Valuation of financial instruments from the professionals' perspective

The originality of the paper relies on presenting the particularities of an emerging country going through significant transformation processes. Capturing the perception of professionals in the area of accounting is integrated within a larger objective that looks at the respondents as a significant element in the dynamic of a national accounting system that went through complex accounting reforms of more than two decades.

The developed analysis uses information being obtained through implementing a questionnaire addressed to Romanian valuers. It comprised two distinctive parts: (i) first was oriented towards obtaining general information regarding the respondent’s professional activity; (ii) second comprised a series of questions that made reference to the particularities of financial instruments’ measurement.

Further part of the analysis being develop in this study was dedicated to documenting an association between valuers’ professional activity and their professional training. The tendency to develop behaviours that subscribe to the idea of lifelong learning is nowadays acting worldwide. We propose the following set of research hypotheses:

H₀:       When considering the market for valuation services in the area of financial assets (financial instruments’ measurement) there is no direct connection between the dimension of the developed activity and the valuers’ level of professional training.

H₁:       When considering the market for valuation services in the area of financial assets (financial instruments’ measurement) there is a direct connection between the dimension of the developed activity and the valuers’ level of professional training.

The results document the sustainability of the proposed regression model. Furthermore, the values being obtained when running the Cox-Snell R² and Nagelkerke measure tests allow us to consider that valuers’ professional activity in the field of financial instruments is determined in an approximately 50% proportion by their professional training.

If we are to make reference to the particular research hypothesis which we formulated at the beginning of this part of analysis in this study, considering the fact that for the whole model the Chi-Square test generated a value of 46.757, while p-value = 0.000, there could be stated the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. The results document the fact that when considering the national market of valuation services in the field of financial instruments, there is a direct connection between the dimension of the developed activity and the valuers’ level of professional training under the above mentioned circumstances.

We consider results to represent incentives for valuers to invest in their professional training. The better trained professionals who easily perform under current economic circumstances we have, the better are the chances that their contribution makes a difference in the dynamics of the international arena even if by starting at a national level.

This work was supported by project number POSDRU/89/1.5/S/59184 “Performance and excellence in postdoctoral research within the field of economic sciences in Romania”, and by project P403/11/0002 “Current Issues of Valuation for the Purposes of Company Management: Owner’s and Manager’s Approach” registered at Czech Science Foundation (GA ÈR).