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Every enterprise seeks to determine as accurately as possible the cost of the products or services it produces. The allocation of indirect costs causes considerable difficulties in this process. In the search for the most accurate alternatives for allocating indirect costs, the Activity Based Costing (ABC) method has become more popular in recent decades and is increasingly used by companies. The ABC method has many advantages, but it also has disadvantages, which have led to further development of the method by proposing newer versions. These include Fuzzy Activity Based Costing (FABC), which reduces the risk of uncertainty in data collection conditions and inaccurate cost allocation. However, while the literature provides a theoretical model of the FABC approach, there is very little research focused on sector-specific companies. Given that the issue of indirect cost allocation is particularly relevant for manufacturing companies, this paper explores the possibilities of applying the FABC method in manufacturing companies, using the example of a paper and cardboard manufacturing company. The aim of the research: after revealing the principles of ABC and FABC implementation, to improve the indirect cost allocation process in a paper and cardboard manufacturing company using the FABC method. The methods used for the study were document analysis, observation, conversation, interview, and fuzzy set analysis. The results showed that the FABC method has lower cost drivers for some activities and higher cost drivers for others than the ABC method. The improvement path developed for the allocation of indirect costs using the FABC approach could serve as a good model for its implementation in other manufacturing sectors.

This paper assesses empirically the COVID-19 effect on businesses and the potential dynamic changes regarding post-COVID-19 automation and technology penetration using various logistic regression models. A field survey was used to collect the necessary data for testing various hypotheses. This study demonstrates the severity of the pandemic on businesses and how it has changed their perspectives on technology as a critical aspect of survival and future success. The results showed that capital-intensive firms are more resilient to the crisis. In addition, the firms that were affected severely in terms of employment due to the pandemic believe that technology will significantly impact hiring, investment, and value added. This paper investigates a unique phenomenon represented by COVID-19, its impact on businesses in a resource-rich context and their responsiveness concerning technology deployment and automation.

The paper examines the leverage effects and the spillover effects in the base metal cash and futures market. The study also attempts to find the trend and the pattern of volatility clustering in the base metal markets of India. Further, the significance of the risk premium and the possible downside risk of the market are also examined. The study confirms that unlike aluminium futures market, leverage effect is found for copper futures traded at MCX, India. Similar to aluminium, it is evident that the market advances generate larger volatility than the market turbulence in the cash and futures market of nickel. The study finds that the variance term (ξ) is not statistically significant for both cash and futures markets, which indicates that the risk premium of the asset is not significant to hedge. Further, unlike copper and aluminium, short-run volatility spillover is absent from the futures to the cash market of nickel. The paper concludes that the long-run volatility shock of futures has a persistent effect on the cash market of aluminium, copper and nickel and vice-versa. Future research might address the cross-volatility spillover between the base metal futures market. Further, the spillover between the Indian and London base metal futures markets is left for future research.

This paper is undertaken to investigate the role of institutional quality in proportion to the economic growth of war-torn countries during the last 20 years. Within this framework, the paper employed three different models to investigate the link that exists between good governance indicators and economic growth. According to the results, the long-run PMG model indicated that political stability and regulatory quality increase war-torn countries’ economic development. Contrarily, it has been demonstrated that the situation of law and corruption in these countries reduces economic growth. Neither the long-term nor short-term estimations from the MG and DFE models showed any noteworthy results. Next, the FMOLS and DOLS revealed that political stability, voice and accountability have a favorable effect on the economic development of these nations. On the other hand, these nations’ regulatory standards had a very detrimental impact on economic growth. Lastly, the fixed-effects model showed that a 1% improvement in these nations’ political stability will result in a 4.5% increase in GDP. This research will aid managers, academics, and policymakers in determining the course of actions needed in their areas of specialization or nations of interest to ensure economic growth and put in place an effective institutional framework through enforced supervision.

