Bar in Questionnaires

Vougiouklis ＆ Vougiouklis have proposed the replacement of Likert scales, usually used in questionnaires, with a bar. With this proposal a discrete situation is replaced by a fuzzy one. There are identified certain advantages concerning the use of the bar as compared to that of a scale during both the stages of filling-in as well as processing a questionnaire. The main advantage associated with business research requirements is the fact that it is expected to be much quicker to fill in and much easier to explain to participants. The bar provides the potential for different types of processing Likert scales cannot. Therefore the researchers are allowed to ascertain that the given answers follow not only the already suggested and used Gauss distribution but also a parabola distribution as it will be suggested in present paper, and which is expected to give the researcher the opportunity to ＂correct＂ this tendency. Therefore, a possibility of choosing amongst a number of alternatives is offered, by utilizing fuzzy logic in the same way as it has already been done in industry and combining mathematical models with multivalued operations.     

Quantitative research of annual runoff distribution characteristics in the Dagujia River basin, Yantai, China

Mann-Kendall method and minimum variance method are used in this study to analyze the mean value variable-point of the runoff data observed by Fushan Hydrological Station in the Dagujia River basin from 1966 to 2004. Based on the results, the runoff time is divided into four periods with the similar hydrological variation character. The annual runoff distribution characters in the Dagujia River basin are discussed by using the non-uniform coefficients, concentration degree and concentration period, variation range, etc. The results indicate that： （1） River runoff is very unevenly distributed throughout the year in Dagujia River. About 90% of runoff is in the period from June to October, while the runoff from November to April of the next year is lower. （2） The annual runoff distribution characters during 1966-1971 are very similar to that of 1982-1996, and the runoff of1972-1981 is almost similar to that of 1997-2004. （3） The annual runoff distribution characters have changed obviously during 1997-2004 compared with the other periods, which makes it more difficult to exploit and use the water resource in the future.     

The Way of the Social and Economic Development of China An Attempt of Historical and Synthetic Representation

The issue of social and economic development is an important part of theoretical and empirical research of the contemporary economy. China is an example of an economy which in a short period of time achieved success within this scope. Therefore it seems to be justified to draw the reader＇s attention to the factors and determinants which may be regarded as the key ones for the economy of China, both in the period of 1949-1978, namely, in the period of real socialism, and in the period after 1978, so-called ＂socialist market economy＂ to date. On the basis of an analysis of Polish and foreign reference sources and source materials, the author tried to trace both similarities and differences in China＇s economic development over those two periods, first of all paying attention to the Chinese authorities＇ pragmatism of governing in the other period, accompanied by limiting ideological influences. Maintaining the socialist system, in that period China worked out its own, specific principles, and rules of internal activities and activities in the international arena, which enabled to it the creation of a model, especially for developing countries, the system of economic planning and programming, its constant modernization during the implementation of economic tasks, with the consideration given to changing conditionings in the world economy. It was pointed out that with maintaining the laboriousness of the Chinese and their loyalty to authority, they make up China＇s economic power. The aim of the article is to pay special attention to the circumstances, phenomena, conditionings, and factors which occurred on the way to the social and economic development of China, which enabled it to achieve the economic success in a relatively short period of time. This success can be expressed by such indicators as for instance the poverty rate, the unemployment rate, gross domestic product, the value of export, and the value of foreign direct investment as well as other factors.     

