Istraživanje primjene metoda upravljanja financijskim rizicima u hrvatskim poduzećima - anketa na uzorku poduzeća

The aim of the research was to get information on usage of financial risk protection instruments in Croatian large and medium-sized companies, as well as to recognize existence of possible differences among characteristics of the companies that use and that do not use them. Survey research based on a telephone interview with financial or accounting managers from a stratified random sample of 101 Croatian companies in October and November 2004 was carried out. The stratification criterion was «number of employees». One stratum contained medium-sized companies that were defined as those with 51-250 employees, and the other one included companies with more than 250 employees. Approximately equal allocation with 50 large and 51 medium-sized enterprises from each of respective strata was applied. Methods of estimation used took into account the procedure of random sampling of units, so that margin of errors could be calculated. Considering normal approximation, in each strata the research result for the proportion, with 95% confidence level and coefficient of confidence z = 1.96, is within margin of error of maximum +/- 14,2%. The results of the survey research based on random sample of 101 Croatian companies shown that there is no statistically significant dependence between the firms’ size and usage of risk protection, so planned stratification was not stressed in further analysis. The research results were compared to the results of similar surveys from Europe and America. The common conclusions in all these studies were that financial managers are aware of the danger arisen from financial and other risks, but the financial policy in most cases is not precisely defined. Even if this policy is defined, it is formal and reactive, and very seldom proactive. Control functions and risk management seem to be quite centralized business functions in most of surveyed companies. There is a lack of systematic standardized «financial risk manager» function, and a well organized financial department seems to be an exception. According to the survey, financial risk protection instruments were used by two fifth of companies from the sample, and the same proportion of them wants to have additional education a about these instruments. Only one fifth of companies covered by the survey have got a kind of developed protection policy. The most often enterprises use financial risk protection services from banks, and in most cases they are satisfied or vary satisfied with these services. The surveyed enterprises worry the most about liquidity risks and currency risks, and interest rate risk is not the subject of such great concerns. This paper deals in details about various haracteristics (such as company size, activity, region, and size of market) of enterprises that are threatened to quite serious extent with various types of financial risks. Interviewees from 41 companies that use financial risk protection methods mentioned that the most often used protection instruments against liquidity risk were: cash flow investment analysis (70% out of 41), and analysis of assets, liabilities and sources (also 70%). Against currency risk surveyed companies most often use: currency futures (34%), selling prices policy (29%) and currency forward (27%). Against interest rate risk the most often applied protection instruments were: interest rate futures (12%) and interest rate management at the money market (10%). The reasons for not using the protection instruments are insufficient knowledge about them, prevailed perception that they are not efficient and that are too expensive. Contribution of this study comes out of the testing of hypothesis about dependence between characteristics of Croatian companies and the usage of financial risk protection instruments. The survey results show that the companies that are using these instruments are more often registered as share holding companies than as limited, they have significantly greater average yearly revenue, and their revenue is increasing more often according to previous year than in companies that are not using protection instruments. Also, companies using controlling approach tend to apply protection instruments in their business. Further, these companies very often use bank services to help them in protection. Last, but not the least, financial managers in companies with active financial protection policy have got higher education than in those companies that are not actively protecting themselves. Usage of financial risk protection instruments contributes the business success of a company. Only continuous and proactive informing about financial position of a company concerning its exposure to total risk may insure survival, keeping market position, and progress of a Croatian company in recognized turbulent environment of domestic transformations, market globalization, and the pressure for accepting rules of a game of international competitiveness. Finally, in the future the researchers and authors of the study paper plan to make a sample survey research based on deeper stratification of population of Croatian businesses, so to include three sizes of companies, concerning number of employees, and to include a kind of financial measure of company’s size, e.g. the factor of yearly revenue, as well, and than it would be possible to make more detailed analysis concerning different companies' features and usage of financial risk management instruments in Croatia.instrumenti upravljanja financijskim rizicima, anketno istraživanje, hi kvadrat-test neovisnosti; Levenov test jednakosti varijanci populacija, t-test razlike aritmetičkih sredina

Neovisnost varijabli konjukturnog testa trgovine u Hrvatskoj u recesijskom razdoblju

Rezultati konjunkturnih testova koriste se u praćenju, objašnjenju i predviđanju kretanja makroekonomskih varijabli nacionalnog gospodarstva. Kao takvi, vrlo su značajni u recesijskom razdoblju. U radu su korišteni rezultati konjunkturnih testova u hrvatskome trgovinskom sektoru kako bi se ispitala neovisnost varijabli u anketnom upitniku. Korišten je hi-kvadrat test o neovisnosti varijabli u tablici kontingence i Cramerov koeficijent kontingence. Istraživanje je provedeno na tri stratificirana uzorka (za prvo i drugo tromjesečje 2009. godine na početku recesijskog razdoblja i godinu dana nakon toga, u drugom tromjesečju 2010. godine). Temeljem rezultata istraživanja zaključeno je da su menadžeri u promatranom recesijskom razdoblju mijenjali kriterije u ocjenjivanju i u očekivanjima, što je utjecalo na ovisnost odnosno neovisnost varijabli u konjunkturnom testu hrvatskoga trgovinskoga sektora