The paper analyzes household portfolio dynamics in Europe, focusing on the period from 2010 to 2017 using data from the European Central Bank’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The study examines the evolution of household portfolios after the 2008 financial crisis, with housing assets found to be one of the key drivers. On the aggregate level, the household portfolio remained stable between 2010 and 2017. Housing importance remained crucial during all the time and drove the majority of portfolio performance for households in 40–99 percentiles of the wealth distribution. With the evolution of household portfolios, age cohorts 45–54, 65 and older strengthen their positions by increasing the share of their owned assets in comparison to other age cohorts, which lost part of their shares. I conclude the paper with some stylized facts showing the relationship between home ownership, the share of portfolio in housing assets and wealth inequality between countries. The stylized facts provide evidence that household portfolios significantly concentrated in housing assets during the analyzed decade. Furthermore, the transition of households from renters to home owners contributed significantly to the changes in wealth inequality that occurred after the 2008 financial crisis.

In this paper, earnings management is analyzed in the light of stakeholder theory in order to evaluate earnings management ethics. The main reasons for using earnings management are studied and systematically arranged in the context of stakeholder theory. An assumption is made that together with other motives mentioned in the literature, perceived role of ethics and social responsibility may not only influence ethical evaluation of earnings management, but also impact use of earnings management in accounting practice. The results of a study on impact of perceived roles of ethics and social responsibility on ethical evaluation of earnings management, carried out among accountants providing professional services in Lithuania, are presented in this paper. The ethical evaluation of earnings management has been found to depend on its type. Accrual-based earnings management is seen as more unethical than real earnings management. It also reveals that accountants' belief that business ethics and social responsibility are less important is a motivation for the use of manipulative accounting.

Bankruptcy can happen to any company, but it is very difficult to identify intentional bankruptcies that are carried out for personal gain. Currently, there is no precise methodology for identifying intentional bankruptcies, so the process depends on the skills and qualifications of the investigator. The purpose of this research is to provide a method for identifying intentional bankruptcies after examining fraud in the financial statements and their impact on the probability of bankruptcy. The paper identifies the main methods of fraud bankruptcy detection, distinguishing forensic science as the main method for doing so. The paper conducts research, which was modeled on research conducted by other authors to test the effectiveness of bankruptcy prediction methods and the effectiveness of financial indicators in detecting fraud. The research evaluated the trends of the Altman Z'-Score model and the application of binary logistic regression analysis to a sample of intentional and unintentional bankruptcies. The regression analysis provided a model for determining intentional bankruptcies and identified the following indicators: net profit/assets, liabilities/assets, liabilities/equity, and Altman Z'-Score. An independent t-test was also performed to show the differences in the means of financial ratios between intentional and unintentional bankruptcies. The results of the T-test indicated that it is important to calculate and evaluate the following additional indicators: current assets/assets, receivables/income. The results of the research may help to identify the likelihood of intentional corporate bankruptcies and thus facilitate the sophisticated methods used to date.

This article analyzes different bibliometric indicators on research papers which examine the issue of economic integration in the Latin American region. The documents have been obtained from the Scopus bibliographic database; a total of 564 papers published in the time span from 2000 to 2020 have been identified, processed, and analyzed using the open-source software Bibliometrix and Vos Viewer. The results achieved allow identifying elements such as volume and relevance in scientific publications by country, H-G-M index of researchers with the greatest impact, estimation of Lotka’s Law, the analysis of co-occurrence between keywords, the dynamics in publication of the main sources, and finally, the thematic evolution in the last two decades. The findings provide a better understanding of the research processes as well as a comprehensive analysis of authors, their impact and the relevant sources in the economic integration of Latin America.

This research demonstrates that global food products suffer from healthiness bias – a tendency to favor local food products and evaluate them as healthier than equivalent global or foreign food products. The paper extends previous research findings and provides empirical evidence that the perception of the product’s healthiness is a driver of this phenomenon. Results of three between-subject experimental research design studies indicate that global (versus local and foreign) food products are associated with lower perception of healthiness. In turn, such evaluations impact consumers’ buying intentions. Moreover, bias is more pronounced for consumers who perceive themselves as vulnerable to diseases and, conversely, disappears for those who are not vulnerable to diseases. The paper discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings and points toward future research directions.

