Sustainable finance: A new paradigm

We argue that our current approach to shareholder wealth maximization is no longer a valid guide to creation of sustainable wealth: An emphasis on short-term results has had the unintended consequence of forcing many firms to externalize their social and environmental costs. An unwavering faith in markets' ability to efficiently uncover long-term value implications of short-term results has created many unacceptable outcomes. Given the social and environmental challenges ahead, such practices and their unacceptable outcomes cannot be sustained. Therefore, a shift in paradigm is called for. We propose a sustainable value creation framework, within which all social and environmental costs and benefits are to be explicitly accounted for.     

Determination of the efficiency of the world railway companies by method of DEA and comparison of their efficiency by Tobit analysis

This paper attempts to measure the performance of railway companies that produce passenger and freight services around the world. The data covering 10 years from 2000 to 2009 is analyzed first via the data envelopment analysis method in order to obtain technical efficiency and allocative efficiency scores of 31 railway companies for the purpose of the study. In the analysis conducted by use of the CCR model, while total 17 firms were efficient in the first year, this figure reaches to 18 companies for the last year with one more addition. While only two companies seem efficient in the first year, this figure goes down to one for the last year. With input oriented and variable return analysis conducted by use of the BCC model, the firms having technical efficiency at the beginning of the period were 20 in number. At the end of the period, the figure reaches to 24. Next, the outputs of DEA are correlated by Tobit regression and tried to determine decisiveness of the outputs on the efficiency. It has been seen that the same output composition used with Tobit analysis gives more compliant results with the allocative efficiency scores rather than with the technical efficiency scores.     

Building entrepreneurial universities in a specific culture—barriers and opportunities

• Globally universities are facing an increasingly dynamic environment, and many have responded through becoming more entrepreneurial. European and US universities have adopted new governance structures, diversified their funding, changed their organisational structures and adopted an entrepreneurial culture to drive more innovative behaviour. Using multiple case studies, based on semi‐structured interviews, the barriers and opportunities for entrepreneurialism in five UAE universities are identified. UAE universities possess inherent qualities necessary for entrepreneurialism, including steerage, concern for economic surplus plus their performance driven environment allows quick response to the dynamic external environment; however, there are certain areas that require further development such as developing a culture of innovation, incentivising Universities to take risks as well as gaining appropriate support from the State. Based on the results of this work a change agenda has been chartered to further support and develop entrepreneurial universities in the Middle Eastern environment.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of endowments,technology and size in international trade: new evidence from product-level data

Using product-level trade data, we empirically investigate the export patterns of more than 150 countries in their exports to the USA, Brazil, India, and Japan. We document strong evidence that exporters specialize according to their relative factor endowments, technology, and economic size. More developed, capital abundant countries are found to export products of higher unit values and a wider range of products to developed, emerging and developing markets. More developed, economically larger, and technologically advanced countries are also the major exporters of new products, spanning a wide range of product categories with high unit values. Our findings provide important insights into the macro phenomenon that a large proportion of the global trade takes place among developed economies, and that the latter are also major exporters to developing markets.     

Can Market Potential Explain Regional Disparities in Developing Countries? Evidence from Turkey

Regional disparity is one of the important characteristics of the Turkish economy. This study examines the impact of market potential on the regional differences in Turkey by investigating wages in the manufacturing industry for 1987 and 2000. Evidence suggests that market potential is an important determinant of inequality in Turkey. In addition, public–private decomposition reshapes the dispersion of wages supportive of rising heterogeneity in the private manufacturing industry. This increases the explanatory power of market potential, which is observed to be high in western Turkey and diminishes toward eastern Turkey. Our findings highlight that during the postliberalization era of the 1980s, Turkey's regional inequality concern transformed into a structural problem which can be explained by provincial market potential. Moreover, our results underline that the modern geography framework, which has been tested for developed economies, is able to elucidate the regional differences in a developing country suffering from persistent imbalances.     

电子商务环境下的第三方物流

本文从物流在电子商务发展中的推动力入手,分析电子商务物流和第三方物流的关系,得出第三方物流是电子商务物流的必然选择,并提出了发展第三方物流的策略。     

An investigation into the impact of vacation travel on the tourist

This paper explored the impact of vacation travel on the ‘self’ using a questionnaire survey and interviews. Vacation travel emerged as a form of learning about the self, a journey of self‐discovery rather than self‐recovery. Travel impacts are predominantly self‐centered, producing changes that provide opportunities for personal growth. Experiences leading to these changes are mainly influenced by interactions with the ‘other’. Importantly, no significant association was found between personality type and being impacted, and no difference was found between a pleasurable and a miserable experience and being impacted. Both findings offer a contribution to knowledge and a platform for further research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic Portfolio Choice with Parameter Uncertainty and the Economic Value of Analysts' Recommendations

We derive a closed-form solution for the optimal portfolio ofa nonmyopic utility maximizer who has incomplete informationabout the alphas or abnormal returns of risky securities. Weshow that the hedging component induced by learning about theexpected return can be a substantial part of the demand. Usingour methodology, we perform an "ex ante" empirical exercise,which shows that the utility gains resulting from optimal allocationare substantial in general, especially for long horizons, andan "ex post" empirical exercise, which shows that analysts’recommendations are not very useful. (JEL C61, G11, G24)