POVEZANOST OČEKIVANE PROIZVODNJE I POKAZATELJA POUZDANJA POTROŠAČA U PRERAĐIVAČKOJ INDUSTRIJI EUROPSKE UNIJE

Ankete pouzdanja poduzeća i potrošača (engl. Business and Consumer Surveys, BCS) koriste se kao izvor podataka za ekonomske analize i prognoze. U dostupnim dosadašnjim istraživanjima ispitivana je povezanost varijabli i pokazatelja BCS-a, s jedne strane, i makroekonomskih varijabli, s druge strane. Poznato je da se temeljem kompozitnih pokazatelja BCS-a može predvidjeti smjer promjene referentnih makroekonomskih varijabli i do nekoliko mjeseci unaprijed. U ovom radu ispituje se povezanost ocjena i očekivanja potrošača s očekivanjima menadžera u prerađivačkoj industriji. U radu se ispituje hipoteza da su Pokazatelj pouzdanja potrošača (engl. Consumer Confidence Indicator, CCI) i očekivana proizvodnja menadžera (engl. Production Ecpectation, PE) pozitivno korelirane varijable. Pritom se ispituje može li CCI biti prethodeći pokazatelj PE-u. Istraživanje je provedeno za Europsku uniju (EU), Europodručje (EA) i Republiku Hrvatsku (RH). Uočeno je da su očekivanja i ocjene potrošača, (sažete u CCI) i PE od strane menadžera u prerađivačkoj industriji statistički značajno pozitivno visoko korelirane varijable i imaju približno isti smjer promjene u analiziranom vremenu te pokazuju sličnu osjetljivost na poremećaje u gospodarstvu

Nonlinear optimisation approach to proposing novel Croatian Industrial Confidence Indicator

Croatian Industrial Confidence Indicator (ICI) is one of the measures of mangers’ sentiment about the economic situation in the Croatian manufacturing industry. Since 2005, the ICI has been calculated in accordance with the harmonised European Commission methodology as a simple average of three variables: order books, stocks of finished products and production expectation. It was empirically confirmed that the ICI could predict the direction of change in industrial production more than one month ahead. With the aim of raising the ICI forecasting power, this paper proposes a novel ICI with a different weighting scheme. The empirical analysis is based on monthly data for three standard ICI subcomponents and industrial production expressed as year-on-year growth rates. The data set covers the period from May 2008 to February 2019. Data sources were the European Commission and Eurostat. The newly defined ICI was constructed by using the nonlinear optimisation approach. The weights were determined by minimizing the root mean square error (RMSE) in a simple regression model and by maximizing the correlation coefficient between the ICI and industrial production for various time lags. The results reveal that the newly defined ICI performs better in adapting and following the industrial production growth rate as well as that the dominant component in the ICI is the production expectation

Ocjene i očekivanja menadžera u hrvatskom uslužnom sektoru određene vlasništvom: da ili ne?

Uslužni sektor u Hrvatskoj je visoko zastupljen u strukturi BDP-a. Prognoziranje promjena u tom važnom sektoru nacionalnog gospodarstva moguće je provesti, između ostaloga, korištenjem rezultata konjunkturnih testova. Iako su konjunkturni testovi usklađeni na razini Europske unije (EU), heterogenost uslužnog sektora ostavila je mogućnosti odstupanja u metodologiji provođenja po zemljama članicama EU. Područja u kojima su prisutna javna i polu-javna poduzeća su posebna po svojim obilježjima i kao takva se mogu isključiti iz konjunkturnog testa. Na tragu toga je postavljena, a zatim i potvrđena, istraživačka hipoteza rada da su vlasništvo (s jedne strane) i sve ostale varijable u konjunkturnom testu uslužnog sektora RH (s druge strane) statistički nezavisne varijable. Iz navedenoga slijedi da nije nužno iz hrvatskog testa isključiti područja obrazovanja i djelatnost zdravstvene zaštite i socijalne skrbi. U istraživanju su korišteni podaci Centar za poslovna istraživanja Privrednog vjesnika - Zagreb za konjunkturni test proveden krajem lipnja i početkom srpnja 2016. godine na uzorku 90 menadžera uslužnog sektora

Economic policy uncertainty index and economic activity: what causes what?

This paper is a follow-up on the Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index, developed in 2011 by Baker, Bloom, and Davis. The principal idea of the EPU index is to quantify the level of uncertainty in an economic system, based on three separate pillars: news media, number of federal tax code provisions expiring in the following years, and disagreement amongst professional forecasters on future tendencies of relevant macroeconomic variables. Although the original EPU index was designed and published for the US economy, it had instantly caught the attention of numerous academics and was rapidly introduced in 15 countries worldwide. Extensive academic debate has been triggered on the importance of economic uncertainty relating to the intensity and persistence of the recent crisis. Despite the intensive (mostly politically-motivated) debate, formal scientific confirmation of causality running from the EPU index to economic activity has not followed. Moreover, empirical literature has completely failed to conduct formal econometric testing of the Granger causality between the two mentioned phenomena. This paper provides an estimation of the Toda-Yamamoto causality test between the EPU index and economic activity in the USA and several European countries. The results do not provide a general conclusion: causality seems to run in both directions only for the USA, while only in one direction for France and Germany. Having taken into account the Great Recession of 2008, the main result does not change, therefore casting doubt on the index methodology and overall media bias