One of the most exciting times when taking a PhD is the opportunity to meet with other PhD students and listen to experienced Professors from all over the world. This year we, roughly 125 students and faculty, met in beautiful Trondheim at Clarion Hotel & Congress, at the annual NFB Research conference. It is really impressing to see that Norway invests money in allowing PhD students from all across Norway in the area of Economics and Business, and it becomes an invaluable platform for allowing students to interact and build these important networks which help in not only advancing our research, but also helps in growing us as researchers.
This time I am presenting my third paper, which may be the last one I need for my PhD. This paper is entitled “Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurial Success in the Informal Economy.” The discussant was Professor Grete Hennes. The paper links in with the data collection and previous papers, but specifically focuses on the impact of Financial Literacy on the performance of small informal businesses in Ecuador. The findings indicate that those microfinance clients who are more financially literate, have more success in their business, measured in terms of profits or return on assets. The feedback from the presentation helps me in several ways:
- While the presentation is great, including photos of the context etc, I need to better explain in the paper the context.
- I need to consider other factors which could bias the result
- Discuss the data reliability in more detail
Keynote speakers during the conference included Professors Barbara Czarniawska, Frode Mellemvik, Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe and John Burns. For more details, please see the program. A reflection for next year is to perhaps try to get even more well known key note speakers, as the group is quite large and it would make a lot of sense to invite some of the big names in research.
In the evening we had a dinner at the business school, with a Norwegian choir entertaining…
Later we walked home and passed the so called Nidarosdomen or Nidaro´s cathedral. It was completed in 1300, but the beginning of the dome was built in 1035. It is built over the burial site of St. Olav who was a Norwegian Viking king, who has become a patron saint of Norway.
Pontus Engström 