Attraction of advanced students interested in studying at HEIs for an accounting major degree internationally remains a constant challenge to the accounting profession since the 1990s. To meet the demands it faces, the profession needs to be attractive for students who have the potential to become both technically competent professionals with good analytical abilities and communicative team players, able to understand the expanding business environment and think creatively. Unfortunately, there is a risk that potential students may possess false perceptions of accounting practices and profession. The aim of the research is to explore the perceptions of accounting of the students enrolled in the studies for non-accounting major degree of Professional Bachelor in Business Administration at Lithuanian HEIs. Foremost, the paper analyses the studied assessing approaches and tools used in the notable prior research on the topic. This is followed by the revealed methodology and analysed findings for the research carried out. One of the more important discovers was that the female students assessed the accounting significantly as more definite, boring, precise, and compliance driven than male students. Even considering the abovementioned differences, the results of the perception factors’ analysis strongly suggest that the surveyed students despite their gender in the mass hold traditional stereotypical perceptions of accounting. Due to sufficient number of the surveyed students, findings in overall are applicable to the target group of the research. Finally, the paper provides conclusions, limitations and insights for feasible further research in the study area.

Technological advancements bring continuous changes into the investment industry. The paper aims to provide insights on future research agenda based on a review of the current stance of research on the links between the Robo-advisors phenomenon and behavioural biases of individual investors. A qualitative investigation method has been applied for literature review on Robo-advisors and their impact on behavioural biases. The key findings indicate that Robo-advisors can help users to make better informed and less biased decisions. However, Robo-advisors activate the investors’ automatic system processes. The resulting passive investment approach could lead to alienation of the investors from the stock market, decreasing their understanding of the investment process that could widen a gap between different clusters of investors. The paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, it provides arguments on why a dual process theoretical framework in the relationship between financial advisory and investment behavioural biases is applicable. Second, it studies the Robo-advisor phenomenon and proposes a comprehensive definition of Robo-advisors. Third, the literature review suggests drivers of the Robo-advisors effect on the changes of behavioural biases as a future research direction.

This paper aims to examine the Algerian economy by applying Okun’s law to study the impact of real GDP on unemployment rates and examine the impact of labour market protection policies on Okun’s coefficients. The annual data on the Algerian economy for the period 1991–2019 were used. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing technique model was used in conjunction with the gap version for Okun’s coefficients. The empirical results show that Okun’s law operates in Algeria’s economy. Coefficients estimated using the gap version led to the conclusion that there was a negative and significant impact of the GDP gap on unemployment rates. Though there was a decline in unemployment as GDP increased, the rise in employment was very weak for each 1% increase in the GDP. These findings should be of significant interest to regulators and policymakers in the Algerian economy, practitioners and academic researchers, international and national investors, managers and any other groups interested in the labour market in the Algerian economy and the labour markets of other developing economies. The paper provides the real GDP’s effect on unemployment rates in Algeria by releasing the gap version for Okun’s coefficient. Also, it provides evidence that increased labour market protection mitigates the adverse effects of a decrease in output growth rate on employment.

Online shopping has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, overshadowing traditional brick-and-mortar shopping. Research has tried to understand the online shopping experiences of various consumers. However, the online shopping experiences of consumers with visual impairment (CWV) gained less attention. This study captures the online shopping experiences of CWV by employing a phenomenological qualitative approach. Data was collected from CWV through semi-structured interviews. The sample size of this study was fifteen, and data was analyzed using NVivo14. The findings indicate a growing preference for online shopping among the CWV. The results explore the accessibility-related issues encountered by CWV and strategies employed to overcome them. Additionally, the paper underscores the benefits of independence and the impact of online shopping on the personal growth and well-being of CWV. The study provides insights to marketers to foster inclusion in the digital marketplace. This study helps marketers and other stakeholders to understand the online shopping experiences of CWV and ensures consumer well-being and inclusion.

