Dynamics of interest in higher education before and during ongoing war: Google Trends Analysis

The improvement of global Internet access and the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated mass testing of online teaching methods, have forwarded the competition between higher education institutions from the regional level and the struggle for the rich student into the competition for students in all countries. The paper aims to determine the influence of the rating of higher education institutions on the interest of Internet users by conducting a comparative analysis of the popularity of the official names of higher education institutions in search queries in Ukraine and Poland. To do this, a comparative analysis of the change in the interest in leading higher education institutions in Ukraine and Poland in search queries in the Google search engine is carried out. The analysis is performed using the Google Trends web application. As a result, it is found that a high position of the university in the national ranking does not guarantee more search queries about it on the Internet by both national Internet users and users from the neighboring country. In general, Internet users continue to be most interested in universities located in their region at the time of the search.

The impact of financial risks on share prices concerns investors, company executives and accounting standards developers. Investors need this information in delineating their equity valuation models while company executives need the information to make appropriate capital structure decisions. Accounting standards developers use this information in their policy to make accounting standards contemporary.
The authors examine the link between relative and absolute financial risks and share prices using a dynamic panel of non-financial listed companies on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange after dollarization. Equity investors incurred losses before dollarization, which prompted this investigation into the sphere of financial risks in order to explain share price movements so that investors can use it to minimize losses in the future. Absolute financial risk is measured by the total debt, while debt/equity ratio measures relative financial risk. Market capitalization as a proxy for equity and debt is measured by total liabilities. An average debt/equity ratio greater or equal to one qualifies a firm into the high-risk category while ratios below one imply low-risk firms. Results from two-step System Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) show negative and significant connection between relative risk and share prices across risk categories. The impact of absolute risk on share prices differs by risk category. Firm managers are advised to keep total liabilities below market capitalization in order to enjoy the benefits of low-risk categorization. Debt ratio is a reasonable indicator of value and investors can use it in equity valuation. Mandatory reporting of debt ratios should be considered by accounting standards developers.

Nowadays, the banking system is undergoing significant changes. Digitalization that appears in Industry 4.0 also pioneers in the banking system, so we can also talk about Bank 4.0 as a new development direction. In this shift in the digital age, it becomes even more critical to examine the performance of banks. The case study approach was based on an attempt to diagnose the performance of a sample of local commercial banks in Qatar and Kuwait based on their financial statements for the period 2013–2017, and approve the existing accounting data as sources for the financial analysis process, by using essential financial analysis tools such as financial ratios. The output of the analysis was used to measure performance. All this is applicable when using the CAMELS rating model to evaluate the financial performance of the banking sector. The results show statistically significant differences between countries for four factors (Asset quality, Management efficiency, Earnings quality and Sensitivity) and none for the remaining two (Capital adequacy and Liquidity management) because the significant level is higher than 5%. However, the two factors with no significant differences are vital to the prudent operation of banks, mainly that Qatari banks perform better than Kuwaiti banks.