<p>Scania is an old and well established company within itsindustry, thus the company has understood, through experience, that it is simply not enough to be product oriented in the truck industry, instead the company has to focus on what is of value to the customer. To know and understand the customer’s business or area of business is a key success factor which develops trust for the company, this trust and knowledge of the customer’s area of operation is of critical importance during economic slowdowns.</p>

Scania is an old and well established company within itsindustry, thus the company has understood, through experience, that it is simply not enough to be product oriented in the truck industry, instead the company has to focus on what is of value to the customer. To know and understand the customer’s business or area of business is a key success factor which develops trust for the company, this trust and knowledge of the customer’s area of operation is of critical importance during economic slowdowns.

The disclosure of information about the policy making process and the release of new databases may add relevant information about the exchange rate to guide the public's expectation, but may also mislead it. Asymmetric information also reinforces the importance of the learning process for policy makers and financial markets. This dissertation focuses on the role of information in the political economics of exchange rates. The two first chapters provide empirical studies of how access to information shapes and constraints the choice of exchange rate policy (official statement and implemented policy). The last chapter considers the question of whether international banks learn from their previous crisis experiences and reduce their lending to developing countries as a result of a financial crisis. It focuses on the experience accumulated with past financial crises. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The aim of my diploma thesis is not only theoretically describe the financial crisis as such, but it tries to handle a specific case study and tries to emphasize how these problems are solved in small firms in the Czech Republic. The work analyzes and at the same time solves the financial crisis in the global economy in general. These theoretical issues are then applied to the particular case of one of the many small businesses in the Czech Republic, which is engaged in foreign trade, sale and service of measuring techniques. My work tries to solve every impacts of current financial crisis to this company. It tries to outline possible steps and to propose solutions that may affect and reduce the impact of current financial crisis on small businesses in the Czech Republic.

The diploma work deals with the problems of financial crises, concretely with the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008. The main target of the work is to describe the course, the causes and the consequences of the financial crisis. The fundamental informations about the financial crises are summarized in the theoretical part. The descriptive part deals with the development of the icelandic economy before crisis and with the course of the financial crisis. The final part is devoted to the analysis of the icelandic financial crisis, for that is used the general model of systemic financial crises.

This study investigates the effect of the value of financial flexibility on bidder’s merger and acquisition (M&amp;A) performance, including the differences between domestic and cross-border M&amp;As and the effect of the financial crisis. Using data gathered between 2005-2012 of 3,882 M&amp;As with the bidder from developed Europe or the U.S., OLS regressions are used to predict the effect of value of financial flexibility on the bidder’s cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). Findings reveal partial evidence to support a positive effect of the value of financial flexibility and the cross-border effect on bidder’s M&amp;A performance. Collectively, these findings increase understanding of the interdependence of financial flexibility and investments.

Published Article / The financial crisis of the 21st century arising from the credit and sub-prime crisis has resulted in the accounting for financial instruments being placed under intense scrutiny. In reaction to this, the International Accounting Standards Board commenced a comprehensive review of financial instruments and the related accounting standards. This article analyses the disclosure of financial instruments by performing a literature review of the principles underlying financial instruments disclosure, followed by an empirical study of the current practices of the disclosure of financial instruments by selected companies on the JSE Limited. This article indicates that in certain aspects of the disclosure practices related to financial instruments, the "through the eyes of management" approach is not followed in the companies selected - a principle established in International Financial Reporting Standard 7 (IFRS 7).

This paper compares the depth of the recent crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the recent crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and will do so for unemployment in 2010. Our data indicate that the recent crisis indeed had the potential to be another Great Depression, as shown by the speed and simultaneity of the decline in the first nine months. However, if we assume that a large second dip can be avoided, the drop in all indicators will have been smaller than during the Great Depression. This holds true specifically for GDP, employment and prices, and least for manufacturing output. The difference in the depth in the crises concurs with differences in policy reaction. This time monetary policy and fiscal policy were applied courageously, speedily and partly internationally coordinated. During the Great Depression for several years fiscal policy tried to stabilize budgets instead of aggregate demand, and either monetary policy was not applied or was rather ineffective insofar as deflation turned lower nominal interest rates into higher real rates. Only future research will be able to prove the exact impact of economic policy, but the current tentative conclusion is that economic policy prevented the recent crisis from developing into a second Great Depression. This is also a partial vindication for economists. The majority of them might not have been able to predict the crisis, but the science did learn its lesson from the Great Depression and was able to give decent policy advice to at least limit the depth of the recent crisis. (author's abstract)

This thesis examines fiscal policy coordination in the EU during the Great Recession (2008-2010). For the first time since the Maastricht Treaty heralded the coordination of macroeconomic policies among EU Member States, public finances were collectively focused on stimulus policies. In sharp contrast to the preceding decade of consolidation and constraint, fiscal policy coordination during the Great Recession presents a novelty: a study in fiscal expansion. Drawing on Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action, this thesis uses a mixed-methods approach that combines the insights from over 40 in-depth interviews and econometric analyses. The central argument of this thesis is that the fiscal crisis responses of EU Member States were not coordinated. Yet despite this lack of coordination, free-riding was kept at bay. First, the overarching consensus on the need for counter-cyclical fiscal policies prevented growth free-riding (i.e. a situation of limited domestic stimulus and free-riding on other countries’ expansive fiscal policies). Second, discipline imposed by financial market participants contributed to policy-makers’ awareness of their limited room for fiscal manoeuvre, which meant that stability free-riding (i.e. stimulus policies that exceeded a country’s fiscal space) did not occur. The first finding suggests the importance of shared policy ideas in achieving collective action; the second points to the role of financial markets in constraining public finances. Ultimately both, shared policy ideas and market discipline, can function as a substitute for strong institutional commitment to shape group oriented behaviour.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In light of the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, as well as pre- and post-crisis banking reform, this research investigated changes in competitive behaviour among banks in Sub-Saharan Africa, thus adding new insights to the current debate. The main findings from the empirical test were as expected and suggested conditions of monopolistic competition. In order to validate sufficient conditions for observing competition, an empirical test conducted to measure a state of general market equilibrium, had the expected outcome. Specifically, the research methodology applied the Panzar-Rosse model, a non-structural approach in the manner of the New Empirical Industrial Organisation. In the first instance, the model derived a continuous measure of a static H-statistic with a value of 0.57, using 481 bank-year observations from an unbalanced panel of 83 banks from six countries over the period 2008–2013. The H-statistic measured the degree of competition by explaining how changes in market power or unit factor input prices of funds, labour and capital expenditure influenced the pricing output of banks. A computed E-statistic, which was statistically equivalent to zero, validated the significance of the H-statistic, as the result implied that, in equilibrium, market power of a bank does not influence its returns. Overall, the findings were consistent with the pricing and strategy theories, such as contestable markets theory, which indicates that pricing power is associated with neither industry structure nor concentration, but instead with changes in input prices. In addition, the findings were consistent with relevant prior studies, which concluded that banking systems in parts of Europe, Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa were monopolistic, and that banking reform influenced market discipline.