A comprehensive look at luxury brand marketing research from 2000 to 2016: a bibliometric study and content analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine how scholarly research on luxury brand marketing has evolved in the twenty-first century. This literature review focuses on 242 articles related to luxury marketing. The contributions of these articles are thoroughly analyzed, combining qualitative interpretations with bibliometric citation analysis that uses a social network of referrals. This study identifies the most influential universities, research outlets, and scholars in the recent evolution of luxury marketing research. The study also identifies current and future research streams, geographic scope, and underlying research methodologies, and it reveals the most frequently used theories and prominent constructs in luxury marketing research. There are few studies that have examined the literature review of the luxury marketing discipline. No previous research has investigated luxury branding by means of a bibliometric analysis and qualitative assessment within such a large scope. Building on the results of this analysis, researchers can target their studies precisely and, thus, increase the contributions of their empirical research.

     

Perceptions of instructors and administrators of English language on their professional development needs

The present study aims at investigating the professional development needs of instructors and administrators of English language in public universities in North Iraq. The study also attempts to evaluate the professional development of universities’ instructors in improving their personal and professional career while teaching English as a foreign language. Professional development provides teachers with more knowledge, skills, and experiences either personally or professionally throughout the process of teaching. In this study, qualitative research methods were used. There were forty participants involved in this study including English language and literature instructors, heads of departments, assistant heads of departments, and coordinators employed in the 9 public universities of North Iraq. The results showed that there are still no actual tendencies of professional development as a program to be implemented as a continual process of teaching and learning, and there is a lack of professional development opportunities in public universities in North Iraq. The participants also provided significant suggestions on their professional development needs.

     

Spatial Inequality,Polarization and its Dimensions in Iran: New Empirical Evidence

This paper analyses the extent and dynamics of inequality amongst the provinces of Iran. It reviews theoretical propositions for possible convergence and divergence and argues that, while the evidence from the more developed countries supports the case of convergence, the empirical evidence for developing countries is ambiguous at best. Straight and population weighted measures of inequality are used to see the evolvement of inequality amongst the provinces of Iran with respect to two indicators of income and consumption with a rural and urban break up. Polarization in distribution depicts a disturbing picture for urban areas and this is traced around a few proposed dimensions. The results reveal a close cluster of the provinces in Iran drifting behind the rest of the provinces.     

Is International Trade More Beneficial to Lower Income Economies? An Empirical Inquiry

Does the effect of international trade on income growth depend on the economy’s level of development? More specifically, is trade more beneficial to lower income economies? Does trade contribute to a smaller international income inequality? The present paper seeks to answer these questions by employing the empirical model of Frankel and Romer (1999 ), which shows trade increases income growth in a cross section of 150 countries. We find evidence in support of the hypothesis that international trade benefits the lower income economies more than it benefits the higher income economies. This finding is robust in the presence of control variables including distance from the equator and institutional quality.     

Adjustment in General Equilibrium: Some Industrial Evidence

The link between output changes and factor-mix adjustments in general equilibrium is examined for each of nine industries using pooled data from 12 developed countries over the years 1970–85. Specifications of the Stolper-Samuelson theorem and the specific-factors model of production are built on the assumptions and structure of theory with each industry isolated in turn. In their simplest version with only capital and labor input, these competitive general-equilibrium models explain a good deal of the observed variations in industrial factor mixes. The specific-factors model performs better.     

An Integrated Framework to Evaluate Resilient-Sustainable Urban Drainage Management Plans Using a Combined-adaptive MCDM Technique

Due to the inevitability of urban flood in presence of the rainfalls exceeding design capacity of urban drainage system, resilience approach has been recently considered instead of the conventional urban drainage management. However, acceptance of resilience approach necessitates considering sustainability in the selection of urban drainage projects due to the various aspect of flood impacts. This paper presents a new integrated framework to show how urban drainage plans are resilient and sustainable. The framework consists of several indicators including technical, economic, social, environmental and planning aspects. On the other hand, the selection of suientropy of the probability distribution p _i . In fact, entropy reduces the effect of plan among available suggested plans is complicated in presence of multiplicity of the indicators. A new combined-adaptive multi criteria decision making technique including combination of Adaptive analytical hierarchical process, Entropy and TOPSIS is here introduced to facilitate the decision making process as well as dealing with uncertainties due to the subjective experts’ preferences. Moreover, presented framework are applied on a part of urban drainage system of Tehran, Capital City. Four urban drainage plans are designed and suggested to be evaluated along with existing system in terms of their sustainability and resilience. The results shows the presented framework provide comprehensive information regarding the behavior of the urban drainage plans against urban floods as well as their sustainability for urban managers. In addition, presented framework facilitates and accelerate the complicated process of decision making. Therefore, it can be employed as comprehensive decision support tool for resilient and sustainable urban drainage management.     

A Simulation-Optimization Model for Conjunctive Use of Canal and Pond in Irrigating Paddy Fields

Water Resources Management - In this study, a new methodology is presented for conjunctive use of canal and pond to assess the role of ponds in saving local water and optimizing use of them in...     

Evaluation of Four Tree Algorithms in Predicting and Investigating the Changes in Aquifer Depth

One of the key elements in improved management and better planning for aquifer maintenance is the ability to predict changes in aquifer depth. In order to forecast changes in aquifer depth in Qazvin plain, four methods, including Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Reduced Error Pruning Trees (RepTree), M5-Pruned (M5P), and M5Rule, were used in this work. The absolute mean error (MAE) and coefficient of determination (R2) data show that the CART algorithm performs better than other algorithms at forecasting changes in aquifer depth. The CART algorithm's prediction findings showed that the aquifer's behavior in the two seasons was entirely different. In the first stage, which began in November and continued through April, there was an annual average depth of 0.045 m. The aquifer depth has been greatly influenced by rising precipitation and falling air temperature. The aquifer experiences an average decline of 0.15 m in the second portion, which runs from May to October. Aquifer depth has significantly decreased as a result of declining natural water supplies and rising agricultural water use. It is advised to utilize a crop scheme with reduced water need when rainfall reduces due to the strong effect of changes in aquifer depth from rainfall with a delay of one to three months ago.

     

Causes and Remedies of the Japan's Long‐lasting Recession: Lessons for China

Japan has suffered from sluggish economic growth and recession since the early 1990s. In this paper, we analyze the causes of the prolonged slowdown of the Japanese economy (the lost decade). Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has argued that Japan's lost decade is an example of a liquidity trap. However, our empirical analysis shows that stagnation of the Japanese economy comes from its vertical IS curve rather than a horizontal LM curve, so the Japanese economy has been facing structural problems rather than a temporary downturn. The vertical IS curve is caused by an insensitivity of investment to a lower interest rate partly because of the decline of sales due to the aging population and firms not wanting to invest. The structural problems come from the aging demographic, which is often neglected by scholars and policy‐makers, and also from the allocation of transfers from the central government to local governments, and the unwillingness of Japanese banks to lend money to startup businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), mainly because of Basel capital requirements. Many countries, like China, are expected to face similar issues, particularly given the aging population. The present paper will address why the Japanese economy has been trapped in a prolonged slowdown and provide some remedies for revitalizing the economy.