Morkūnas, Mangirdas

Hedge funds have become an important part of the financial sector. The development of the hedge funds in the Nordic countries has been rather robust. Therefore, it is important to identify the determinants of the hedge fund performance and isolate the managerial performance, i.e., the Jensen’s alpha. To this end, this paper construct cross sectional and panel model for the Nordic hedge funds over 2005–2018. The Fung-Hsieh 8-factor model and other models are developed to identify the determinants of the Nordic hedge fund performance. The effects of crises of different nature (local to global, hedge funds to banking sector) are also tested. The results indicate that Nordic hedge funds are capable to generate positive alpha during the crisis even exceeding the alpha of the economically stable time periods.

The goal of the current study is to highlight the factors that could affect retail food prices and develop an econometrical model for estimating the level of the impact of the identified factors. The research covers the period from 2016 to 2018. Multiple regression modelling is used for model creation. The outcomes mad available evidence that the factors most affecting the prices are the monthly average price of food product and yield of the agricultural subsector providing main stock for the food product. The current research contributes to the scientific literature by showing that retail food prices could be estimated for the short-term period. The limitation of the research is that the developed econometric models are adequate for the Lithuanian market and ought to be modified if applied in other markets.

The present paper aims at revealing and ranking the factors that most frequently cause bias in marketing-related publications. In order to rank the factors causing bias, the authors employed the Analytic Hierarchy Process method with three different scales representing all scale groups. The data for the study were obtained through expert survey, which involved nine experts both from the academia and scientific publishing community. The findings of the study confirm that factors that most frequently cause bias in marketing related publications are sampling and sample frame errors, failure to specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria for researched subjects and non-responsiveness.

The present study examines the influence of young farmers’ support system including both direct payments for young farmers and rural development measures initiatives under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on the sustainability of rural regions. The intentions and decisions taken by young farmers in Lithuania are analysed within the rural sustainability concept. The empirical analysis relies on the questionnaire survey. In order to disentangle the possible effects of the CAP support on the farming sustainability (as it is perceived by the young farmers), we consider payments for farm establishment and expansion along with support for advisory services. The results show that young farmers’ support system under the CAP has the strongest perceived effect on income support in Lithuania without significant differences across different groups of farmers. The effect on investments is significantly lower for crop farms if opposed to the other farming types. Still, the results also indicate that environmental awareness of Lithuanian farmers is rather low as the demand for such advisory services appeared to be relatively low. The relatively high demand for advisory services on the business plan preparation suggests low levels of business administration and marketing skills among the young farmers, which indicates the need for development of the social dimension.

This paper aims at to identify the differences in the performance of the agricultural sectors in the selected European Union Member States. The research covers 21 countries in the period from 2007–2017. The paper uses data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). Three types of sectors were considered: Crop farming (wheat and rapeseed), specialist milk, and specialist cattle. The sector’s performance was measured by calculating the aggregate scores using the VIKOR technique. The panel regression model was also used to estimate and assess the technical and economic determinants of the sector’s performance. The obtained results indicated that the new EU Member States showed higher levels of performance compared to the old Member States. This finding may be attributed to the fact that some of the production factors in the new EU Member States are still under-valued compared to those of the old EU Member States.

Jungtinei Karalystei traukiantis iš ES derybų, prioritetas teikiamas tarpusavio prekybos sąlygoms ir piliečių teisėms, nustumiant į šalį kitas svarbias sritis. Viena iš jų – būsimas ES biudžetas ir galimi jo pokyčiai palikus bendriją vienai iš donorių. Aptarti galimus žemės ūkio finansavimo scenarijus ėmėsi mokslininkai. Leidinyje „Journal of Scientific Papers Economics and Sociology“ (Vol. 12, No 2, 2019) Lietuvos agrarinės ekonomikos instituto ir Mykolo Romerio universiteto mokslininkai Artiomas Volkovas ir Mangirdas Morkūnas paskelbė publikaciją, kurioje analizuoja tris galimus scenarijus ir jų taikymo padarinius. Savo įžvalgomis autoriai dalijasi ir su „Mano ūkio“ skaitytojais.

The European Union (EU) is an integrated alliance of equally treated Member States sharing mutual values, legal principles and markets. Close cooperation, deep integration and convergence are the major priorities for the EU. Anyway, these principles are not always reflected in the EU-wide policies which are implemented through financial support mechanisms. The direct payments financial support mechanism under the Common Agricultural Policy, the main instrument for promoting convergence in development of Member States’ agricultural sectors and rural sustainability, faces critique for failing to meet its objectives. One of the major deficiencies of the direct payments scheme is that it allocates more resources to already developed agricultural sectors of the older Member States and less resources to developing ones thus increasing the divergence among the Member States. The aim of this paper is to suggest new mechanisms for direct payment funds redistribution across the EU Member States which are based on the methodological principles that would more precisely correspond to the aims of convergence, transparency and fair redistribution. The results show that, regardless of the method chosen (to support more or less effective agricultural sectors of EU Member States), the proposed methodology lowers differences in direct payment rates among the EU Member States by two-fold. This ensures correspondence to the goal of convergence within the EU.

A timely response to a fluctuating and ever-changing consumer demand is an important decision for a company, as it may impact its position in the market. Thus, proper inventory management becomes a focal point in retail business process management and can provide a substantial competitive advantage. In this paper, we introduce a modified version of Wilson’s model, which takes into account trends in consumer demand and offer flexibility in reordering time. The illustration of the proposed model is presented, showing the significant economic benefit under particular conditions.