Journal of Business & Financial Affairs

The early history of tourism is the story of the development of mobility of man. Both in the pre-historic era and later, man searched for things he wanted and he travelled for food, shelter or just for curiosity. ‘Attitude’ is an abstract concept; it cannot be directly measured in quantitative terms. There is no fixed value or score which will help measure the attitude. But the attitude can be measured indirectly with the help of scaling technique. The level of attitude may vary from one tourist to another and from time to time. A comprehensive study has been made to highlight the level of attitude, the variation in the levels of attitude and their relative importance to each component identified for measuring the level of attitude. This paper presents the attitude of tourists towards tourist facilities available in and around Madurai region. An airstrip with facilities for landing and takeoff, of mini planes and helicopters of private travel agencies at least should be established at Cape Comorin. It will put the entire district on the international and national tourist map.

This study empirically examines the market which reacts first in India by assessing the relationship between spot and future prices of agricultural commodities such as Soya bean, Chana, Maize, Jeera and Turmeric for a period from January 2010 to March 2015 traded in NCDEX, Empirical results suggest the existence of long-run equilibrium relationships between futures and spot prices for all the 5 agricultural commodities that were taken for this study. Regression model pertaining to Lead-Lag relationship between Spot and Future markets suggests that for the commodities Maize, Jeera and Turmeric, both the spot and future markets price plays the leading role in the price discovery process and said to be informationally efficient and reacts more quickly to each other.

This paper presents a bivariate structural VAR model which investigates the interrelationships between the stock market indexes of the MINT economies - Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey; and a significant macro-economy proxy measured by the growth rate of industrial production using monthly data from 2000:1 to 2014:12 obtained from DataStream International, World bank, IMF and stock exchange sites of each countries where available. Improving on previous studies, we employed the Bai and Perron test to determine the significant break period and the Coefficient covariance matrix was specified by employing the HAC (Newey-West) method and allowing error distributions to differ across breaks which identified a common break (pre and post crisis) period for all the MINT economies corresponding to respective economic activity of the countries. Examining possible relationship between the variables, our Granger/ Block exogeneity test reveals that, the null hypothesis will not be rejected in all cases, except the hypothesis that stock returns has a lead-lag effect on industrial production for the case of Mexico during the pre-crisis period but reverse is not the case. Our VAR estimation revealed that real activity shocks only explain a small fraction of the variability in real stock prices during the pre-crisis period than the post-crisis period in the case of Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey excluding Mexico which explained larger variation in the pre-crisis than the post-crisis period for both the stock return and real activity. The results also reveals smaller variation of each variable on one another for variation of real activities due to innovations from stock returns for Nigeria and Indonesia alone while Mexico ant Turkey depicts the opposite. Thus, the study provides additional evidence for the absence of the direct linkage between real stock returns and real economic activities measured by industrial production which shows that the market is inefficient and perhaps not derived or guided by fundamentals, more so, the impact of the global financial crisis is also revealed and policy recommendation provided.

The Banking and Financial Environment in Colombia has witnessed so many regulatory changes and competitive dynamics. This has made segmentation practices an imperative determinant in their service offering and development to its complex customers. Approach: This study assessed the use and impact of market segmentation patterns and practices on the performance of selected banks in Colombia, post consolidation period of 2012 to date. The methods applied were both primary and secondary while the design was mainly exploratory, relating basic market segmentation variables like market share, geographical location and pricing to bank performance. Statistical test using Herfindal Hirchman Index (HHI) was designed to test for market concentration against bank’s performance. Objective: The idea behind this research was to assist managers, business students, and banking workers to understand the concept and impacts of marketing segmentation patterns and practices on banks performance. Results: Findings from the study indicate that, segmentation practices have immensely impacted on the performance of the selected banks in Colombia. The study exposed that the banks have used segmentation practices to lower their overall operation unit cost, expand their market shares, retain their customers, better their communications, increase profitability and focus on their company. They are well positioned in capital strength and they are the best capitalized banks in Colombia, thanks to their segmentation strategy called data-informed strategy. Conclusion: The study however concluded that there is a threshold point (37.2%) in which any further commitment of funds into market segmentation practice can lead to negative result. Recommendation: It was recommended that less dominated banks can adopt acceptable corporate image, simple and flexible account opening formalities, just-in-time service delivery, employee-customer management, and effective and efficient use of referrals to win customer loyalty which tend to retain old customers and win new customers as well.