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of corporate characteristics on voluntary disclosures of management discussion and analysis (MD&A) reports in India. Using a formal tone, the data was extracted from the annual reports of the top 100 listed firms available on the CMIE Prowess database for seven years (2016–2022). After excluding 23 companies from the financial and insurance sector, a panel regression method with the assistance of Gretl software was employed to investigate the relationship between the Management Discussion and Analysis Disclosure Index (MDADI) for voluntary aspects and various corporate attributes, with a total of 490 firm years of balanced observations. In India, firms follow the mandatory compliance of the MD&A reports, but voluntary disclosures are somehow those which are not much emphasized but are a good indication of firm performance and their accountability towards their stakeholders (Mayew et al., 2015). Our empirical findings reveal that profitability as a proxy to firm performance has a significant positive relationship with MD&A voluntary disclosures. Further, an insignificant association between VDS (Voluntary Disclosure Score) and the board size, presence of independent directors and firm size was found. This indicates that firm performance plays a significant role in adding more voluntary disclosures in MD&A reports. The possible reason for this could be the use of “Management Impression Strategy” in the MD&A reports, which means managers disclose more only when the firm has earned more and use impressive language to attract stakeholders. The outcomes of this research offer valuable insights for regulators, policymakers, and listed companies in India, aiding in the enhancement of MD&A reporting quality. Additionally, this study provides a roadmap for future research on MD&A reporting quality and corporate attributes in other emerging countries that have similar regulatory frameworks. This paper makes a timely and pertinent contribution to the scholarly discourse by shedding light on the relationship between MD&A disclosures and firm attributes. Its findings provide valuable insights for both academia and industry.

The need to address global concerns has led to an increase in the significance of sustainable capitalism, which is located at the intersection of economics, business, and environmental studies. This study aims to delve into the theoretic evolution and academic structure of the relationship between sustainability and capitalism, by employing a bibliometric analysis. Relying on 687 documents, sourced from the Scopus database, this paper provides a thorough overview of the evolution of sustainable capitalism, highlighting significant turning points, essential themes, and new research directions. VOS-Viewer and R-Studio were used for implementing the techniques of citation, co-citation, and keyword analysis. The findings from the study have implications for multiple stakeholders. While the analysis could help researchers have a better understanding of the field and explore future research agendas, it can push the corporate houses to take necessary remedial actions for their past capitalist behavior. The study will also be beneficial for developing countries to understand the pressing issue of environmental damage and come up with cheaper yet effective ways to implement circular models of the economy.

The predominant tradition in the literature is to scrutinise the competitive performance of passive and active investment strategies with less regard to the prevailing market climate. The thesis of this paper is that volatile market conditions may necessitate investment strategy adjustments. Such readjustments may confound empirical comparison of passive and active investing if econometric models do not adapt accordingly. Currently, the literature cannot give a stylised fact of whether the historical claims of passive–active relationships relate to normal market conditions or not, which is a flaw. The present study reduces the flagged knowledge gap by answering the question whether passive investment outperforms active investing under normal market conditions. The study applies the parametric and non-parametric risk-adjusted models of the Jensen alpha and Sharpe index. The empirical analysis is based on the weekly returns of 16 unit trusts listed on South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange for ten years (between 2009 and 2019). Consistent with the hypothesis of inefficient capital markets in developing economies, the study finds that active investing significantly outperforms passive investment strategy under normal market conditions. The results should benefit investors and policymakers in the era of increasing competitiveness, digitalisation, and globalisation.

Retail supermarket chains face high turnover that creates costs and compromises customer satisfaction. Turnover intention is influenced by the fit or misfit of employees to the job and the organization, as well as their satisfaction with the job and the commitment to the organization. This paper investigates the relationship of person-job (P-J) and person-organization (P-O) fit with job satisfaction and organizational commitment. A total of 211 questionnaires from employees in the retail supermarket chains in Kosovo were collected. Regression analysis is used to test the relationships between fit constructs and work attitudes as outcomes and their effect on turnover intention. Bootstrap mediation is used to test the direct and indirect effect of fits on turnover intention. Results show that person-job fit and person-organization fit have a significant positive effect on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. All these constructs have a negative effect on turnover intention. P-J and P-O fit have a direct negative effect on turnover intention, which is also partially mediated by job satisfaction and organizational commitment. This paper supports previous evidence that P-J and P-O fit have a positive effect on work attitudes and eventually reduce turnover intention. The direct effect of fits on turnover intention is stronger than the indirect effect, mediated by job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

