Financial market globalization,nonconvergence and credit cycles

This paper explores the dynamic consequences of variable investment-project size in a global economy consisting of many small open countries that are plagued with domestic credit market frictions. As is customary in the literature, borrowers provide some internal funds, but they also need external funds to implement their investment projects, which are subject to the costly-state-verification problem. Contrary to the literature, the investment-project size increases with the country’s own capital stock. We find that financial market globalization may lead to a process of oscillatory convergence, even in the absence of any exogenous shocks, if the investment-project size is very sensitive to the change in capital stock.     

Financial Sector Volatility,Banking Market Structure and Exports

This paper assesses the impacts of financial sector volatility and banking market structure on industrial exports. By utilising the specification of Rajan and Zingales (American Economic Review 1998; 88 , 559) on the cross‐country, cross‐industry data from Manova (Journal of International Economics 2008; 76 , 33), we find that financial sector volatility, measured as the standard deviation of the growth of private credit, and banking market structure, measured as the share of the three largest banks’ assets in a country, respectively exert significantly negative and positive impacts on industrial exports, particularly for those industries that are more externally financially dependent. The findings are robust to a variety of kinds of sensitivity analysis and thus lend support to the notion that a more stable and concentrated banking system is important to the exports of those industries that rely more on external finance.     

The risks connected with accidents on highways and railways

Quality & Quantity - Safety in an integral sense is a comprehensive tool by which the humans ensure the level of their security and the sustainable development of them and of other basic public...     

Personalized goal-based investing via multi-stage stochastic goal programming

In this paper, we propose a goal-based investment model that is suitable for personalized wealth management. The model only requires a few intuitive inputs such as size of wealth, investment amount, and consumption goals from individual investors. In particular, a priority level can be assigned to each consumption goal and the model provides a holistic solution based on a sequential approach starting with the highest priority. This allows strict prioritization by maximizing the probability of achieving higher priority goals that are not affected by goals with lower priorities. Furthermore, the proposed model is formulated as a linear program that efficiently finds the optimal financial plan. With its simplicity, flexibility, and computational efficiency, the proposed goal-based investment model provides a new framework for automated investment management services.     

Strategies for Improving Codes of Ethics Implementation in Construction Organizations

It is necessary to reconsider the assumptions upon which the process of implementing compliance with ethical programs rests, in both theoretical and practical terms. These assumptions should hinge on organizational enablers that allow embeddedness of codes of ethics in the web of an organization's processes. This article sets out to describe an approach that will facilitate implementation of codes of ethics in construction organizations and a comprehensive literature survey approach is adopted to achieve this. The paper equally employs the application of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model as a tool to stimulate ethical behavior in an organization, with the focus on the enabler criterion of the model. The authors discuss organizational enablers in relation to the implementation of ethical codes. The study demonstrates how ethics can be managed in an organization by proposing a framework to enhance codes of ethics embeddedness in the web of an organization. The paper indicates current research gaps and future opportunities for both academics and practitioners.     

Design and development of inventory knowledge discovery system

Inventory management (IM) performance is affected by the forecasting accuracy of both demand and supply. In this paper, an inventory knowledge discovery system (IKDS) is designed and developed to forecast and acquire knowledge among variables for demand forecasting. In IKDS, the TREes PArroting Networks (TREPAN) algorithm is used to extract knowledge from trained networks in the form of decision trees which can be used to understand previously unknown relationships between the input variables so as to improve the forecasting performance for IM. The experimental results show that the forecasting accuracy using TREPAN is superior to traditional methods like moving average and autoregressive integrated moving average. In addition, the knowledge extracted from IKDS is represented in a comprehensible way and can be used to facilitate human decision-making.     

A MCGP decision aid for homebuyers to make the best choice

This study adopts a new approach, the multi-choice goal programming (MCGP), to evaluate houses in order to help homebuyers to find better house based on the residential preferences. According to the function of MCGP, homebuyers can set multiple housing goals with multiple aspiration levels. This increases the flexibility to find a suitable house. Compared with other classical methods such as checklist and analytic hierarchy process, MCGP is more efficient, especially while considering a lot of housing criteria and house alternatives. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of MCGP decision aid for housing selection, a real case study is then provided. Furthermore, ten volunteers are invited to participate in the empirical experiment. The results also validate the effectiveness and efficiency of MCGP decision aid.     

Web users’ behavioural patterns of tourism information search: From online to offline

This paper presents a conceptual framework of Web users’ engagement in tourism information search for a comprehensive understanding of their integrated online and offline search behaviour. The information search experiences are characterised as a process constituting some common elements: prior knowledge and searching experiences, online searching strategies, processing and recording information, barriers to online searching, reasons for ending an online search, summarising information, exchanging information and searching for more information through other sources. Such behaviour goes beyond the scope of information searching and captures the other activities, including information processing, utilising and disseminating. The grounded theory research method is employed as an inductive investigative process in which the authors construct the framework by systematically collecting and analysing data. The aim of this research method is to build a theory. The data sets consist of both semi-structured in-depth interviews with subjects and their field observations based on online searching. A theoretical model incorporating 10 propositions is proposed for future testing.     

A technical note on “Optimizing inventory decisions in a multi-stage multi-customer supply chain”

We first generalize Khouja [Khouja, M., 2003. Optimizing inventory decisions in a multi-stage multi-customer supply chain. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 39 (3), 193–208] integrated model considering the integer multipliers mechanism and next individually derive the optimal solution to the three- and four-stage model using the perfect squares method, which is a simple algebraic approach so that ordinary readers unfamiliar with differential calculus can understand the optimal solution procedure with ease. We subsequently deduce the optimal expressions for Khouja (2003) and Cárdenas-Barrón [Cárdenas-Barrón, L.E., 2007. Optimal inventory decisions in a multi-stage multi-customer supply chain: a note. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 43 (5), 647–654] model, and identify the associated errors in Khouja (2003). We present two numerical examples for illustrative purposes. We finally shed light on some future research by extending or modifying the generalized model.