Right censoring in a discrete life model

Although there are many sophisticated models for estimation of failure rate based on censored data in continuous distributions, not much work has been done in the discrete case. We introduce a discrete model for life lengths and consider its properties. For this model, we derive the corresponding maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters under Type I and Type II right-censoring. Received May 2000     

Manufacturing Wage Differentials and Employment in Some Scandinavian Countries, the U.S. and the U.K.: An Analysis of Variance Approach

This paper presents some empirical evidence on the factors determining changes in wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers and in their employment. An ``analysis of variance' (ANOVA) model is estimated using UN data for five OECD countries in order to assess the relative importance of industry-specific, country-specific and international shocks (as well as interactions between industry and country effects). It is found that both international shocks and national policies affect wage differentials over the whole sample, whilst skill-biased technical change (SBTC) was a significant factor in the seventies. Employment responds mainly to international shocks, although national policies and SBTC were important determinants in the seventies and eighties respectively. Some of the results are found to be sensitive to the technology level of the industries considered.     

Entrepreneurial,market, learning and networking orientations as determinants of business capability and international performance: the contingent role of government support

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This study presents a business capability model that connects strategic orientations, business capability, government support, and...     

Explaining agricultural productivity growth: an international perspective

This article presents multi-output, multi-input total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates in agriculture for 88 countries over the 1970–2001 period, estimated with both stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and the more commonly employed data envelopment analysis (DEA). We find results with SFA to be more plausible than with DEA, and use them to analyze trends across countries and the determinants of TFP growth in developing countries. The central finding is that policy and institutional variables, including public agricultural expenditure and proagricultural price policy reforms, are significant correlates of TFP growth. The most significant geographic correlate of TFP growth is distance to the nearest OECD country.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Shariah</Emphasis>-compliant equities: Empirical evaluation of performance in the European market during credit crunch

Islamic finance is based on the Islamic Jurisprudence as prescribed by the Shariah, and has witnessed significant growth and development in the recent decades. During the period of economic slowdown and following the financial crisis during FY 2007–2009, it was claimed that Islamic financial system seemed to be better in coping with economic slowdowns than conventional financial systems. The article analyses whether the same holds true for Shariah-compliant equities in the market, that is, whether Shariah-compliant equities perform better in the market as compared to the general market. Three portfolios are constructed based on the constituents of S&P Europe 350 to represent the overall market, the market without the financial firms and the market of Shariah-compliant equities. It is found that the portfolio of Shariah-compliant equities outperforms the other two portfolios in all aspects of analysis. However, it slightly underperforms the market portfolio when there is an upward growth trend in the economy. The findings of this article are very relevant for policymakers, investors and fund managers to determine policy matters, deciding on investment and marketing strategy for Islamic capital market products.     

Asymmetric impact of oil prices,exchange rate,and inflation on tourism demand in Pakistan: new evidence from nonlinear ARDL

This study scrutinized the asymmetric impact of oil prices, exchange rate, and inflation on tourism demand in Pakistan using [Shin, Y., Yu, B., & Greenwood-Nimmo, M. (2014) Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework. In Festschrift in honor of peter schmidt (pp. 281–314). New York, NY: Springer] nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model. The NARDL bounds test examined the existence of cointegration in study variables, including CO₂ emissions, institutional quality, oil prices, exchange rate, inflation, and tourism demand. The evidence proposes that disregarding the intrinsic nonlinearities may misinform inference. The estimated NARDL model affirmed long-run negative and significant effect of CO₂ emissions on tourism demand, while institutional quality was positively associated with tourism demand. Furthermore, the findings of the study also suggested long-run asymmetric relationship between oil prices, exchange rate, inflation, and tourism demand.     

Analyzing Quality of Supply Chain Management in Hotels of Isfahan Using the Partial Least Squares (PLS)

ABSTRACT

Hotels, as one of the major tourism service providers, must offer high quality products to survive in this severely competitive environment so that they can preserve their competitive advantage dealing with other competitors. Therefore, considering the high importance of this subject, this study aims to analyze the quality of hotels supply chain in Isfahan- Iran. On this account, the literature of quality in supply chain is reviewed and seven factors affecting the supply chain are identified. Then research hypotheses are raised in accordance with the seven factors. Data was gathered using questionnaire and Partial Least Square was applied in order to analyze the data. The obtained results indicate that focus on customer, supply chain quality leadership, supply chain quality strategies, supply chain quality information and process approach results in an increase in supply chain quality; meanwhile, the two hypotheses regarding supplier quality management and human resources development of supply chain are rejected. The results of this article will be beneficial to hotels which want to increase the level of their service quality.     

Service quality aspects and sports scientific conventions: An experience from Iran

This study investigates the role of service quality aspects in a Sport Scientific Convention held in Mashhad, Iran in 2015. A sample of 175 conference attendees were targeted to investigate the quality of services offered, their satisfaction, and intention to return. However, the findings show that the quality of access to destination and venue affect service accessibility quality. The hotel value and hotel staff interaction affect accommodation quality, but the atmosphere of the hotel does not. The internal environment of the venue and its staff interaction affect venue quality in a direct and meaningful way, but venue value does not. In addition, convention process and product affect convention quality in a direct and meaningful way. There is also a direct and meaningful relationship between accommodation quality, venue, and convention quality, and service quality in the sports scientific convention. Access quality, however, is not a part of this relationship. On the other hand, there is a relationship between access quality and satisfaction, and satisfaction affects participants' intent to return to the convention.     

Hybrid flow shop scheduling with parallel batching

In this research the problem of parallel batch scheduling in a hybrid flow shop environment with minimizing C_max is studied. In parallel batching it is assumed that machines in some stages are able to process a number of operations simultaneously. Since the problem is NP-hard, three heuristic algorithms are developed to give near optimal solutions. Since this problem has not been studied previously, therefore, a lower bound is developed for evaluating the performance of the proposed heuristics. Several test problems have been solved using these heuristics and results compared. To further enhance the solution quality, a three dimensional genetic algorithm (3DGA) is also developed. Several test problems have been solved using 3DGA and the results indicate its superiority to the other heuristics.