In this article the author has emphasized on both success and failure of macroeconomic reform of Latin America on the bases of Washington consensus and the causes, courses and consequences of the failure of the reform. The article shows the alternative policies in addition to the Washington consensus have been proposed and the personal opinion of the authors what the policy makers are going to be done in macroeconomic stabilization too.

Women can find gainful employment through entrepreneurship they will not become a social burden and the parents may not compel them to get married early. Once they find their way to entrepreneurship and earn for themselves, they become active members of the Society having courage to correct the faults of their male counterparts. Women are increasingly being conscious of their existence, their rights and their work situation. The performance of enterprises depends on the degree to which the women are involved in managing their enterprises. If women involve themselves in various managerial decisions, it would have a positive impact on their enterprise. The Tamilnadu’s Women Development Project conceptualized the Self Help Groups under the name of Mahalir Thittam. This scheme is a replication and phased up scaling of Tamilnadu Women Development Programme successes. Keeping in view of the objectives of the study, the research has identified with the help of the concerned persons (officers & leaders of SHGs) women those who are engaged in running Micro enterprises for selecting the sample.

The present study on “Refugee Protection- In the perspective of Information sharing” was conducted with special reference to seven selected refugee camps i.e., Ghamkol camp (1, 2 and 3), Gulam Banda Camp, Chichana Camp, Jerma camp and Oblan Camp in district Kohat. A sample size of 381 respondents was proportionally allocated to each camp and then randomly selected. The association between independent variables (Information sharing) and dependent variable (Refugee Protection) was tested by using Chi-square test. Association of refugee protection was significant with change of accommodation (P=0.004), Knowledge about Information Counseling and Legal Assistance (ICLA) (P=0.001), availability of Norwegian Refugee Council team (P=0.000), participation in information session (P=0.004), and information was useful in terms of solving problem (P=0.000). Registration of Afghan refugees, framing favorable policies for refugees in light of international refugee laws, awareness among refugees in respect of their legal rights and responsibilities and integration of efforts from national and international organization for refugee protection in camps were some of the recommendations in light of the study.

This article aims to explain the relationship between personality type and organizational commitment in the Office staff of the National Oil Company supplies the south. This study is the research methodology and decision-oriented applied research (the objective) and survey (in terms of data collection). The Statistical population included the Office staff of National South Oil Company supplies that their number is 472 and with random sampling method using a sample of 147 of them as the sample was selected. The results show that among all the component elements of character and commitment, there is a significant relation and this relationship is negative correlation between neuroticism component and the rest are positive. The intensity of this relationship is the association between the components of emotional commitment and loyalty is highest.

Micro enterprises make an important contribution to economic output and employment in Micro enterprise faces many problems in raising finance, as the provider of finance may not find the return on investment interesting as compared to large enterprise, and also investor is more skeptical about repayment. Entrepreneurship gives women the chance to own property and help commodity production in the state, which in turn would help sustain the social sector. Unlike in a paid job scenario, women can have personal freedom and decision-making authority. This will help them get empowered and create a better image and place for women in the society, an attempt has been made in the personality traits of women entrepreneurs in order to identify whether they have the requisite personality dispositions to undertake activities which are independent and self-sustaining, there by contributing to entrepreneurship.

Based on the fact that researchers are only just beginning to address the question of what we mean precisely by risk or volatility, and how best to model it, investment opportunity is clearly indicated. This opportunity reflects the potential for generating abnormal returns through identifying and executing trades based on volatility. The evidence to support this in favors of traditional portfolio strategies is that volatility processes are eminently more persistent and forecast able than asset return processes. Following this, there is a view that volatility arbitrage is likely to prove one of the most fruitful investment opportunities in the next decade, providing adequate means can be found to describe and model the underlying process.

