Learning Style Changes And Their Relationship To Critical Thinking Skills

This study reports on the results of a research on learning styles and critical thinking skills of sixty eight postgraduate students of Master’s Level Business Education Programs. These students have participated in both phases of our research. In the first phase, carried out in spring 2005, Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (LSI v.3) was the basis of the administered questionnaire and in the second phase, carried our in winter 2005 – 06, the LSI v.3 and the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) were the basis of the administered questionnaire. Results show that the prevailing learning style types are the ‘assimilating’ and the ‘converging’ ones. Between the first and the second phase students have become more balanced learners. This balanced learning development relates to both ‘Concrete – Abstract’ and ‘Active – Reflective’ dimensions of the learning process and this latter dimension correlates significantly with students’ critical thinking skills on all scales of the used instrument.&nbsp

Testing The Convergence Hypothesis Using Time Series Techniques: The Case Of Greece 1971-1996

Over the last five years, few issues have proven more controversial in empirical economics than the so-called convergence hypothesis.  This paper considers the issue of convergence across Greek regions, using time series techniques.  Our empirical results support the popular view prevailing in Greece about the existence of dualism across the Southern and Northern regions of Greece.  A possible explanation for this may be the lack of experience that the poor countries (like Greece) have in comparison with the rich ones.  The rich countries have the combined ability to educate themselves as they grow rich and the endogenous ability to accumulate the knowledge upon which these efforts are made.  Also, the same argument can be used as an explanation for the regional differences -the fact that the poor regions do not have previous experience and knowledge for efficient investments

Cross-Sectional Analysis of Stock Returns in Athens Stock Exchange for the Period 2004-2011

This study is an investigation of the factors affecting the average returns of stocks that were traded on the Athens Stock Exchange for the period July 2004 - June 2011. The methodological approach is similar to that applied by Fama and French (1992), in the first stage, stocks are grouped into portfolios with predefined criteria, and subsequently monthly cross sectional regressions are carried out, according to the Fama-MacBeth approach (1973). The main result of this study is that average stock returns in the ASE are not associated with the market beta (market risk) and there is not a strong relationship with any other risk factor for the stocks market value or book to market ratio

The Influence of a Firms\u27 Business Strategy on the Downside Risk of Earnings, Accruals and Cash Flow

This study examines whether a firm\u27s business strategy is an underlying determinant of downside risk in accounting earnings and its components. Based on organizational theory we predict that firms following an innovative prospector strategy exhibit lower profitability tendencies than firms following a cost-oriented defender strategy. Further, we anticipate that these strategies are asymmetrically positioned towards environmental uncertainty, with defenders focusing their efforts to efficiency, cost control, and minimizing exposure to downside risk, whereas prospectors direct their resources to flexibility, innovation, and maximizing the growth potential through aggressive expansion to new product markets. We find that prospectors are indeed less profitable than defenders. We also demonstrate that prospectors have greater total and downside earnings risk. Finally, we decompose earnings into accruals and cash flow and show that the higher exposure of prospectors to earnings downside risk is driven by the cash flow component rather than the accrual component. Collectively, our results suggest that considering how strategy interacts with financial reporting attributes is a useful way for evaluating a firms\u27 risk profile

Financial Characteristics of Companies Audited by Large Audit Firms

Purpose “ The purpose of this paper is to examine how financial characteristics associated with the choice of a big audit firm with further investigation on the agency costs of free cash flows.Design/methodology/approach “ The sample used for this work includes industrial listed companies from Germany and France. To test our hypothesis, we used a number of logit models, extending the standard model selection audit firm, to include the variables of interest. Following previous work, our dependent dummy variable is Big4 or non-Big4.Findings “ We observed that most independent variables in the German companies show similar results to previous work, but we did not have the same results for the French industry. Moreover, our findings suggest that the total debt and dividends can be an important reason for determining the choice of a large audit firm, reducing agency costs of free cash flows.Research limitations/implications “ This study has some limitations on the measurements of the cost of the audit fees and also generates opportunities for additional searching.Originality/value “ The paper provides only one aspect to explain the relationship between the problems of agency costs of free cash flow and influence in choosing a large auditing firm, which stems from investors\u27 demand for higher quality audits

Data envelopment analysis in financial services: a citations network analysis of banks, insurance companies and money market funds

Development and application of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, have been the subject of numerous reviews. In this paper, we consider the papers that apply DEA methods specifically to financial services, or which use financial services data to experiment with a newly introduced DEA model. We examine 620 papers published in journals indexed in the Web of Science database, from 1985 to April 2016. We analyse the sample applying citations network analysis. This paper investigates the DEA method and its applications in financial services. We analyse the diffusion of DEA in three sub-samples: (1) banking groups, (2) money market funds, and (3) insurance groups by identifying the main paths, that is, the main flows of the ideas underlying each area of research. This allows us to highlight the main approaches, models and efficiency types used in each research areas. No unique methodological preference emerges within these areas. Innovations in the DEA methodologies (network models, slacks based models, directional distance models and Nash bargaining game) clearly dominate recent research. For each subsample, we describe the geographical distribution of these studies, and provide some basic statistics related to the most active journals and scholars

EDITORIAL, The Integration of European Financial Markets And Its Importance For Economic Growth And Financial Stability: Where We Are Now And What We Expect

This paper discusses the trends for the euro area economy and financial markets. The introduction of the euro constitutes a regime shift, which pervades the very structure of markets and the fundamental attitudes of operators. As such, it will force profound changes. It also highlights the main issues raised in the articles that were selected for publication in this special issue of the E.R.S.J.