This paper explores private labels in the context of Croatia, as a representative of a CEE and EU member countries, where their importance is continuously growing. It aims to reveal whether consumers’ psychographic characteristics impact their attitudes towards private labels, which are in the growth stage of the product life cycle. Findings show that price consciousness, consumer innovativeness, and store loyalty have a positive and statistically significant impact on consumers’ attitudes towards private labels. These three psychographic characteristics allow clustering of consumers prone to private labels (by applying K-means analysis) into three different clusters. Consumers belonging to cluster 2 exhibit the highest levels of innovativeness and price sensitivity and might be considered pioneers in accepting private labels. The paper contributes to a more comprehensive insight into private labels marketing management and offers managerial implications for retailers.

The paper discusses the government policy that encourages the emergence of co-operatives and analyzes the co-operatives in light of their growth in number. It establishes a static equilibrium and highlights the co-operatives’ adjustment process (dynamic equilibrium). The methodology/approach consists of the development of a theoretical model, using the Nash equilibrium for the co-operative market, and the determination of a static equilibrium. It presents the data which includes variable measurements for the adjustment process for agricultural, artisanal, and fishery co-operatives in order to analyze the stochastic process of entry-and-exit flow of co-operatives. Accordingly, the paper estimates the co-operatives’ growth index speed of adjustment (SOA) as a function of the mean-reversion Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) process. The theoretical results indicate that co-operatives’ earnings depend on the number of co-operatives, market-demand, and the capacity constraint. They also show that the margin for new entrants is a dynamic gap that especially depends on demand, capacity constraint and the profits. The empirical results indicate that co-operatives growth-index process is significantly mean reverting for all sectors, and the speed of adjustment for artisanal co-operatives is significantly higher than for those in agriculture and the fisheries.

The paper is aimed to study the influence of religiosity on the behavior of buying sports apparel in the Muslim market segment of India. The data was collected from 1000 Muslim respondents from four states: Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, and Jammu & Kashmir. The paper has found that religion plays no role when Muslims buy sports apparel. They shop as any other religious person does. No other factor, even fashion and religious obligation, is influenced by religion, except for shopping enjoyment responsiveness, which is influenced by intrapersonal Islamic religiosity. The paper’s perspective in studying the religious influences will assist sporting apparel manufacturers to design new products that will meet the requirements of the large Muslim segment in India, which is neglected so far. It will help marketers to save their effort and energy which would be utilized for Muslim Population.

The purpose of this paper is to fill gaps in the human capital literature, first, by providing insights into the relationship between human capital and strategic innovation and the performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and second, by exploring the role of human capital as a mediating variable. Although SMEs perform a vital role in the economic development of countries worldwide, developing countries tend to lag behind developed countries in this sector; hence, there is a need to investigate the peculiar nature of SMEs and their performance in the context of developing countries. Additionally, understanding an organization’s human capital requires the articulation of a system of variables that helps to uncover and manage the visible wealth. The contribution of SMEs can be measured through performance. This study is a conceptual discussion of manufacturing SME performance in Yemen and the effect of human capital and strategic innovation. The performance is considered to be very low, and the country is ranked by the Global Innovation Index as one of the lowest in terms of innovation. This paper describes the development of a framework which is a clear manifestation of the knowledge gap addressed by this study.