Banking sector plays a vital role in the economic growth. In this paper, an effort has been made to assess the financial execution of the ten commercial banks working in Pakistan and the data has been taken for seven years i.e., 2007-2013. Moreover, data were also assembled from articles, papers, the World Wide Web (Internet), Specialized International Journals, and relevant previous studies. In the present study an endeavor was made to evaluate the execution and financial accuracy of commercial banks using CAMEL approach. CAMEL is the supervisory and administrative framework implemented by State Bank of Pakistan. It consists of five critical indicators to assess the soundness and execution of the bank. These segments are Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management, Earning and Liquidity. The Capital adequacy, Asset quality, Management efficiency, Earning and Liquidity are taken as independent variables (financial measures) with a view to study their impact on the firm‘s performance. Earnings per share (EPS) is used as a dependent variable. Measurable apparatuses like descriptive statistics, Correlation and regression analysis were used to gauge the execution of the banks. The results show that total deposit to equity, non-performing loans to gross advances, non-performing loans to equity, Admin Exp to Interest Income Ratio, Gross Advances to Total Deposits Ratio were significantly but negative correlated with a bank’s performance. The Return on Assets and Return on Equity were significantly and positively correlated with a bank’s performance. The interest income to total assets ratio is statistically insignificant with bank’s performance, whereas the regression result show that INT is statistically significant with bank’s performance. The cash ratio is also showing insignificant correlated bank’s performance, whereas the regression result shows that the cash ratio is statistically significant with a bank’s performance.

The recent worldwide expansion of higher education and increase of the enrolment number, emergence of diverse educational providers, as well as various delivery modes continuously provokes the need for development of appropriate internal and external quality assurance mechanisms for different types of higher education providers. Private higher education is one of the most dynamic and fastest growing segments of postsecondary education at the turn of 21st century and, lacking traditions of quality provisions, the private tertiary institutions are challenged to build appropriate mechanisms from scratches. These institutions are urged in developing internal quality assurance systems to address the external controls and external accreditation requirements, as well as to face an increasing competition. The internal quality assurance systems set up by universities vary in scope, employed models (in case if used formal quality models at all), objectives, implementation methods etc. Implementing internal quality management systems for the sake of meeting the requirements of accreditation bodies, inherits the risk of symbolic adaptation of quality management rather than an embedded quality improvement system. Continues improvement is agreed by many experts on quality in education as a central element in achieving improvement. Yet, continuous improvement is observed as lacking in many HEIs. This research is aimed at exploring and examining the importance of internal audit for sustaining the implemented quality management systems and continuous improvement of private higher education institutions. It examines the emerging role of internal audit function (IAF) for quality and the importance of the internal audit for ensuring the continuous improvement of the private higher education institutions.

The impact of Information Technology on workplaces, individuals and society as a whole has increased dramatically during the last two decades of the 21st century. This period has seen maturation in the field of digital computing, combined with the use of telecommunications technology, in order to link many computers into what is 'virtually' a very large single network, the Internet. Data has become widely accessible, and readily inter-related. Implementation of new technology has lead to many changes in the workplace. This paper aims to study the impact of technology on various Job related factors, 5 shortlisted for the study i.e. Health and Safety, Job Satisfaction, Performance, Productivity and Work Life Balance. Which Job factor is getting affected to maximum extent with the introduction of technology? The study was done with the help of questionnaire based on Likert scale. Data was collected from 100 employees of Barco and CMC Ltd. Convenience sampling method was used. Data was analyzed through SPSS Software and excel to find out that Performance is the most impacted factor by introduction of new technology, followed by Job Satisfaction, Health and Safety, Productivity and work life balance. The factor analysis converted them into three components in which component 1 contributed more towards the impact of technology.