was used to analyze the risk and return relationship. The tests were applied on the stock returns of each firm and on the data set of the entire industry to generalize the results. The results reveal that market return is largely accounts variation in stock returns, however the inclusion of other economic variables has added to the explanatory power of the model. It is also found that industry stock returns are more responsive to changes in economic conditions than firm level stock returns

Impact of Training on Expectation of Employee and Employer: A comparative study

Organizations today spend millions of dollars on training to enhance the performance of their employees, which leads to formation of expectation on employers end as well as employees ends observing this phenomena ,this research was conducted to analyze the expectations of employee and employer and its impact on post training satisfaction, for that matter data was collected from 20 organization where training is provided ,sample size was 20 training / HR managers and per managers 5 employees, paired sample t test was applied to gauge the difference or similarity between the perception and expectation of employees and employer, after the analysis it was found that there is significant difference between the perception of employee and employers on the expected training outcomes and no similarity existed between the expectation of employee and employer which did not have positive effect on post training satisfaction

Street Children and its Impact on Educational Attainment in North-Western State (Punjab) of Pakistan

Street children constitute a violent category in most societies; they have considered what society considers appropriate relationships with major institutions of childhood such as family, education and health. The study sets to examine background characteristics of street children, surviving strategies of street children, abuse experienced by street children, problems encountered on the street. The sample of 250 respondents was selected by simple random sampling technique through well-structured questionnaire. The instrument comprised on two sections. According to the results of the study the neglect is most common abuse experienced by children in the selected area of study and it is increasing highly. In addition, it was discovered that socio-economic status serves as a predictor to existence of street children in country i.e. as the age increases, level of abuse also increases. Therefore, the study recommends that a better social supports for children, the need to establish street rehabilitation strategy to come-in to serve as a very effective way to support street children as it occurs at locations where they live

The Unconditional and Conditional Methods to Examine the Weekend Effect of Stock Returns

This paper examines the weekend effect on stock market returns by using the unconditional method and the conditional method. This paper uses daily closing prices of firms listed in Indonesian stock exchange by using LQ-45 index from January 2006 to December 2013 in three subperiods: All months, non-January months and January month. Independent sample t-test is applied to examine the significance of the weekend effect. Results support the weekend effect in three subperiods by using the unconditional method. But when using the conditional method, the weekend effect only exists in down market for all months period and non-January months period. There's no weekend effect in January month period by using the conditional method, both in up and down market. This paper presents new evidences and supplements the finance literature on the weekend effect for the case in Indonesian stock exchange, and also help investors to develop a good investment strategy. Keywords: Weekend Effect, The Conditional Method, The Unconditional Method, Return of Stock JEL Classifications: E44, G