Testing population variance in case of one sample and the difference of variances in case of two samples: Example of wage and pension data sets in Serbia

Testing one population variance and the difference in variances of two populations based on the ordinary t-statistics combined with the bootstrap method are suggested in this article. Suggested techniques are combined with Hall's transformation approach. Application of presented methods in domain of real economic data set is described and analyzed. We compare the outputs of suggested methods and traditional methods for considered data set. The results show that these introduced methods have small advantages in comparisons with traditional methods especially for small samples.     

Competitive Advantage and Human Resource Management in SMEs in a Transitional Economy

The article is based on data of the study of 151 small companies in Slovenia by J. Pranikar and others. The study is the first investigation of small firms in slovenia with a sufficiently large number of cases to enable conclusions about the ways in which SMEs are managing to cope with new opportunities and problems. The aim of this article is to investigate a link between competitive advantage and human resource management in SMEs in a transitional economy. Results indicate that a link indeed exists in that human resource efforts in SMEs to a certain degree contribute to the competitive advantage of companies.     

STABILITY OF THE UTILITY MAXIMIZATION PROBLEM WITH RANDOM ENDOWMENT IN INCOMPLETE MARKETS

We perform a stability analysis for the utility maximization problem in a general semimartingale model where both liquid and illiquid assets (random endowments) are present. Small misspecifications of preferences (as modeled via expected utility), as well as views of the world or the market model (as modeled via subjective probabilities) are considered. Simple sufficient conditions are given for the problem to be well posed, in the sense that the optimal wealth and the marginal utility‐based prices are continuous functionals of preferences and probabilistic views.     

Wirtschaftslehre der Unternehmung in Hauptgedanken ihrer theoretischen Begründung

Ohne ZusammenfassungGewidmet der Tschechischen Technischen Hochschule in Prag — dieser ältesten öffentlichen ingenieurwissenschaftlichen Schule Europas —zum 250-jährigen Jubiläum (1707 bis 1957) im festen Glauben an eine baldige Vereinigung aller Prager Hochschulen technischer Richtung in das organische Ganzeder Technischen Universität und in der Überzeugung von der Notwendigkeit der wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät als eines unabtrennbaren Bestandteiles dieser Universität.     

Using artificial neural network and multivariate analysis techniques to evaluate road operating conditions

Regional paved roads are low volume roads with a prevalence of heavy traffic. In the world, these roads concern about 80% of the total road network; however, the traffic that affects these roads is about 20%. Since regional roads are characterized by weak demand, budget for their management/maintenance is very low. This produces considerable difficulties in the choice of strategies for maintenance planning and scheduling. For this reason, the recurring topics of research in this field deal with typical roads issues and aim to develop low cost tools and methods. The study proposes a decision support system to evaluate regional paved roads operating condition in relation to the hydrogeological situation. In particular, the system allows to evaluate in a quick and easy manner, the operating conditions of the road, through low-cost tools (i.e. using low economic resources). This is very useful in the case of LVRs because administrations for these roads have a limited budget. The procedure is developed on a regional paved roads network based on more than 80 roads located in Southern Italy. Data is collected by direct surveys in the field and is integrated with cartography and information available in road agency records. From data analysis, obtained using two different techniques, an easy and quick use procedure is made. In particular, Model 1 is built through multivariate analysis and Model 2 using the artificial neural network (ANN) technique. The results show the validity of the two models in Regional paved roads operating conditions estimation in relation to hydrogeological situations of sites. Both models show good reliability. In particular, the first model (Model 1) is characterized by a high level of significance (p < 0.01) and by a coefficient of determination equal to 0.82. Comparative tests between the second model (Model 2) on which standard tests cannot be performed for obvious reasons, and the first model (Model 1). The results show that the ANN model (model 2), characterized by lower residual, simulates more accurately than the second (Model 1).