The aim of this paper is to assess the profitability of contrarian strategies on the Stock exchange of Mauritius. Using data from 2001 till 2009 for all 40 listed companies on the official market, the study shows little support in favour of the contrarian effect. In particular, the losers portfolio seems to outperform the winners portfolio in one out of nine strategies. However, when considering the market return, negative excess returns are noted for all portfolios across all strategies, providing strong support for a passive portfolio management strategy and weak support for overreaction hypothesis. In addition, the Size, Price, Earnings to Price (E/P) and Book to Market (B/M) Effect has been tested. The results suggest that the average market return is greater than size-based portfolios and price-based portfolios. However, when accounting for the E/P and the B/M effect, there seems to be a strategy which can beat the market. Nevertheless, most strategies for E/P and B/M portfolios indicate insignificant excess returns. In general, the results of this paper are undoubtedly in sharp contrast with most popular studies in developed markets. However, it is observed that investors on the SEM may not possess similar characteristics to those of well-advanced markets. In particular, according to Harvey (1995), emerging market countries are sometimes relatively isolated from capital markets of other countries.

Despite the sharply increasing remittances in developing countries (especially in the AsiaPacific region), the relationship between remittances and domestic investment in recipient countries has not been fluently evidenced. This paper aims to fill the empirical gap in the Asia-Pacific region by investigating the impact of remittances on domestic investment with a sample including nineteen developing countries based on time series data from 1980 to 2015. However, our findings contradict some evidence from other regions. The results robustly confirm that remittances have a negative impact on domestic investment in these countries. Our results also indicate that the annual GDP per capita growth, official development assistance, domestic credit, gross saving, and inflation have a positive impact on domestic investment, however, we conclude that the impact of trade openness on domestic investment has a negative sign in the study period. The paper also provides some policy suggestions with regard to remittance flows in this region.

This paper investigates the role of fiscal policy on financial development in Sub-Saharan African economies, drawing on a sample of 23 countries from 2000 to 2021 using the panel ARDL method after evidencing stationarity and co-integration properties among the variables. Our results show that an increase in fiscal policy and institutional quality decreases financial development in the long run. An increase in taxation and expenditure by the government affects the development of finance in SSA countries. Our results also show that an increase in foreign capital and industrial growth increases financial development in the long term. The outcome evidence that the interaction between fiscal policy and institutional quality exhibits a positive effect on financial development. Causality results reveal no directional link between fiscal policy, foreign capital, industrialization, and financial development with institutional quality indicating a single direction. The study suggested that SSA countries should focus on developing policies to track the implementation of adequate fiscal policy systems and structures. Institutional coherence within and between SSA nations is required for efficient fiscal policy development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine consumers’ perceptions of the parent brand and their attitudes towards the brand extensions by exploratory researching the topic in the new context of one emerging European market. Theoretical part gives a comprehensive description and analysis of the main features of the brand extension strategy. The purpose of the primary research is to explore and understand Croatian consumers’ perceptions about the global parent brand (Coca-Cola) and their attitudes towards its extensions on the Croatian market. Research results support the assumption that managers should introduce brand extension when they are sure of the position of the parent brand and its former extensions in the consumers’ mind. As such, results corroborate previous findings, showing how it is necessary to know the existing level of brand affect, brand loyalty, and brand trust since they have different impacts on consumers’ perceptions of the brand extension. The main contribution of the paper stems from the replication and extension of the previous research in the new context (in terms of the level of the market development and consumer culture). Research findings add to the existing knowledge with insights and results from the new market (Croatia), and as such might help in increasing understanding of the brand extension phenomena in the field of the strategic brand management in emerging markets.

Foreign subsidiaries are at a disadvantage as compared to domestic enterprises, which is especially the case for emerging market firms in more developed economies. In this paper we apply liability of foreignness (LOF) concept to address the issue of these disadvantages. We consider LOF effects associated with equity vs. non-equity entry modes for Russian firms when penetrating the German market. The paper presents the results of a pilot study of 41 subsidiaries of Russian firms operating in different regions of Germany. Our results show that investors are more concerned about information, customers and partnerships, which can be explained by preeminent reliance on their own resources, while exporters appeared to be driven mostly by image considerations indicating minor interest in other characteristics of the host market. Although both exporters and investors experience significant negative effects from the lack of proper institutional and business knowledge on the host market, these effects vary for equity and non-equity entry modes. We suggest instruments to mitigate these effects, including cooperation with institutional agents, which is especially important for FDI strategy.

