Safety of motorized two-wheeler riders in the formal and informal transport sector

Abstract

Road fatalities are largely preventable problem with large socioeconomic impact. Due to the rapidly increasing population, transport systems and road infrastructure have not met the demand. The use of motorized two-wheeler vehicles has increased, as informal transport. However, evidence on their safety is scarce. The aim of this article is to examine the safety and social equity issues in MTW in the informal transport sector. Factors can be used to explain traffic collisions in MTW in the formal/informal transport sectors: design, rider behavior, road design, enforcement, and regulation of the informal transport sector. Evidence suggests that MTWs could be a common related to pedestrian fatalities. Informal transport drivers are typically poor, uneducated, young men who due to lack of other employment options move into the informal sector. Their vehicles are old, unmaintained and have a lack of protective equipment for themselves and their passengers. Young, male drivers speed, take risks and not use protective equipment. Users of informal transport live in the poorer peripheries of cities, which, have limited, inefficient or unaffordable public transport. The provision of transport has therefore become an often unrecognized, important social equity issue and studies are urgently needed on MTW in the informal transport sector.     

Positive spillover effect and audit quality: a study of cancelling China’s dual audit system

The mandatory dual‐audit and dual‐reporting system (DADRS) for mainland Chinese firms cross‐listed in Hong Kong (AH firms) was abolished in 2010. This study quantifies a positive spillover effect from Hong Kong‐based auditors in the DADRS and examines whether and to what extent this affects the audit quality of AH firms. We find that AH firms exposed to a stronger positive spillover effect have higher audit quality, and the loss of this effect drives the declining audit quality of AH firms after they cancelled the DADRS. This study is among the first empirical works on this research topic.     

Efficient paired choice designs with fewer choice pairs

For paired choice experiments, two new construction methods of designs are proposed for the estimation of the main effects. In many cases, these designs require about 30–50% fewer choice pairs than the existing designs and at the same time have reasonably high D-efficiencies for the estimation of the main effects. Furthermore, as against the existing efficient designs, our designs have higher D-efficiencies for the same number of choice pairs.     

Machine learning for quantitative finance: fast derivative pricing,hedging and fitting

In this paper, we show how we can deploy machine learning techniques in the context of traditional quant problems. We illustrate that for many classical problems, we can arrive at speed-ups of several orders of magnitude by deploying machine learning techniques based on Gaussian process regression. The price we have to pay for this extra speed is some loss of accuracy. However, we show that this reduced accuracy is often well within reasonable limits and hence very acceptable from a practical point of view. The concrete examples concern fitting and estimation. In the fitting context, we fit sophisticated Greek profiles and summarize implied volatility surfaces. In the estimation context, we reduce computation times for the calculation of vanilla option values under advanced models, the pricing of American options and the pricing of exotic options under models beyond the Black–Scholes setting.     

The Emergence of Consolidated Service Centers in Health Care

Hospital supply chains can be conceptualized as complex systems with a large number of players and a high degree of interrelatedness among them, creating an environment that is difficult to optimize and manage. In recent years, a consolidated service center (CSC) strategy (sometimes also referred to as “self‐distribution” strategy), has emerged in some healthcare systems, showing a strong potential for reducing the complexity in a hospital's supply chain to achieve high levels of performance and innovation. We examine three CSCs using a qualitative case method to understand the unique characteristics of this supply chain strategy, and how CSCs move hospital supply chains toward a less complex state. We find that CSCs demonstrate characteristics that distinguish them from other supply chain strategies. These characteristics enable the CSC to orchestrate supply base rationalization and disintermediation initiatives in the hospital's supply chain to effectively reduce the number of components and interrelatedness in this complex system.     

Factor Models for Option Pricing

Options on stocks are priced using information on index options and viewing stocks in a factor model as indirectly holding index risk. The method is particularly suited to developing quotations on stock options when these markets are relatively illiquid and one has a liquid index options market to judge the index risk. The pricing strategy is illustrated on IBM and Sony options viewed as holding SPX and Nikkei risk respectively.     

Circular economy to enhance sustainability of small and medium‐sized enterprises

The circular economy (CE) represents a major paradigm shift of moving from the concepts of linear to circular supply chains across multiple industries. Although some aspects of CE adoption within industrial supply chains have been researched extensively (particularly addressing challenges of design, implementation, and operations), the research that relates CE practices with sustainability performance to reveal the current state of CE practices within small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is scant. The aim of this research was to facilitate SMEs to achieve greater sustainability through CE implementation. This research addresses three research questions—How are CE fields of action related to sustainability performance? What are the issues, challenges, and opportunities of adopting CE in SMEs? And what key strategies, resources, and competences facilitate effective implementation of CE in SMEs? This study adopts a mixed method approach (qualitative and quantitative) using survey research, focus group, and case studies; 130 randomly selected SMEs within the Midlands of the United Kingdom have been surveyed, and the responses are analysed using statistical tools along with findings from focus groups and case studies. The study reveals that all CE fields of action (take, make, distribute, use, and recover) of SMEs are correlated to economic performance, but only make and use are related to environmental and social performance. The study further derives strategies, resources, and competences for achieving sustainability across all the CE field of actions. Additionally, this research reveals the issues and challenges, strategies, resources, and competences required for implementing CE in SMEs.     

Return spread and liquidity: Evidence from Hong Kong ADRs

Fifteen Chinese H-shares listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong are cross listed as ADRs on the NYSE. We empirically determine the role of security specific liquidity associated with those ADRs and their underlying H-shares on return spreads, differences between the returns on ADRs and their corresponding H-shares after controlling for ADRs and H-shares excess market returns and their respective price inverses denoting conditional betas. We use three proxies for liquidity, trading volume, turnover, and illiquidity (Amihud, 2002) and find that only trading volume and turnover are consistent determinants of return spread for the majority of Chinese ADRs with primary listing in Hong Kong Stock Exchange (SEHK). We use a switching regression model and find that the model parameter estimates are not stationary and change, often drastically between pre and post 2000 and 2003. Further tests using Bai Perron indicate return spreads data as non-stationary with multiple regime changes during the sample period. Further the causes of non-stationarity seem to be largely security specific and not driven by broad market swings in either market.