烟台地区耕地资源态势及宏观驱动力研究

According to the statistics of cultivated land in Yantai area during the Reform and Opening-up over the past 20 years and with the detailed survey and changing data of land use during the recent live years, this paper reveals the basic characteristics of the resource utilization, the basic process of the changes, regional differences, and current direction of cultivated land In addition, this paper makes a preliminary research on the major driving factors and the influence mechanism for the changes in the cultivated land area. and reaches the following conclasions： （1） There was a trend of obvious fluctuant decrease in cultivated laud area during the past 20 years. The changes of cultivated land have undergone the process - slow decrease,steep decrease, slow decrease. And there were three peak periods of cultivated land loss around 1985. 1987-1996 and 1991-1993 respectively （2） The decreased cultivated land was mainly converted into land for industry and mining, residential area. and all kinds of traffic and orchards. The increase of cultivated land mainly came from exploitation and land and arrangement and reclamation of industry and mining land （3） The economic development. population growth and policy are the dominant macro-driving factors for the decrease of cultivated land area in Yantai. The obvious sudden changes during the change process of cultivated land acreage are relevant to the national macro.policies background The rapid decrease of cnltivated land area is synchronous with the overheated economic growth resulting from the direct investment in fixed assets. Spatial distribution of the decrease in cultivated land is congruous with the differences in speed and the scale of economic growth between the different regions of Yantai area. Furthermore. the decrease in cultivated land caused by population increase cannot be ignored.     

The Motivation Factors of Sales Personnel in Financial Institutions

The motivation is an employee＇s internal relationship in the form of behaviour directed towards a specific goal and is manifested as an important factor for overall organisation performance. The goal of any business is to motivate employees to perform work with the maximum results. The work motivation is complex and dynamic feature of human resources and influences to motivation are very broad and diverse. The material forms of motivation are different compensation that employees receive for their work in the company. They appear in the financial and non-financial forms （paid or in the form of various services）. The goal of this research is to identify the main factors of human resources motivation in financial institutions （banks）. The questionnaire will be used as a research instrument and consists of two parts. The first part of the questionnaire will focus on socio-demographic characteristics and the second part concentrates on the motivation variables of material and immaterial character. Applying adequate knowledge discovery research methods will be identified as the main motivation components of selling persons in financial institutions.     

常绿阔叶林恢复过程植物物种多样性的变化

Evergreen broad-leaved forest is one of the most important vegetation types in China. Because of the human activities, evergreen broad-leaved forest has been destroyed extensively, leading to degraded ecosystem. It is urgent to conserve and restore these natural forests in China.tn this paper, the tendency and rate of species diversity restoration of the evergreen broad-lea ved forest in Darning Mountain has been studied. The main results are as follows:(a) in subtropical mid-mountain area, species diversity in degraded evergreen broad-leaved forest can be restored. Through analyzing b diversity index of communities in different time and space, it was found that the species composition of communities tend to be the same as that in the zonal evergreen broad-leaved forest. (b) The restoration rate of evergreen broad-leaved forest was very fast. Planting Chinese fir after clear-cutting and controlled burning of the forest 178 species appeared in a 60Om^2, sample area after 20 years““ natural recovering. Among these species, 58 were tree layer and the height of community reached 18m, The survey suggested that it would take only 20 years for the degraded forest to develop into community composed of light demanding broad-leaved pioneer trees and rain-tolerance broad-leaved trees, and it need another 40-80 years to reach the stage consisting of min-tulerance evergreen broad-leaved trees, (c) Species number increased quickly at the early stage (2-20 years) during vegetation recovering process toward the climax, and decreased at the min-stage (50-60 years ), then maintained a relatively stable level at the late-stage (over 150 years).     

Discussion on the business performance of life insurance industries in Taiwan and Mainland China Application of Metafrontier model

When using the Data Development Analysis method for analyzing the efficiency of different firms, it is common to put all similar DMU together for measurement in order to figure out the efficiency values of various DMU. However, such an analysis may easily neglect the source property of an individual DMU, meaning that the differences among various DMUs derive from different environmental backgrounds, e.g. environment variables such as economic civilization, laws and regulations, and political backgrounds. Applying the Metafrontier model can overcome the barriers resulting from the environment variables, and it can analyze and measure the differences among various DMUs which have different source properties. It can also be used for measuring the difference between each group of DMU and all DMUs. Therefore, this study adopts the DEA method, assuming variable returns to scale to evaluate and comparatively analyze the business performance of life insurance industries in Taiwan and Mainland China based on ＂BBC input orientation＂. When evaluating the business performance, the operating management echelon is affected by uncontrollable external environment variables. Thus, this study applies the Four-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis to discuss the impact of environment variables on business performance and re-measures the business efficiency of life insurance industries in Taiwan and Mainland China after adjusting the input variables. The demonstration period adopted by this study is from 2003 to 2005, and the research subject comprises 43 companies in Taiwan and Mainland China, among which, there are 19 companies in Taiwan and 24 companies in Mainland China, and there are 129 sets of sample data. It is assumed that the discount rate is ？ （）, is set as 3% in this paper）, and figured out the change of each life insurance company in technical efficiency in the inter-period accumulative years from 2003 to 2005.     

