Jurevičienė, Daiva

The article aims to propose a different approach to assessing smart cities which combines some commonly used indicators with several new ones in line with the concept of sustainability. The aspect of sustainable development as an essential driver for the smart city and the combination of indicators for sustainable and smart city concepts have been analysed fragmentarily so far. There are many different approaches to evaluate the indicators of city smartness; however, very little attention is paid to the analysis of the reciprocal importance of the indicators. Ten indicators representing a smart city were selected that would be keep in line all the three pillars of sustainability—environmental, social, and economic. An expert survey was conducted to assign the weights of indicators using the pairwise comparison approach. The results were processed by utilising the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which reduces the subjectivity in the experts’ answers. The presented approach differs from the ones commonly used and while it does not cover a wide range of usual indicators, it proposes some new ideas for further research. Some represent cities to attract young and intelligent citizens, others relate to comfortable and safe living conditions and the environmental situation. The results revealed that the most vital smartness indicators are foreign direct investments, pollutant emission, and the share of people registered as unemployed among the working-age population. These indicators cannot be easily identified as ones representing a smart city, but rather as indicators representing investment and environmental, sustainable aspects. Hence, finding a balance between the indicators related to sustainable and smart city is what highlights the need for further research.

The global pandemic has affected all sectors and disrupted not only supply chains but also had a particular impact on the range of services provided and the whole service sector. Outsourcing is used to adapt to business environment changes. However, in the scholarly literature, outsourcing of services is analysed as a complementary part of the manufacturing process - there is a lack of research on outsourcing in service companies. This article analyses the enablers of outsourcing in all service groups. The aim of the semi-structured interview was to determine not only the enablers, their significance in each WTO (World Trade Organisation) group of services but also the use of outsourcing in the provision of core and non-core services. The results of the empirical study revealed that outsourcing is increasingly used in the service sector; however, enablers vary depending on the provision of services, the nature of the service company’s activities, and the needs they meet, public or for-profit

The research examines an approach to forecast return on equity using leading economic indicators for short periods in banks. ROE is one of the most important ratios for performance measurement. Its adequacy is necessary for competitiveness, attract funding in financial markets, accumulate reserve for future turbulences, secure compliance with supervisory requirements and maintain positive signals for the market. There is still a debate in the literature on factors of commercial banks’ profitability forecasting, techniques, and most appropriate models to improve the correctness of predicting and acquiring more accurate signals for communication on targets. The problems are still relevant from both a theoretical perspective and practical implementation. This research aims to prove the necessity to include leading economic indicators for short term ROE forecasting. It conducts investigations for the relevant studies, using regression analysis, necessary tests, ascertains opportunities and limitations of using these indicators and develops a conceptual model and its assessment major Baltic banks. The results show verification of approach to forecast ROE using leading economic indicators for short periods. Such study complements signalling theory with a new approach, how to predict and acquire signal not only using economic indicators as a general group but sub-group them into coinciding, lagging and leading.

The goal of the current paper is to show that the factors that are related to individual customers’ usage of banking services are vital for banks’ profitability. In the current research, profitability is expressed by return on assets, return on equity and net interest margin. The following determinants influencing profitability were determined from the literature: number of cards, number of branches, number of automated teller machines (ATMs), number of point-of-sale (POS) terminals, number of internet banking users, number of mobile banking users, customers trust. It was found that five of them (except the number of cards and number of mobile banking users) have a positive influence on commercial banking sector profitability in Lithuania.

Purpose of the article: Profitability is one of the most important ratios for performance measurement in any competitive commercial bank and key source to fund future working capital and investments needs. This leads to necessity to investigate topics related to profitability and applicability of factors, which would enable to capture latest trends in economy. In scientific literature, leading economic indicators (in addition to financial and lagging/coinciding economic indicators) are suggested as able to capture trends of economic development. However, there is still a discussion going on applicability of these indicators as well as on financial ratios and economic indicators. The problem is relevant from theoretical and practical point of view. Methodology/methods: Quantitative factors for forecasting commercial banks' profitability were identified and tested employing methods of detailing, grouping and quantitative analysis (GMM estimator) in empirical research. Scientific aim: To identify applicability of leading economic indicators for bank's profitability forecasting. Findings: Regression analysis of models using blend of bank, industry, economic ratios improves explanatory power in both dimensions - time (higher scores received for all forecasting horizons) and alternatives (different models that use different blends of determinants). Such improvement was found for all forecasting horizons (one, two and three-quarters) resulting improved explanatory power for one, two and three quarters in comparison to models without leading economic indicators. Conclusions: Leading economic indicators can help to better capture forwardd-looking signals, however, to avoid volatility in forecasts they should be employed with careful analysis of their methodologies and in combination with bank and industry specific, lagging and coinciding economic factors.

The banking sector has developed and extended usage of different services at a distance using the internet in the last decade. Internet-based banking services dominate over other historically provided alternatives. This paper explores the adoption of internet banking in Lithuania and Latvia. Internet banking success model was developed based on four main factors ease of use, perceived risk, trust, and perceived usefulness. A survey of Lithuanian and Latvian respondents was carried out. Correlation and regression analysis was used to determine which factors influence intention to use internet banking. The results showed that the most important in both countries is perceived risk, which has a positive direct impact. Moreover, two additional factors were distinguished and analysed in the study, they are website design and customers satisfaction with e-banking services. Limitation of the study is the respondents they were individuals, thus the results do not reflect companies intention to use e-banking system.

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Behavioural economics was in a process of rapid development in the last century. One of behavioural phenomenon discovered by economists is money illusion – an inclination to make biased decisions based on nominal rather than real monetary values. This illusion influences individuals’ perception of money-related processes and, hence, their economic behaviour. Euro illusion concept, which represents money illusion in countries that adopted the euro, became commonly used after money illusion has been identified and studied in a number of Euro zone countries. Money illusion has not been deeply discussed in Lithuania. The euro introduction in 2015 provides an additional reason to study its impact on Lithuanian citizens. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate money illusion impact on individuals’ economic behaviour in Lithuania after assessment whether Lithuanians experience it. Analysis of scientific literature, experimental study and statistical methods were applied. It was found that citizens are prone to money illusion, which causes irrational economic behaviour. Despite difficult adaptation to the euro, Lithuanians do not experience euro illusion. Newly collected data on money illusion in Lithuania suggests critical evaluation of individuals’ economic behaviour. Performance of such experiment has some limitations as problems presented in a survey are hypothetical and decisions made by participant may not extend to real world. In addition participants may bear in mind their own assumptions like personal experience (e.g. income, savings, debts etc.) which could affect their decisions.

The aim of this article is to analyze the interrelationship between solvencies of consumer credits customers and indirect factors such as borrowing motivation as well as demographical and socioeconomic factors characterizing the borrowers’ personality. The results of this research were obtained using statistical software SPSS. Systemic scientific literature analysis, correlation analysis of randomly selected records from consumer credit contracts, Student t-test criteria application for testing hypothesis, analysis of Levine's and Pearson’s correlation criteria are used in the article. In addition, previously carried out expert evaluation research results were compared with actual consumer credit contracts data. The novelty of this research is classification off actors influencing personal solvency into direct and indirect. The influence of indirect factors (demographic, socioeconomic and borrowing motives) has been investigated in risky consumer credit market of Lithuania. The results show that the most influencing in direct factor is the purpose of consumer credit.