Volume 21 (2021): Issue 1 (June 2021)

Research background: The aim of this paper is to examine the long run relationship among oil prices and the Algerian Dinar exchange rate over the period January 1995–February 2020 in Algeria as one of the most important oil-exporting countries and one of the OPEC members.

Purpose: This study investigated the co-integration relationship between oil prices and exchange rate in Algeria by testing the long-run relationship between the two variables and their positive and negative shocks.

Research methodology: the study applied both the traditional co-integration analysis using Engle-Granger, Phillips-Ouliaris and Johansen-Juselius tests and the hidden co-integration presented by Granger and Yoon (2002).

Results: The results revealed that there is no evidence of a co-movement and linkage between oil prices and exchange rate in Algeria over the period of study neither with the original series nor between the cumulative components whatever the dependent variable.

Novelty: This paper fills in the missing link between the Algerian Dinar exchange rate and oil prices especially with the absence of the hidden co-integration analysis in the case of Algeria and most of the developing countries. To deal with the oil shocks according to Apergis and Miller (2007) and Narayan and Gupta (2015) studies where when they suggested distinguishing between the negative and positive oil price shocks because the asymmetric effect on the macroeconomic variables.

Research background: There is the lack of a sector based analysis of wages for different genders. We present such an analysis regarding the education sector in Poland.

purpose: The study aims to compare hourly earnings for men and women in Poland, with particular emphasis on the education sector. We go beyond the simple Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and compare earnings distributions.

Research methodology: First, we examine the hourly earnings inequalities using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition procedure. Second, we extend this procedure to different quantile points along the whole earnings distribution by the use of the residual imputation approach. The results are obtained for the whole sample (people of all professions), for a group of teaching professionals, and for university and higher education teachers.

Results: The magnitude of the gender hourly wage gap varies substantially depending on how the sample of interest is defined. It also heavily depends on the quantile of the analyzed distribution. Although the average gap in the educational sector is negative, the differences turn positive and increase with higher quantiles of distribution in favor of men. The disparity was most pronounced for university top professionals.

Novelty: Our results provide novel insights into the sectoral dimension of the income gap. We analyze inequalities over whole distribution in the educational sector and compare them with wage inequalities in enterprises employing more than 9 people.

Research background: One of the main ways companies gain and maintain a competitive advantage in many markets is to introduce product innovations. The degree of their acceptance by consumers is determined by many factors, among which the level of consumer innovativeness is of great importance. The paper presents the results of a study on consumer innovativeness of the adult inhabitants of the Poznań agglomeration.

Purpose: The main purpose of the study was to recognize the relationship between consumer innovativeness and consumer’s personal characteristics and to advance knowledge regarding consumer innovativeness.

Research methodology: The research was carried out using the direct interview technique with the use of an interview questionnaire, on a sample of 795 adult inhabitants of the Poznań agglomeration.

Results: The results show that there is a directly proportional relationship between consumer innovativeness and education or material status and an inversely proportional relationship between consumer innovativeness and age in the pro-innovative dimension. The results indicate that there are statistically significant differences in consumer innovativeness between groups based on respondents’ personal characteristics – gender, age, level of education and material situation. The results however are ambiguous.

Novelty: The novelty of the study is based on the verification of the relations between consumer innovativeness and their selected personal characteristics, with the example of Poland.

Research background: Health outcome such as infant mortality rate is an important measure of the standard of living. It is a part of Millennium Development Goals, which all countries of the World strive to achieve, by allocating enormous economic resources to the health sector respectively.

Purpose: The study assessed the impact of government expenditure on health and on health outcome (infant mortality rate) in the West Africa Sub-region.

Research methodology: Secondary data were collected from 2000 to 2015 on thirteen countries in the Sub-region. Owing to the fact that the nature of the data involved is macro-panel data, the study performed the pre-estimation test (such as panel unit-root test and co-integration test) to ascertain the time series properties of the series. Based on the results of the pre-estimation tests, the work employed the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS).

Results: It is found in the study that public health spending has an indirect impact on infant mortality rate in the West Africa Sub-region.