The New Method to Determine Ownership Stake to Exercise Control： An Empirical Analysis on Italian Companies

The idea of this work arises from the analysis of the researches developed in the literature on topic of ownership and control that are mostly based on threshold of ownership stake to determine control equal for all companies and, in most cases, not supported by theoretical arguments and empirical evidences. In fact, the aim of this paper is to build a new method of determining the threshold of ownership stake that allows the shareholder to exercise control. In particular, this survey uses all Italian listed companies as reference, and the minutes of the Ordinary and Extraordinary General Meetings of shareholders, in 2009-2012, as database. The topic can be enriched with further and future researches aiming to adapt this new method in a cross-country investigation and so to identify the different threshold for the countries, on the basis of the different national laws regarding the ownership stakes that affect the control.     

Is proximity to oil refinery a big factor in explaining differences in gas prices？

According to the Energy Information Administration, average retail gasoline prices tend to typically be higher in certain states than in others. Aside from taxes, the factors shown to contribute to regional and even local differences in gasoline prices include proximity of supply, supply disruptions, competition in the local market and environmental programs. Of interest in this paper is proximity of supply. It has been hypothesized that areas farthest from the Gulf Coast （the source of nearly half of the gasoline produced in the United States and, thus, a major supplier to the rest of the country） tend to have higher prices. To test this hypothesis, the paper assembles state level monthly retail gasoline data for the period 1983 to 2007 for five states with oil refineries （Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana） and five states without refineries （Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida）. The analysis employs dynamic correlation, regression, cointegration and vector autoregressive methods. Overall, the results show that retail gas prices in states with refineries and those without refineries tend to move in the same direction over time. The small differences observed over time may suggest that price shocks take a short time to be felt nationwide.     

Distribution characteristics of China's key cultural relic tourism resources and suggestions to its development and protection

SPSS13.0 was used to process the data of the 1-6 batch of key cultural relic conservation units promulgated by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China; and multi-element evaluation method was used to calculate the composite distribution index.The spatial distribution of cultural relics of provinces in China can be divided into four grades,namely：very rich areas,rich areas,poor areas and very poor areas; the article analyzes the characteristics of cultural resources in spatial and temporal distribution.The paper holds that（1）the distribution of China＇s cultural relic tourism resources is relatively concentrated,different sharply from region to region,with more Han nation＇s heritage,less relics of the ethnic minorities; （2） Henan,Hebei,Shaanxi,Shanxi Province are the main regions with heavy distribution of cultural resources; （3） relics appeared in specific time periods in China＇s history.Ming and Qing Dynasties,Sui,Tang and Five Dynasties,Song,Liao and Jin,the Western Han,Shang and Zhou dynasties,the New Stone Age are the major periods producing more cultural relics.This paper also analyzes relationships of the emergence of cultural relics with production technology,specific historical process,specific geographical location,political system,religion,national culture,customs,architectural styles and techniques of the traditional cultural educational system.Finally,the paper discusses the development and protection of heritage.     

