Some Features of Hungarian Financial Literacy in the Light of the Economic Behaviour of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Abstract

The study examines the financial management culture of the SME sector based on the results of a nationwide representative survey. The analysis focuses on the financial literacy and behaviour of entrepreneurs: the knowledge and use of different financial products, the planning of financial management, the late settlement of invoices and the substantiation of financial management decisions. The database of our research is based on the survey entitled “Financial Literacy in Hungary”, conducted by Corvinus University of Budapest in 2017. We examined the different financial literacy indicators by means of simple statistics including, in some cases, their changes over time. In the next step, by applying a multinomial logistic regression, we showed that the domestic SME sector can be segmented according to certain corporate demographic and other independent variables, as well as financial literacy indicators. Three groups can be distinguished: (1) traditional thrifty enterprises, (2) enterprises lacking resources and (3) smartly-financed enterprises.