Novelty: No extant study examined the impact of public expenditure on health and on maternal mortality rate using the West Africa Sub-region as an area of coverage. This study employed a fully modified OLS (FMOLS) to assess the impact of public expenditure on health and on infant mortality rate in the West Africa Sub-region.

Research background: The traditional function ascribed to a modern financial institution is to mobilize resources among the two units (surplus and deficit) of the economy. This can be achieved when financial institutions wake up to this responsibility and act as the pillar upon which other institutions can rely on.

Purpose: This study examined the impact of bond market development on the growth of the Nigerian economy from 1986–2018.

Research methodology: Data were analysed using the co-integration bounds test approach while the robustness of the estimates was also checked.

Results: Government bond exhibited an insignificant positive relationship; corporate bond and value of bond traded were positive and statistically significant (prob. <0.05) while bond yield indicated a negative relationship with the growth of the Nigerian economy.

Novelty: The study found that corporate bond and the value of bond traded were the major variables that increased the depth of bond market development in Nigeria. Therefore, policymakers in Nigeria should encourage the issuance of more corporate bonds to further enhance the efficiency of bond markets development.

Research background: Ageing societies is a global phenomenon. In the media and the press, there strongly exists a stereotype of elderly people being poorly adjusted to social change, lonely, poor and not open to market novelties. However, an in-depth description of the senior consumer market segment shows their high degree of variety and differentiation in their approach to purchasing product innovations.

Purpose: The aim of the article is to present a model of segmentation of older people according to the criterion of their attitudes towards innovation on the FMCG market.

Research methodology: The source of information for building the typology was personal interviews conducted in 2018 with people aged over 60 in Greater Poland (the Wielkopolska region). The selection of respondents (the sample consisted of 1,451 people) was carried out using the quota selection method. The K-means clustering algorithm was applied to classify the respondents into clusters.

Results: The research procedure allowed for the identification of different segments of senior consumers: reluctant conservatives, knowledgeable traditionalists, aspiring withdrawn/passive, unaware practical and rational innovators.

Novelty: The results of the analysis of the segmentation of senior consumers confirm that people actively interested in product innovations on the FMCG market constitute a relatively small part of the elderly population (18.0%) and that there is a clear relationship between the attitude towards innovation and the characteristics of consumers in terms of economic, demographic and social variables.

Research background: A number of microeconomic and macroeconomic variables affect credit risk. Macroeconomic factors are particularly significant for credit risk volatility.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify significant macroeconomic determinants influencing credit risk in the banking sector of Central and Eastern Europe. This goal was achieved as a result of a statistical and econometric analysis.

Research methodology: The empirical part includes a statistical study based on an analysis of primary statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficients between selected variables and the credit risk measure. Afterwards, on the basis of aggregated panel data at the country level, an econometric model was made through the GMM system.

Novelty: A statistical and econometric analysis was conducted that showed the occurrence of long-term shocks for credit risk for Central and Eastern European countries, which is in opposition to short-term shocks based on global credit risk studies. The stability of results for the impact of economic growth, unemployment rate and inflation rate on credit risk was confirmed. The occurrence of “moral hazard” in the banking sector of some of the examined countries was also proved. A comparison was made of the impact of macroeconomic variables on credit risk in particular examined countries. A considerable diversity of countries was demonstrated in terms of “moral hazard” in the banking sector.

Research background: There have been several studies on the degree of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to consumer prices, as well as macroeconomic environment with yet no clear direction.

Purpose: This research work investigates exchange rate pass-through effects into consumer prices in Nigeria from 1960 to 2018.

Research methodology: The methodology employed by the study for estimation is the Johansen cointegration and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) procedures.

Results: The empirical results indicate an incomplete pass-through of exchange rate into consumer prices in Nigeria. The pass-through is found to be 1.6 for the model under consideration. The impulse response function results indicate that the response of the consumer prices to the exchange rate shock decreases immediately to a negative shock in the short run, and continues along the horizon to a positive shock in the long run. Also, the response of consumer prices to interest rate shock decreases immediately and continues to fluctuate to a negative shock in both the short run long run horizon.

Novelty: The results support the view that exchange rate policy should be complimented with coordinated macroeconomic policy approaches in order to control inflationary level in the economy. The study therefore recommends that the Federal Government should adopt a tightening of the monetary policy as it will help reduce the impact of exchange rate depreciation on consumer prices.

