Determinants of operational efficiency on the financial health of non-life insurance companies in South Africa

In an attempt to examine the influence of inflation on the growth prospects of the Nigerian economy, the study employs the autoregressive distributed lag on the selected variables, i.e. real gross domestic product (GDP), inflation rate, interest rate, exchange rate, degree of economy`s openness, money supply, and government consumption expenditures for the period 1980–2018. The study findings indicate that inflation and real exchange rate exert a significant negative impact on economic growth, while interest rate and money supply indicate a positive and significant impact on economic growth. Other variables in the model depict no influence on the economic growth of Nigeria. The causality result shows the unidirectional relationships between interest rate, exchange rate, government consumption expenditures and gross domestic product. However, inflation and the degree of openness show no causal relationship with gross domestic product. As a result, the study recommends that a more pragmatic effort is needed by the monetary authorities to target the inflation vigorously to prevent its adverse effect by ensuring a tolerable rate that would stimulate the economic growth of Nigeria.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effect that halving has on the fair market value of bitcoins. The main hypothesis of the study is that the decline in the cost of miners’ remuneration for mining is a significant factor that affects the price of cryptocurrencies. The article examines the factors that regulate the issuing process. The significance of a limited supply of bitcoin is detailed in the article, as well as the mechanism for the implementation of the issue of new bitcoins. The study compares the historical inflation data of the US dollar and the projected data on the inflation of bitcoin. The article analyzes the main technical element of cryptocurrency – halving – when the miner’s reward is halved. This analysis includes the mathematical methods of statistical data processing. Research results show that reducing remuneration by half every four years leads to an increased market value of the cryptocurrency. This relationship is clearly illustrated by the Kendall rank correlation method. The results of the study can have a significant impact on the fundamental assessment of bitcoin and can also enable investors to assess any of the existing and operating cryptocurrencies according to this method.

The evaluation of equity mutual fund performance and identification factors that affect mutual fund performance is of great interest to an investor in Indonesia. This study investigates the performance of equity mutual fund by using risk-adjusted performance proposed by Treynor (1965) and examines factors affecting mutual fund performance by using the ability of investment manager (market timing and stock selection skill), fund size, and inflation. To achieve the objectives of this study, a total of 19 equity mutual funds was selected using purposive sampling method from the period from 2011 to 2015. A panel data analysis method has been used to analyze the effect of those factors on the equity mutual fund performance. The result showed that equity mutual fund performance tends to fluctuate in Indonesia. Equity mutual fund performance influenced by stock selection skill and inflation, meanwhile, market timing skill and fund size have no significant effect on the equity mutual fund performance.