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To inform research on source credibility by providing insight into investors' perception and use of common information sources.

In total, 235 individuals with investing experience or intent ranked the perceived credibility of nine common sources that report unaudited corporate earnings estimates and nine sources of non‐financial performance measures. Respondents also assessed the relative value of source credibility to their investment decisions and indicated which common sources of information they use when investing.

Results indicate no significant differences in the rankings between more and less experienced investors. Respondents seemed to impute accountability or independence to certain sources without warrant. Source credibility was less valued in the non‐financial performance measurement context than in the earnings estimate setting. A surprisingly low proportion of investors reported using the auditor's report and financial statement notes in combination with financial statement data.

Theory can usefully be expanded to address investors' assumptions about source accountability or independence and the data context's effect on the relative value of source credibility. Using US‐based participants potentially limits the ability to generalise results. More extensive lists of sources may refine the observed differences.

Results suggest that investors should question their assumptions about a source's typical behaviour. Similarly, financial reporting professionals may need to promote more heavily the value of credible sources of non‐financial performance measures while reminding investors of the importance of common financial reporting vehicles.

In addition to providing investor feedback on source credibility, this paper reveals areas for theory to address and raises questions for further performance measurement research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of small loans on new firm performance using data from the second Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, a large longitudinal data set of new firms in the USA. Contrary to prior research which suggests that small or microloans primarily benefit entrepreneurs who experience disadvantages in the marketplace, the findings revealed no significant differences in loan source or loan amount by gender, ethnicity, or employment status during the early years of the firm. The findings did reveal, however, that the motivations (push vs pull) of the entrepreneur were a determinant of loan source. From this, the authors begin to develop a theory of financial bricolage based on the premise that small loans secured at key points in time can make a significant difference on firm performance for all types of entrepreneurs, not just those who have traditionally be classified as “disadvantaged.”

The data for this study was taken from the Panel Study on Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED II). The authors focussed on business performance measures over the six years of that study to reassess existing findings on relationships between microfinance and underperformance, especially among women, ethnic and unemployed entrepreneurs, from a financial bricolage perspective. Specifically, the authors will assess the impact of small or microloans on business performance over time by tracking the role of financial sources, amount of money borrowed, background characteristics, and motivation to start a business (i.e. push or pull).

The results also revealed no significant difference by gender, ethnicity, or employment status in the source of amounts of small loans secured during the first two years of the businesses. Thus, consistent with the theory of financial bricolage, all types of entrepreneurs engaged in seeking out small loans during the early years of their businesses’ existence.

Although using the PSED II has many advantages, it is not protected from methodological pitfalls. One such potential disadvantage is the fact that this database allows the authors to understand the development of US-based nascent entrepreneurs, but overlooks other countries. Future research efforts should be focussed on surveying nascent entrepreneurs from other countries and cultures to expand the understanding of the relations between small loans and financial sources on business performance worldwide. This could be most useful for intensifying research in regions that generate more push and/or pull entrepreneurs. A second disadvantage inherent in the PSED is that interviews in follow-up surveys may have become impossible over time, resulting in missing data. In addition, the reasons for being unable to reach interviewees are not always clear. In the entrepreneurial realm, these reasons have a great impact on the understanding of the development of new businesses. Interviewees’ businesses may have gone bankrupt, merged with other firms and thus changed contact details, gone global and therefore left the country, etc. (Delmar and Shane, 2003); these could bias the results. A final potential weakness in the PSED is that the data are based on entrepreneurs’ self-reports which are known to be prone to many kinds of response bias.

By offering practical education aimed at enhancing the financial performance of entrepreneurs, the authors believe that they can meet the challenges posed by the research (e.g. Du Rietz and Henrekson, 2000; Parker, 2004; Pfeiffer and Reize, 2000; Reynolds et al., 2002) on performance gaps between entrepreneurs with different background characteristics and those embarking on entrepreneurship with different motivations (push vs pull). In line with the financial bricolage theory, the results may aid governmental bodies, educational and academic institutions oriented toward entrepreneurs, and small businesses, in constructing programs that will train entrepreneurs to be attentive to the diverse range of potentially available resources, including small loans and different financial sources.

