Validating the Financial Literacy Index of Hungarian SMEs during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russian–Ukrainian War

Abstract

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian–Ukrainian war have had a significant impact on economies around the world, with pivotal implications for the activities of companies. The issue of corporate financial literacy has been within our scope of interest for a matter of years now, and this study aims at re-enforcing our previous overall theoretical and literacy-based analysis from a methodological approach. We use our own previous databases to explore and analyze the importance of corporate financial literacy, taking into account the economic factors inside and outside the organization that affect the businesses. For this, a confirmative factor analysis (CFA) model has been created. The article aims at two things with this. On the one hand, we intend to introduce the wider scope of the fit tests applicable in the CFA, thus giving a direction to other authors. It also allows for adequate verification for their models, while at the same time conducting the fit test for our corporate financial literacy model as well as a valid model framework suitable for making measurements and deductions. With the resulting model, this paper aims to examine the corporate financial literacy, the current economic challenges, and the issues faced by managers during crises. In addition to all this, with our article, we also want to make some contribution to the methodology of empirical data analysis: in the article we collect the fit tests that can be used to validate confirmatory factor models, the way they are determined, and most importantly, we try to sort out the literature approaches to the acceptable values of these tests, giving the reader a kind of guide and a reference base. The results of the research identify response measures that can contribute to increasing companies’ resilience based on the principles of financial awareness.