Lawyers mostly work individually and unobserved by supervisors, therefore, their employers want to make sure they gain sufficient competence to perform well. There is little previous research on the direct relationship between self-directed learning and individual work performance. Therefore, the goal of the paper is to analyze how self-directed learning influences individual work performance of lawyers in Lithuania. Our study is based on a quantitative research method, a self-reported questionnaire including 267 lawyers. The self-directed learning readiness (Guglielmino, adapted by Hashim, 2007) and individual task performance (Koopmans et al., 2012) scales were chosen. The correlation and regression analysis is performed to answer the question of the research. The survey revealed that self-directed learning dimensions explain up to 32.5 % of variance in individual work performance expressed by task performance. Determination, initiative, confidence and reflection in learning have statistically significant influence on individual work performan between self-directed learning and individual work performance of lawyers. Also, the topic is under-researched in the context of emerging economies. The paper is original as few if any previous studies analyze the relationship between self-directed learning and individual work performance of lawyers. Also, the topic is under-researched in the context of emerging economies.

The paper focuses on the impact of time horizon on risk and return, which usually is the object of discussions about “stock versus bond”. The aim of this paper is to investigate the transformation of risk and return when increasing the investment term, and to determine the impact of the investment horizon on investment results when investing in shares and bonds in Lithuania. The authors are proposing a hypothesis that a long-term investment in shares is not only more profitable, but also less risky than investment in bonds. Research of developed markets indicated that long-term investments in shares were more attractive than in bonds: the risk of shares fell to the risk of bonds, but at the same time, the return of shares remained high. However, there are just a few surveys in this field involving developing markets. Empirical results of this research are based on OMXV index and 10-year government bond data from Lithuania. Our results are different from the research results carried out by authors in developed countries and show that even with an increase in the investment horizon up to 60 months, the risk of shares in Lithuania still remains higher than the risk of bonds, and return of shares is lower than that of bonds. Risk premium for shares is negative during all the periods exceeding 12 months. The results suggest that investors with long-run investment horizons must consider the impact of horizon as well as the development of securities market they invest in.

The paper examines the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on operational effectiveness of parcel delivery sector companies operating in Lithuania. As demand of parcel delivery sector‘s services has increased, it is important to find out whether the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on operational effectiveness could be considered as positive even though the sector faces difficulties related to parcel delivery. The aim of the research is to evaluate the efficiency of parcel delivery sector companies operating in Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the literature analyses, it was decided to examine the financial statements of 27 parcel delivery companies during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) and before the pandemic (2017-2019). During the investigation the impact of pandemic was analysed using the methods of correlation, regression, and logistics analysis. The main purpose of correlation analysis was to find connections between variables and by regression analysis to find causality between dependent and independent variables. The results of pandemic ware compared with results of pre-pandemic. After this, the results of pandemic have been applied in logistics analysis in forecasting process. Overall, it became clear that during the pandemic operational profit was more effective and costs were less effective comparing with results of pre-pandemic. In addition, the results of logistics analysis showed that there is a possibility that in the future operation profit will be ineffective and costs will be effective.

This paper is devoted to the development of heuristics for the dynamic pricing problem. A discrete time model of dynamic pricing on the fixed time horizon is proposed. It is applicable to products that satisfy two properties: 1) product value expires at a certain predetermined date, and 2) consumers demand at most a single unit of the product. This type of demand structure allows deriving a simple system of recursive equations for optimal prices using dynamic programming techniques. Optimal pricing policy is expressed as a function of time to expiration and inventory levels of unsold products. An analytical solution to this problem was obtained for special cases, while for the general case, a numerical algorithm has been developed. Qualitative characteristics of the optimal pricing policy are established, and their implications for dynamics of inventories and prices are discussed. Based on these observations, a simple heuristic rule for dynamic price adjustments is proposed. Performance of this heuristic is evaluated against the optimal dynamic and fixed-price policies using Monte-Carlo experiments. Results demonstrate high efficiency of the proposed heuristic strategy and its even simpler derivatives. Heuristics’ adaptability and ease of implementation should make it suitable and attractive for small and medium businesses.