Research background and purpose: The CAPM, Fama-French and modified Fama-French models were used to estimate the cost of the capital of the DJIA and selected Polish stock indexes were used. The estimated cost of capital was the cost of the portfolio of corporate investment projects estimated by market returns.

Research methodology: The model tests were run on 276 monthly returns of stocks listed on the markets in the years 1995–2019. The bootstrap method to estimate the confidence interval of the cost of capital was used.

Results: The highest and positive cost of capital median was found for the DJIA index, about 0.85% monthly, and for the WIG20 and WIGDIV indexes, about 0.25% monthly. The cost of capital median for the mWIG80, WIGBANK and WIGCHEMIA indexes were found to be negative. This was due to large errors in the estimated cost of capital.

Novelty: Minor errors in the estimation of the cost of capital of index DJIA may result from a more rational policy for the implementation of investment projects by companies included in the index.

Research background: This paper analyses how different income sources affect the level of inequality in Poland, with focus on the role of family and children related allowances in decreasing income inequalities in 2015–2017. Therefore, the study has focused on the various subgroups of households with children.

Purpose: The paper is aimed at examining the extent to which family and children related allowances affect household income inequality and identifying whether they affect inequality in various groups of households in the same way.

Methodology: The study was carried out on micro-data gathered by Eurostat. To examine the extent to which different income components affect income inequality, we decompose the Gini coefficient according to the method introduced by Lerman and Yitzhaki.

Results: Our study revealed that for most households with children, the inequality-reducing effect due to family and children related allowances increased in 2017 compared to 2015. However, despite the additional child-raising benefit under the “Family 500+” programme, income taxes and social security contributions remained by far the most important factor in reducing household income inequalities in Poland.

Novelty: To our knowledge, no study has yet attempted to assess the extent to which family and child-allowances affect income inequality based on real data. The present analysis takes a step towards filling this gap. Unlike other studies based on microsimulation, in this paper we made use of the representative micro-data derived from the EU-SILC study.

Research background: Scientific exploration of customer orientation also confirms the existence of connections which occur between the focus of an enterprise on the needs of its customers and the level of its innovativeness. For it is the customer and his/her needs that determine a company’s primary directions of development and, in the end, the customer decides whether to make purchases and accept the company’s offer

Purpose: The goal of the present study is the systemization of knowledge within the scope of customer orientation and dependencies that exist between innovativeness and customer orientation.

Research methodology: Inferences have been supported by the results of a CAWI quantitative survey conducted among 204 business leaders (top managers) from the Podlasie Voivodeship in Poland.

Results: The study results confirm that customer orientation within a company can vary in form and differ in character as well as indicate that innovation can determine the level of customer orientation within an enterprise.

Novelty: The study of the dependence between customer orientation and innovativeness is a challenge for management sciences and is subject to some limitations since both innovativeness as well as customer orientation are structures which are very complex and ambiguous. Innovation becomes a factor unifying a company with a customer because it guarantees the provision of new values and is the answer to the dynamic character of those changes.

Research background: Total Quality Management – TQM consists in managing an organization in which the continuous striving for quality based on the Deming Cycle is an important assumption. Even though the ‘product’, in reference to higher education, is not the same as in reference to industry, higher education can be improved in terms of quality and the manner of conducting classes, and administrative work by applying the TQM methods.

Purpose: The main purpose of the research conducted at the University of Lodz was to identify and compare the determinants affecting the opinion of the students and lecturers on the assessment of the possibilities and effectiveness of introduction of the CQI methods in the Polish higher education.

Research methodology: Multivariate statistical methods – cluster analysis were used for the analysis and cross tabulations.

Results: Students and lecturers of the University of Lodz positively evaluated the CQI methods. The research shows most of the assumptions of the CQI concept can be adapted to the conditions of work at Polish universities; 68.92% of respondents stated that the CQI methods may be perceived as a concept of improvement of the quality of a university institution; 89.86% of respondents believe that the CQI methods are appropriate on the concept of the improvement of the quality of given classes/lectures.

Novelty: The value of this paper is a contribution to the debate on needs and improving the quality of education at Polish universities.