Consideration of technological and environmental heterogeneity in cost efficiency analysis

In order to evaluate and compare the efficiency levels across banking industries, we adopt the meta-frontier model that can assess the technological difference among countries. Given the importance of country specific conditions, we include in our analysis the different specificities of each country to incorporate the technological as the environmental differences in the evaluation of banking efficiencies. Using data on the banking industries of several countries in the MENA region, over the period 1991–2011, the results of the efficiency scores corrected by the technological and environmental gap led us to conclude that Egyptian banks are the most efficient in terms of cost compared with banks in other countries. Egyptian banks enjoy a very favourable banking technology. Our results support the hypothesis that traditional techniques of efficiency analysis based on the efficiency scores of a specific and pooled frontier tend to mystify efficiency levels and may incorrectly identify efficient banks. This paper contributes to the efficiency literature by incorporating technological and environmental heterogeneities in the evaluation of efficiency. This helps to characterize the production process of a bank and provides common standards by which the efficiencies of banks in different countries can be compared in a meaningful way with each other.     

A characterization of exact non-atomic market games

Continuous exact non-atomic games are naturally associated to certain operators between Banach spaces. It thus makes sense to study games by means of the corresponding operators. We characterize non-atomic exact market games in terms of the properties of the associated operators. We also prove a separation theorem for weak compact sets of countably additive non-atomic measures, which is of independent interest.     

Resilience: Lessons from banks that have braved the economic crisis—And from those that have not

Resilience – a firm's ability to adapt, endure, quickly bounce back, and then thrive despite a catastrophic event – addresses diverse managerial constructs including performance (Carmeli & Markman, 2011). Our exploratory study expands this line of research by making two contributions: first, we develop and test a new revelatory measure for resilience – VOLARE – combining financial performance measures with volatility data. Then, applying this new measure to the financial industry, from 2002 to 2011, we identify highly resilient international financial services firms (IFSFs; e.g., banks) and compare them with less resilient IFSFs. Second, we assess three factors – bank size, home-market solidity, and product and market complexity – that the literature has traditionally shown to be highly predictive of banks’ performance. Consistent with our expectations, the results corroborate that VOLARE is complementary to, but distinct from, traditional financial measures of firm performance. We explain these deviations from traditional studies and suggest further research topics.     

How effective are heuristic solutions for electricity planning in developing countries

Heuristic algorithms have been widely used to provide computationally feasible means of exploring the cost effective balance between grid versus off grid sources for universal electrification in developing countries. By definition in such algorithms however, global optimality is not guaranteed. We present a computationally intensive but globally optimal mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) model for electricity planning and use it in a Monte Carlo simulation procedure to test the relative performance of a widely used heuristic algorithm due to [28]. We show that the overall difference in cost is typically small suggesting that the heuristic algorithm is generally cost effective in many situations. However we find that the relative performance of the heuristic algorithm deteriorates with increasing degree of spatial dispersion of unelectrified settlements, as well as increasing spatial remoteness of the settlements from the grid network, suggesting that the effectiveness of the heuristic algorithm is context specific. Further, we find that allocation of off grid sources in the heuristic algorithm solution is often significantly greater than in the MINLP model suggesting that heuristic methods can overstate the role of off-grid solutions in certain situations.     

常德市土地利用/覆被变化分析

通过GIS空间分析功能,选取常德市的四个县市:桃源县、汉寿县、临澧县、津市市,从土地利用现状、土地利用时空变化、土地利用类型动态度、土地利用程度变化以及土地利用变化区域差异等五个方面对常德市2009年和2012年土地利用、覆被变化进行定量、定性分析比较。研究结果表明:12009-2012年期间,四个县市的城镇、交通水利等建设用地需求持续增加;2 2009-2012年期间,土地利用程度综合指数呈增长的趋势;3常德市2009-2012年间土地利用程度变化不大,并且区域不平衡;4 2009-2012年期间,四个县市中相对变化最大的为临澧县城镇建设用地。     

基于B/S模式的高校量化管理系统的应用研究

本文分析了目前高校教学量化管理工作中普遍存在的问题和矛盾,提出了一种基于B/S模式的高校教师教学工作量化管理网络化系统的解决方案,论述了系统开发的必要性和实际意义;文章介绍了系统的结构及主要功能模块,以及系统在实践中的应用效果。     

基于Arduino的MiFare射频卡读写机制的研究

本文阐述了在Arduino UNO上对MiFare One卡射频识别卡进行读写的软件实现,并重点描述了阅读器与卡片之间的通信过程。     

Perspectives on Natural Resources in the Global Economy: Polity Series Review

Polity's ‘Resources’ series is a set of scholarly books, each of them dealing with a single resource or resource‐based commodity from a generally global or international perspective. As of this writing, nine books have been published in the series, six of which I review here. The series is a welcome contribution to interdisciplinary and overall critical perspectives on the social and environmental dimensions and implications of the international appropriation, production and exchange of natural resources. While there is no clear disciplinary bent or theoretical foundation running across the volumes, together the books develop a transnational perspective, stressing the linkages between specific sites of appropriation and production, on the one hand, and broader political economic networks of processing, finance, coordination, commercial distribution and social regulation, on the other. The books should serve as valuable references to researchers in academic, government and non‐government institutional settings, but should also prove valuable for undergraduate teaching on contemporary natural resource industries and their social regulation.     

Lost in intervention. The Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect on the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998)

We have decomposed the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998) into its trend and cyclical components and used the former to proxy its time-varying equilibrium. Then, we have compared changes in the equilibrium with changes in the Spanish and the USA productivity differentials to identify years that do not fit with the Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson (HBS) hypothesis. The greatest maladjustment is found in the 1940s and 1950s, decades of strong exchange rate intervention in Spain. Conversely, the link between equilibrium and differentials adjusts to the hypothesis when using the non-intervened peseta/dollar exchange rate on the Tangier black market. These contrasting results back up the idea that exchange rate intervention, so common in developing countries, might explain their scanter evidence in favour of the HBS effect.     

绥中地籍登记信息平台构建

地籍登记信息平台的建立能够支持地籍登记工作实现信息实时更新和共享。系统基于C/S架构进行开发,以绥中县为例,建立农村宅基地数据库,集成多源地理空间数据,为用户提供宅基地信息的基本浏览和查询,实现数据的信息化管理,提高土地管理部门的工作效率和服务质量,对当前登记信息平台的建立进行了有益的探索。