The research challenges the necessity-opportunity simplistic categorization and builds upon prior work in the field of bricolage, or the practice of “making do with whatever is at hand,” to begin developing a theory of “financial bricolage.” It is the contention that all new businesses are resource-constrained due to challenges posed by asymmetric information. Thus, new businesses, in general, do not have access to a full range of funding alternatives. In light of this, small loans may be critical for the survival and success of not only necessity-based businesses but opportunity-based businesses as well. The results and findings bear this out.

Particular attention has been paid to the need to adapt the sources of financial law of Ukraine to the acquis communautaire. This paper emphasizes that the system of sources of financial law is inherently dynamic, which is reflected in the constant development of both its content and external form of expression.

This paper analyzes the main approaches to determining sources of law. The main features and peculiarities of the sources of financial law in Ukraine have been outlined. The positions of scholars on the characteristics of the sources of financial law of the European Union (EU) have been analyzed.

It is considered appropriate to allow soft law to belong to one of the sources of financial law. It is established that the adaptation of financial legislation of Ukraine to EU law is due to the following objectives: implementation of theoretical and practical experience of EU member states in the form of European standards enshrined in the sources of EU law; and harmonization of the rules of financial activity in Ukraine to the norms of EU financial law is necessary to ensure the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital.

The directives of the EU that regulate financial relations and the state of their implementation have been described. This paper proposes to improve the sources of financial law of Ukraine to harmonize the national legislation of Ukraine with the standards of the EU.

This paper aims to explore how fund managers (FMs) deal with major problems of ignorance and uncertainty in stock selection and in asset allocation decisions.

Interviews were conducted with 40 fund managers in the period October 1997 to January 2000. A seven stage approach was adopted to sift through and process the large volumes of case data. The interview case data formed the basis for identifying common patterns and themes across the cases.

The case data revealed the nature of this private information agenda concerning intellectual capital or intangibles and the dynamic connections between these variables in the value creation process. The case data provided insight into how the book value and market value gap arose and the special role of information on intangibles and intellectual capital in valuing the company.

The fund management behaviour has important implications for regulatory policy issues on insider information, on corporate disclosure, the corporate governance role of financial institutions, and for the governance of financial institutions.

The paper focuses on issues of importance in an increasingly concentrated and global FM industry.

Although the focus of this issue is on investment in British industry and hence we are particularly concerned with debt and shares, the transactions and holdings in these cannot be separated from the range of other financial claims, including property, that are available to investors. In consequence this article focuses on an overview of the financial system including in Section 2 a presentation of the flow of funds matrix of the financial claims that make up the system. We also examine more closely the role of the financial institutions that are part of the system by utilising the sources and uses statements for three sectors, non‐bank financial institutions, personal sector and industrial and commercial companies. Then we provide, in Section 3, a discussion of the various financial claims investors can hold. In Section 4 we give a portrayal of the portfolio disposition of each of the major types of financial institution involved in the market for company securities specifically insurance companies (life and general), pension funds, unit and investment trusts, and in Section 4 a market study is performed for ordinary shares, debentures and preference shares for holdings, net acquisitions and purchases/sales. A review of some of the empirical evidence on the financial institutions is presented in Section 5 and Section 6 is by way of a conclusion. The data series extend in the main from 1966 to 1981, though at the time of writing, some 1981 data are still unavailable. In addition, the point needs to be made that the samples have been constantly revised so that care needs to be exercised in the use of the data.

The main objective of the paper is to examine and evaluate how security analysts in Thailand and Malaysia appraise ordinary shares and what sources of information they use. A questionnaire was sent to 570 sell‐side Thai securities analysts working for 63 stock brokering firms, and to 160 Malaysian analysts working for a sample of 24 stock brokering firms. Responses were received from 191 Thai analysts and 75 Malaysian analysts. The results reinforce and support our expectation that fundamental analysis is the primary method of investment appraisal. Of the Thai analysts, 147 (77 per cent) reported that fundamental analysis is ‘almost always’ used to value common stocks and a further 38 (nearly 20 per cent) reported that they ‘usually’ use fundamental analysis. Similarly, 73 per cent of Malaysian respondents indicated that fundamental analysis is almost always used and a further 18 per cent usually use it as a basis for valuing common stocks. The results also reveal that both groups rate profit and loss account, balance sheet, half‐yearly results, company annual report, and company visits as the most important sources of information. In terms of relative importance, Thai analysts view company visits as the most important source, while their Malaysian counterparts rate the profit and loss account first.

