Suchergebnisse

Purpose – This paper aimed at assessing the efficiency of investment in companies belonging to the rare earth elements sector and examining the stability of the results. Research method – The following performance measures were used in the study: modified Sharpe and Omega, Sortino, Calmar, Sterling and Burke ratios. The investigation is based on daily quotations of selected companies whose business activities were related to extraction, processing and recycling of rare earth metals in the period: from July 2018 to June 2023 and MVIS® Global Rare Earth/Strategic Metals Index representing the global market. Results – The analysis for the entire period revealed a worse performance of investments in rare earth stocks than investment in risk-free assets. Only AREC outperformed other securities offering the best results for 3 of 6 ratios. To examine the stability of the results, the total investigation period was divided into 5 subperiods and all performance ratios were determined for each of them. A strong variation of results did not allow to recognise stable patterns. When the results for the entire investigation period were used as a benchmark, only MVREMX offered stable and attractive results of modified Sharpe ratio outperforming the five-year value in 4 out of 5 subperiods. Originality / value / implications / recommendations – This study provides a new insight into the rare earths sector regarding its growing international importance and the efficiency of investments into listed rare earth firms. The examination uses two-dimensional measures offering the advantage of simultaneously combining return and risk into a single performance number. The findings imply the necessity of improving the stock price performance to attract investors' interest.

Purpose – The aim of this article was to assess the changes in the topological structure of the currency market caused by two crises: the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and Russia's aggression against Ukraine in 2022. A network of major world currencies was analysed over three six-month sub-periods: the pandemic period 1.02–31.07.2020, the war period 1.02–31.07.2022 and the reference period 1.02–31.07.2021. Research method – We have used the dynamic time warping (DTW) method for comparing time series. DTW distances between pairs of individual currencies were calculated, and, based on them, minimum spanning trees (MST) were constructed, whose topological characteristics were analysed. Results – It turned out that the topological structure of the foreign exchange market varies in the sub-periods studied, and the analysed crises affected the currency network. In addition, the networks generated by the MST depend on the choice of base currency used to measure the value of all other currencies. Originality / value / implications / recommendations – The significance of the results obtained lies in providing a description of the topological structure of the market during the observed crises. The detected hierarchical structures can be useful in theoretical descriptions of currencies and in the search for economic factors affecting specific groups of countries.

Purpose – The aim of the paper is the evaluation of the results of Polish socially responsible funds during the pandemic period in comparison to two previous subperiods. Research method – In the research, the nonclassical meters of investment efficiency were used. They were designed for three research subperiods. They provided the basis for creating rankings and for studying the stability of results. The results were compared with the WIG and WIG-ESG index results.Results – The studied socially responsible funds noted lower results in the period directly before the pandemic. In the pandemic period, they, however, noted higher results than the WIG index.Originality / value / implications / recommendations – The paper bridges the research gap pertaining to the research on the results of Polish socially responsible funds during the pandemic period. The article, according to the authors' knowledge, is one of the first papers in Poland which studies the results of socially responsible funds during the pandemic period.

Purpose – The paper aims to assess the credit financing of microenterprises and farmers by commercial and cooperative banks in pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 subperiods. Research method – In the study, we apply the Kruskal-Wallis test and Wilcoxon ranksum pairwise comparison test with the adjustment based on the Benjamini and Hochberg method to check whether there are significant differences in median values of banking loan categories for microenterprises and farmers among commercial and cooperative banks in the pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 periods. Results – We observe that microenterprises mostly use commercial banks, while farmers depend majorly on cooperative banks. Additionally, farmers use investment loans more often than microenterprises. We show a significant decline in loan sales and enquiries among microenterprises and farmers during COVID-19. Moreover, we observe the median values of all analysed categories show significant differences between commercial and cooperative banks. It concerns both investment and working capital loans. Originality /value /implications /recommendations – Our contribution is that we analyse this issue from the perspective of leading suppliers offering banking loans, i.e., commercial and cooperative banks. We detect whether analysed banking loan categories differ significantly in the group of microenterprises and farmers across commercial and cooperative banks in Poland in the above-mentioned periods. To our knowledge, there are no similar studies. The results of our study might be helpful for banking institutions and policymakers in the context of a potential future pandemic or crisis situation.