Modelling interactions among the housing market and key US sectors

This study evaluates the dynamic interactions among the housing market and ten key US sectors including: consumer discretionary, consumer staples, energy, financials, industrial, technology, health care, materials, utility and telecommunications. Long-run results indicate that the housing market is integrated with each of the ten sector and that the degree of convergence has increased over time and especially after the onset of the most recent housing crisis. Moreover, the housing market contributes most heavily to the common trends indicating that the housing market is the ‘leader’ market that drives each sector towards the long-run equilibrium relationships. Short-run analyses indicate causal linkages emanating from the housing market to each sector with reciprocal feedback. Finally, impulse response function analysis reveal that shocks from each sector affect the housing market but that shocks from the housing market have a (comparatively) more profound and persistent impact on each sector.     

The organic industry in Australia: Current and future trends

Accurate information is critical for investment, policy alignment and to support agricultural development. In Australia information relating to the size, growth, current and future value of the organic sector has been incoherent and, in some cases, contradictory. This study seeks to address this gap by synthesising industry and government data with the results of an online quantitative survey as well as a series of in-depth interviews to capture the value added component of the organic industry in Australia. By sub-dividing the total organic industry into thirteen categories which makes for meaningful analysis and interpretation, we aimed to estimate the compound average growth rate, the current value added and future trends in the Australian organic industry. This has resulted in some interesting findings, hence the methodology could potentially serve as a benchmark for the reporting of organic food growth globally. The findings also have important implications for various stakeholders including, growers of organic products, investors, land use policy makers and industry operators.     

Trends and Future Directions in Online Marketing Research

Over the last decade, the increased adoption of the Internet in public life as well as in developing businesses has led to a phenomenal rise in academic research on online marketing. This article is set to extensively review scholarly articles appearing from 2000 to 2014 on the topic from 10 top-tier academic journals to understand the research trends in the domain. A literature review has reported eight major subjective categories with an analysis of online marketing effectiveness framework. This review found three most significant subject categories: (1) online marketing issues; (2) Internet usage, perception, and attitude; and (3) online shopping and e-commerce. Additionally, some new online marketing research topics such as word-of-mouth, user-generated content, and social network are also highlighted. Finally, a selection of research topics that got the maximum attention of researchers is presented along with discussion of the future research directions in the online marketing space.     

Performance analysis of the Gulf hotel industry: A Malmquist index with bias correction

This study uses the Malmquist index with bias correction to analyze the performance of hotel chains from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman. We show that Saudi Arabia hotel chains have the highest productivity growth, followed by the UAE and Omani hotel chains. A further decomposition of productivity indicates that a small number of hotel chains experienced an increase in revenues for lower occupancy rate, while most other hotel chains experienced an increase in occupancy rate for lower revenues. Related market discussions of the results are provided.     

An intelligent and secure system for predicting and preventing Zika virus outbreak using Fog computing

Zika virus is a mosquito-borne disease that spreads very quickly in different parts of the world. In this article, we proposed a system to prevent and control the spread of Zika virus disease using integration of Fog computing, cloud computing, mobile phones and the Internet of things (IoT)-based sensor devices. Fog computing is used as an intermediary layer between the cloud and end users to reduce the latency time and extra communication cost that is usually found high in cloud-based systems. A fuzzy k-nearest neighbour is used to diagnose the possibly infected users, and Google map web service is used to provide the geographic positioning system (GPS)-based risk assessment to prevent the outbreak. It is used to represent each Zika virus (ZikaV)-infected user, mosquito-dense sites and breeding sites on the Google map that help the government healthcare authorities to control such risk-prone areas effectively and efficiently. The proposed system is deployed on Amazon EC2 cloud to evaluate its performance and accuracy using data set for 2 million users. Our system provides high accuracy of 94.5% for initial diagnosis of different users according to their symptoms and appropriate GPS-based risk assessment.     

Issues Affecting the U.S. Poultry Industry and International Poultry Trade

Abstract

This study was conducted to examine issues and concerns that may affect the future direction of the U.S. poultry industry and international poultry trade. Given the economic contribution of the poultry industry, it is important to have some understanding about the future direction of the industry, both at the national and international levels. To generate the information required, this study surveyed the top poultry producers in the country as well as specialists and experts in the industry. Although both the producers and specialists believe that the industry has a bright future, they also think that the rapid production growth experienced by the poultry industry in the past two decades cannot be sustained. Growth restrictions in the industry will come from a variety of sources such as environmental waste management, food safety, labor shortages, animal welfare, and increased foreign competition.     

2012年5月国际金融市场运行综述

2012年5月，美元指数大幅上涨；欧元、英镑短期利率下降，美元、日元短期利率基本走平；主要发达国家中长期国债收益率总体振荡下行；全球主要股指振荡下行。     

Variable long-term trends in mineral prices: The ongoing tug-of-war between exploration,depletion, and technological change

This paper explores the use of low-frequency band-pass filters for describing long-run trends in real mineral commodity prices. This approach has the advantage of allowing long-run trend rates to evolve gradually over time, rather than assuming that they are constant (perhaps with occasional structural breaks) over time. This is a flexible way of capturing the ongoing ‘tug of war’ between exploration, depletion, and technological change.Over 100 mineral and commodities, stretching back to the late 19th or early 20th century, are considered. The variety of LR trends is astonishing, but very few increase monotonically, contrary to the prediction of the basic Hotelling model. Some decline monotonically (as predicted by Prebisch and Singer); some have the U-shaped pattern predicted by Pindyck (1978), Heal (1981) and Slade (1982). Others have changed direction up to three times in the period since 1900. The tug of war continues with exhaustion nowhere in sight.     

移动通信网络优化现状及发展趋势

移动通信网络始终处于动态变化中,并且其用户群体庞大、移动性高、话务密度甚是不均匀,由此造成用户手机与基站的信号连接不顺畅,致使通信质量下降的现象。而移动网络优化技术可以有效的改善此局面,提高通信质量。文章介绍了移动通信网络优化的基本概念、存在现状,并对其发展趋势及方向做了总结预测。     

经济发达地区农村合作的组织创新及发展趋势——基于苏州实践的研究

经济发达地区农村"三大股份合作"是对传统合作社组织的创新发展。它初步解决了家庭联产承包与适度规模经营的矛盾,权力主体分散与集体经营的矛盾,农民投资意愿强烈与投资效果不佳的矛盾;促进了传统农民向现代公民的有组织过渡,培育了适应社会主义市场经济环境的新农民,提升了农村的市场化程度,实现了农业规模经营,构建了农民持续增收的长效机制,缩小了城乡差距,推动了城乡一体化发展。研究表明"三大股份合作"呈现以下发展趋势:合作形式趋向集团化,合作经营内容多元化,日常运行"去行政化",治理结构现代企业化,组织构成开放化。