This work proposes a research model that explains investment intention in online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending based on the persuasion theory of elaboration likelihood model (ELM). In the proposed model, investment intention indirectly relates to source credibility and argument quality through the mediation of trust. At the same time, the study hypothetically moderates the relationships between source credibility and trust and between argument quality and trust by financial self-efficacy and risk preference.

This research presents an experiment to empirically validate its theoretical rationales. The hypotheses herein were tested using data from working professionals at a large science park in Taiwan. A total of 500 participants took part in the experiment in which the scenario of a pseudo-online P2P lending intermediary was first presented for their perusal, and then questionnaires based on the scenario were provided for the participants to fill out.

Trust cannot be improved over night without making great efforts on source credibility and argument quality in the long run. Online marketers should study market segmentations to decide what appropriate elements and promises should be provided in advertisements in order to improve their source credibility. Moreover, how online intermediaries formulate convincing messages and Polish their delivery communication skills should be improved so as to increase argument quality.

First, the theoretical conceptualization of source credibility and argument quality built upon the ELM not only broadens the boundary of virtual communities beyond the literature that considers source credibility and argument quality as important determinants, but also shows the practical status quo of trust as a critical mediator. Second, this research incorporates financial self-efficacy (based on social cognitive theory) and risk preference (based on economic theory) as important moderators in the development of trust. For that reason, customer education initiatives that influence financial self-efficacy and risk preference are discussed in greater detail.

This study aims to analyze the financial inclusion of individuals living in the Middle East, North African, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAP). It intends to show the influence of these individuals’ characteristics on financial inclusion, using the World Bank Global Findex Database 2014 for 16 countries in the region.

A probit model is used to examine the marginal effect of financial inclusion of the characteristics of individuals living in the MENAP region. These characteristics include gender, age, income and education. Individual characteristics that are linked to the main financial-inclusion indicators include having a formal account and formal saving and borrowing. The barriers to having a formal account, alternative borrowing sources and motivations for borrowing are also linked to the respondents’ characteristics.

The results indicate that females and the poor are less likely to be included in financial systems, while education level enhances financial inclusion. As disadvantaged people consider access to credit is important to improving their lives, the study finds that the poor are more likely to borrow for medical issues than for other needs. While Islam is the majority religion in the MENAP region, it is not considered a barrier to having a formal bank account. Furthermore, people in different income quintiles are more likely to use informal financial sources, while the educated are more likely to use formal ones.

The results show that policymakers in MENAP should make more of an effort to enhance financial inclusion as a way to enhance economic development in the region. Also, governments institutions, such as central banks, financial ministries and other institutions, could build on these results to enhance financial inclusion as a way toward development in the MENAP region.

To the author’s best knowledge, this is the first study to examine the influence of individuals’ characteristics on financial inclusion in the MENAP region.

This paper focuses on the role of manufacturer brands for resellers within retail channels. This topic is important because of the strategic value of manufacturer brands and the increasing influence of resellers within channels of distribution. Much of the branding research emphasizes a customer-brand knowledge perspective; however, emerging perspectives suggest that brands are also relevant to other stakeholders including resellers. In contrast, channels research recognizes the manufacturer sources of market power, but does not consider the impact of manufacturer “push and pull” strategies within channels. Existing theoretical frameworks, therefore, do not address the reseller perspective of the brand. As a result, the research approach is a multi-method design, consisting of two phases. The first phase involves in-depth interviews, allowing the development of a conceptual framework. In the second phase, a survey of supermarket buyers on brands in several product categories tests this framework. Structural equation modeling analyzes the survey responses and tests the hypotheses. The structural model shows very good fit to the data with good construct validity, reliability, and stability. The findings show that manufacturer support, brand equity, and customer demand reflect the manufacturer brand benefits to resellers. A key contribution of this research is the development of a validated scale on manufacturer brand benefits from the point of view of a reseller. This research shows that the resources that relate to the brand, not just the brand name itself, create value for resellers in channel relationships.