Public and Private Investment in the Port Sector in Mexico, 2000-2010： A Study Through Data Envelopment Analysis

Knowing the level of efficiency of investment applied in ports of Mexico is relevant information for the design of port policies that contribute to its development and thus to greater freight movement. The objective of this paper is to analyze the technical efficiency obtained from International Mexican Ports, through the use of the technique of Data Envelopment Analysis （DEA）. It uses data regarding public and private investment in ports applied during the period 2000-2010 and its influence on the number of Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit （TEU）. Because it has been applied the DEA-CCR （the linear programming model） model input oriented, thus not only the efficiency is calculated in ports, but benchmarking is also obtained to determine the efficient ports that serve as reference to those who were found to be inefficient. The results obtained showed that Manzanillo and Progreso were the most efficient ports. On the other hand, the ports that were not efficient for any of the years reviewed were Mazatlan and Lazaro Cardenas. Generally, public investment has been increasing over the period, and public policies are not designed to allow the ports to have an international projection.     

Non-classical Algorithm for Time Series Prediction of the Range of Economic Phenomena With Regard to the Interaction of Financial Market Indicators

The aim of the article is to present non-clasical copyrighted algorithm for prediction of time series, presenting macroeconomic indicators and stock market indices. The algorithm is based on artificial neural networks and multi-resolution analysis （the algorithm is based on Daubechies wavelet）. However, the main feature of the algorithm, which gives a good quality of the forecasts, is all included in the series analysis division into, a few partial under-series and prediction dependence on a number of other economic series. The algorithm used for the prediction, is copyrighted algorithm, labeled M.H-D in this article. Application of the algorithm was performed on a series presenting WIG 20. The forecast of WIG 20 was conditional on trading the Dow Jones, DAX, Nikkei, Hang Seng, taking into account the sliding time window. As an example application of copyrighted model, the forecast of WIG 20 for a period of two years, one year, six month was appointed. An empirical example is described. It shows that the proposed model can predict index with the scale of two years, one year, a half year and other intervals. Precision of prediction is satisfactory. An average absolute percentage error of each forecast was： 0.0099%---for two-year forecasts WIG 20; 0.0552%--for the annual forecast WIG 20; and 0.1788%---for the six-month forecasts WIG 20.     

The effects of local govemment investment on economic growth and employment： evidence from transitional China

Based on the panel data of 28 provinces in the year of 1987-2001, this paper examines the effects of the local government investment on economic growth and employment. The empirical result shows that the local government investment plays a significant positive role in economic growth and employment. However, while the proportion of local government investment to GDP had a remarkable rise after 1998, the elasticity of local government investment on economic growth declined, which shows that there is a big room for raising the efficiency of local government investment. Moreover. the empirieal examination shows that although local government investment had positive effect on employment, the elasticity had a decrease after 1994 when the tax-sharing system reform was put into practice. This shows that the positive role of local government investment on employment is also limited This paper argues that the role of local governments as investors must be weakened, and local governments of different levels should lessen direct economic intervention and concentrate on public regulation.     

Related factors and regional differences in energy consumption in China

This article used the Cluster analysis of statistical method to separate China＇s 30 provinces and municipalities into three categories according to their energy consumption discrepancies and characteristics from 1985 to 2007. The categories were high, moderate and low energy consumption areas and they had significant differences in energy consumption. Based on this classification, the authors analyzed the influencing factors of energy consumption in the three areas by means of panel data econometric model. The results showed that the influencing factors were obviously different. In order to support national goal of energy conservation and emission reduction, the energy measures and policies should be distinctly taken.     

Economic growth and unemployment in East Asia

Barro and Sala-i-Martin （2004） analyzed the empirical determinants of growth. The data used in this paper consists of panel data of several macroeconomic variables observed for 55 years 0950-2004） in six East Asian countries and regions. Following the implications of semi-endogenous growth theory, the author regressed output growth on the determinants of steady-state income. The estimation and test results suggest the existence of significant relationship between steady-state income and （trend weighted） R ＆ D input both in Japan and South Korea. In addition, following Cellini （1995）, the author also considers cointegration and error-correction methods as the growth regression of East Asian countries. Meanwhile, Chang, et al （2004） derived the conclusion that the decreases in reallocation shocks are main factor in a downward trend in natural rate of unemployment for South Korea. The author extends this analysis using structural VAR to other Asian countries and regions, Japan and Taiwan region. Impulse responses show that the growth of production in Korea and Taiwan reduce unemployment, but, in Japan, this raises unemployment.     

