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Finance and banking research
Massey’s academics in finance and banking are internationally renowned for their expertise. This includes both personal finance issues like home loans, retirement planning and financial capability and broader corporate and industry financial research into aspects such as asset market dynamics, liquidity and investment and international finance.
Research projects
Bank e-loyalty improved by personal relationships
A study by Massey University and Curtin University researchers shows that banks can’t rely on the strength of their technology platforms to create loyalty with their business customers.
Mobile and online technologies have revolutionised banking, but there were no studies examining if technology creates brand loyalty like face-to-face relationship building. Massey's Dr Henry Chung and his colleagues collected data from 336 New Zealand small and medium-sized businesses and compared their commitment to local and national-branded banks with their commitment to foreign-branded banks. The study found that good, personalised relationship building did lead to an increase in e-loyalty.
Bitcoin Liquidity
Bitcoin is emerging as a popular financial asset and means of transacting. However, little is known about its liquidity. This research addresses this deficit.
The research team of Ben Marshall, Nhut Nguyen and Nuttawat Visaltanachoti found that there is both substantial variation in the level of liquidity across different exchanges and currency pairs and a strong systematic aspect to bitcoin liquidity. Moreover, changes in currency liquidity influence bitcoin liquidity. The pricing of bitcoin is less efficient than stock pricing and liquidity plays an important role, with the inefficient pricing being more prevalent on days with less liquidity. Liquidity declines also contribute to bitcoin crash risk.
Cultural response could improve Māori financial literacy
A report on the spending habits of Māori women has identified that a culturally-responsive community model could help improve financial literacy among Māori.
The research project, conducted by the Westpac Massey Fin-Ed Centre and funded by the SkyCity Auckland Community Trust, aimed to provide useful insights for creating targeted financial literacy programmes for Māori women. The results included showing a higher likelihood to borrow from family at short notice and a low engagement with bank loans.
Financial literacy development in Timor-Leste
The Timor-Leste Government has commissioned Massey University's Dr Pushpa Wood to work with the Central Bank of Timor-Leste to develop a national strategic plan for financial literacy.
New environmental standard for organisations
Dr Sue Cassells from the School of Economics and Finance is a technical advisor for a new environmental standard being developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) suite of standards for organisations.
The standard will provide organisations with guidance on determining their environmental costs and benefits. It will also provide principles, requirements and guidelines for monetary valuation of environmental impacts and aspects (such as emissions and use of natural resources and ecosystem services), including human health and the built environment.
Political partisanship and corporate performance
Professor Sasha Molchanov is investigating the specific ways that political party orientation may impact on corporate performance. His research has found that despite a common perception that ‘left’ parties are less business-friendly than right parties, there is little evidence to suggest that companies actually perform worse when left parties are in power.
Research shows superannuation shortfall
The Retirement Expenditure Guidelines, produced annually by the Westpac Massey Fin-Ed Centre, show that the gap between income and expenditure for New Zealand retirees continues to shrink. But rising housing and household utility bills mean most Kiwis’ superannuation payments still don’t cover their costs of living.
Young adult reliance on parents for financial advice could be risky
Young New Zealanders still rely on their parents for financial advice, despite many harbouring doubts about the quality of that advice, according to new research from the Westpac Massey Fin-Ed Centre.
The report presents findings from the second stage of the centre’s 20-year longitudinal study, which tracks the financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of a group of New Zealanders through different life stages.
Named Chairs
Massey has a number of named Chairs for researchers that specialise in business-related expertise. These Chairs reflect our connections with business and alumni and excellence in that field of research. Two of these Chairs are in the area of finance and banking.
Prof Ben Marshall
MSA Charitable Trust Professor in Finance
Ben has published in leading journals and is among the top 1% of authors based on paper downloads from the working paper website SSRN. His work has received extensive media coverage and he has consulted to public and private companies.
Prof Nuttawat Visaltanachoti
Dean's Chair - Finance
Nuttawat is in the top 1% authors based on the research download in the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). He has published in leading international journals, blogs and popular financial media.
Research centres
Westpac Massey Fin-Ed Centre
The Westpac Massey Financial Education (Fin-Ed) Centre works to help New Zealanders become more financially savvy by improving their knowledge, attitudes and behaviour towards money. The Fin-Ed Centre is globally unique for the breadth of its work around financial literacy, covering education, research and consultancy. We undertake research and run courses for both groups and individuals.