Intelligent tools and techniques for modern management

In order to make decisions all companies need information. As a rule, all the informatics systems of a company contain a multitude of data and turn these data into information that has to be analyzed in order to make decisions. It is a slow process. The solution of this drawback is given by Business Intelligence （BI） applications that can help companies increase income or diminish costs by offering the executive management appropriate information on the basis of which quick and efficient decisions can be taken.
The main purpose of the paper is to prove the necessity that BI tools should be used by the modem manager. Managers are aware of that by putting into practice the BI solutions, opportunities of getting control over the business process and methods are improved and better, timely analysis functions of the performance parameters can be obtained.     

金融中介发展与中国宏观经济波动实证分析

This article analyzes the relationship between financial intermediary development and economic fluctuation in the last 50 years in China. It was found that a steady and long-term relation existed between these two variables, and that different aspects of the development of the financial intermediary system had different effects on the economic fluctuation. The improvement of the intermediary＇s efficiency can repress the economic fluctuation , but the increase of financial intermediaries can intensify the fluctuation. On that basis, some suggestions about the development of the financial intermediary are proposed in this essay.     

The contribution of resources and capabilities to the competitiveness： The case of Port of Sines

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the competitiveness of the main maritime Port sited in Portugal - Port of Sines. This paper is developed under the resource-based view approach. A literature review about the resource-based view is presented with a special highlight on the contribution of organisation owns＇ resources to the competitiveness. With this study we intend to emphasize the applicability of a management theory to a different type of organisation which only recently starts to be preoccupied with its competitiveness. A case study methodology is used in order to collect all information needed about its main resources and capabilities of Port and also its competitiveness. The resources analysed in this paper are： The infrastructures, the accessibilities, the Port operations and also the information systems used on it. Also, a set of performance data is analysed as the main indicators of competitiveness. After that, a conceptual model is presented in order to systematise the main resources and capabilities under which the competitiveness of the Port of Sines is built on.     

Effective Management of Own Funds in Polish Cooperative Banks

Today cooperative banks belong to the most significant financial institution in the world. Moreover, they can compete with commercial banks. The own funds of the cooperative bank are important in their activity. The main goal of this paper is to investigate how much the level of the own funds of the Polish cooperative banks influenced their efficiency. The research pertained to operating cooperative banks in Poland. The following measures of the efficiency were used in the research： return on Equity （ROE）, net profit, index C/I, and financial margin. The results of the study indicate that banks from the Quartile III （highest aggregate own funds）, had the highest net profits, the highest ROE, the lowest C/I value, the lowest ROE, and the lowest financial markups. On this basis, it remains to be recommended that banks of highest aggregate own funds continue expansion of own funds which will increase lending capacity and subsequently contribute to higher effectiveness.     

Effects of user perceptions associated with perceived playfulness on their attitude toward using a netbook

A netbook, Internet-enabled and with extra portability, has been fast-growing in the domain of information technology （IT） in recent years. Compared with standardized laptops or desktop computers, a netbook＇s key features include a shrunken-down and lightweight laptop that is ＂easy to learn, easy to work, and easy to play＂. This research is to empirically test the influence of user perceptions of this new form of IT （usability, compatibility and relative advantage） associated with playfulness and attitude toward purchase intention. In addition, personal innovativeness of an individual plays an important role in the antecedents of such perceptions. A test of this model, two-stage approach, confirmatory factor analysis （CFA） and structural equation model （SEM） are employed to validate the casual model from among 227 usable respondents who have been using a laptop for more than two years. Results showed support for eleven of twelve research hypotheses, and one new path linking personal innovativeness with attitude toward using is found to be non-siznificant.