Stakeholder Returns of Islamic Banks Versus Conventional Banks

Sharia principle shaping the Islamic banking model is most determinant on collection and deployment of funds with its ban on interest. This study aims to look at the results of funded activities in isolation for a healthier comparison between Islamic and conventional deposit banks with respect to their financial stakeholders. The differences are reflected as lower asset returns and lower returns for depositors of Islamic banks. These differences sustain throughout normal and crisis periods. Our findings show that despite differences in asset structures and returns, Islamic banks retain similar returns for shareholders to position themselves close to and in competition with their conventional counterparts.     

A HPC based cloud model for real-time energy optimisation

Recent research has emphasised that an increasing number of enterprises need computation environments for executing HPC (High Performance Computing) applications. Rather than paying the cost of ownership and possess physical, fixed capacity clusters, enterprises can reserve or rent resources for undertaking the required tasks. With the emergence of new computation paradigms such as cloud computing it has become possible to solve a wider range of problems due to their capability to handle and process massive amounts of data. On the other hand, given the pressing regulatory requirement to reduce the carbon footprint of our built environment, significant researching efforts have been recently directed towards simulation-based building energy optimisation with the overall objective of reducing energy consumption. Energy optimisation in buildings represents a class of problems that requires significant computation resources and generally is a time consuming process especially when undertaken with building simulation software, such as EnergyPlus. In this paper we present how a HPC based cloud model can be efficiently used for running and deploying EnergyPlus simulation-based optimisation in order to fulfil a number of objectives related to energy consumption. We describe and evaluate the establishment of such an application-based environment, and consider a cost perspective to determine the efficiency over several cases we explore. This study identifies the following contributions: (i) a comprehensive examination of issues relevant to the HPC community, including performance, cost, user perspectives and range of user activities, (ii) a comparison of two different execution environments such as HTCondor and CometCloud and determine their effectiveness in supporting simulation-based optimisation and (iii) a detailed performance analysis to locate the limiting factors of these execution environments.     

Settling for efficiency – A framework for the European securities transaction industry

Despite a lot of restructuring and many innovations in recent years, the securities transaction industry in the European Union is still a highly inefficient and inconsistently configured system for cross-border transactions. This paper analyzes the functions performed, the institutions involved and the parameters concerned that shape market and ownership structure in the industry. Of particular interest are microeconomic incentives of the main players that can be in contradiction to social welfare. We develop a framework and analyze three consistent systems for the securities transaction industry in the EU that offer superior efficiency than the current, inefficient arrangement. Some policy advice is given to select the ‘best’ system for the Single European Financial Market.     

Price dispersion and optimal price categories with limited memory consumers

In this paper, we study consumers with limited memory and examine the effects of their price categorization on the pricing strategies of competing firms. The valuations of consumers are assumed to be heterogeneous. We find that it is possible to observe price dispersion even when each firm charges a single price if the consumers categorize prices non‐optimally. Moreover, we demonstrate that the likelihood of a price dispersion outcome is reduced when consumers with limited memory set up the price categories optimally. These findings suggest that the consumers' limited memory and their sub‐optimal behavior, that is, their inability to choose price categories optimally can be a reason for observed price dispersion.     

On Multinational Corporations and the Provision of Positive Rights

Insights from contemporary psychology can illuminate the common psychological processes that facilitate unethical decision making. I will illustrate several of these processes and describe steps that may be taken to reduce or eliminate the undesirable consequences of these processes. A generic problem with these processes is that they are totally invisible to decision makers – i.e., decision makers are convinced that their decisions are ethically and managerially sound.     

Determinants of state equity ownership,and its effect on value/performance: China's privatized firms

Evidence on the relationship between state ownership and performance in China's privatized firms is convex, concave and linear. Hence, the nature of this relationship is not resolved. This study examines this relationship for a larger, more recent sample of 4315 firm year observations of privatized Chinese firms during 1996–2003. Results support the hypothesis of a convex relationship between state ownership and performance showing benefits from strong privatization and state control. Not only is ownership structure found to affect performance, but also ownership concentration and balance of power jointly affect performance. Chinese firms with mixed control show significantly poorer performance than state or private controlled firms affirming the problem of ambiguity of ownership control, property rights, agency issues, profits and welfare objectives. New determinants of state ownership in China's firms are strategic importance, legal ownership, profitability, and market performance. Privatization benefits because there is a causal relation between ownership and performance.     

Stock exchange business models and their operative performance

In recent years stock exchanges have been increasingly diversifying their operations into related business areas such as derivatives trading, post-trading services and software sales. This trend can be observed most notably among profit-oriented trading venues. While the pursuit for diversification is likely to be driven by the attractiveness of these investment opportunities, it is yet an open question whether certain integration activities are also efficient, both from a social welfare and from the exchanges’ perspective. Academic contributions so far analyzed different business models primarily from the former perspective, whereas there is only little literature considering their impact on the exchange itself. By employing a panel data set of 28 stock exchanges for the years 1999–2003, we seek to shed light on this topic by comparing the technical efficiency and factor productivity of exchanges with different business models. Our findings suggest that exchanges that diversify into related activities are mostly less efficient than exchanges that remain focused on the cash market. In particular, we find no evidence that vertically integrated exchanges are more efficient. However, they seem to possess a substantially stronger factor productivity growth than other business models. We presume that integration activity comes at the cost of increased operational complexity which outweigh potential synergies between related activities and therefore leads to technical inefficiencies. Our findings contribute to the ongoing discussion about the drawbacks and merits of vertical integration.     

Professionalism: A Virtue or Estrangement from Self-activity?

This paper attempts to clarify the meaning of the term ‚professional’ in its current use in our daily lives, mainly by making use of Weber’s discussion of the Protestant work ethic and rationalization. Identifying professionalism primarily as a particular lifestyle, it questions whether professionalism is a virtue to be encouraged or an alienated way of life. Rather than conclusively answering this question in the affirmative or negative, it contends that professionalism is an evolving concept, and endeavors to capture and formulate a favorable understanding of it which would foster less alienating and more fulfilling ways of doing business. It concludes by observing structural similarities between alternative managerial approaches and different conceptualizations of professionalism. Baris Parkan is Faculty member and Coordinator of the Evening MA Program in Applied Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Middle East Technical University.     

The cost-effectiveness of delayed-release dimethyl fumarate for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis in Canada

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) causes significant disability and diminished quality-of-life. Delayed-release dimethyl fumarate (DMF; also known as gastro-resistant DMF) is a new oral treatment for relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) approved in the US, Australia, Canada, and Europe. Objectives: A cost-effectiveness model was developed to compare the health economic impact of DMF against other disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) as first-line RRMS treatment from a Canadian Ministry of Health perspective. Methods: A Markov cohort model was developed to simulate patients’ progression through health states based on the Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) over a life-time horizon. Patients entered the model based on a distribution of baseline EDSS scores, from which they could progress to higher or regress to lower EDSS state, or remain in the same state. Relapses could occur at any EDSS score. Results from a mixed-treatment comparison were used to inform model inputs for disease progression and relapse rates per treatment. Costs included direct medical costs stratified by EDSS score. Utilities were accrued based on time spent in each EDSS state. Results: Compared with glatiramer acetate, DMF yielded 0.528 incremental quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) at an incremental cost of $23 338 Canadian dollars (CAD), resulting in an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of CAD $44 118/QALY. The ICER for DMF compared with Rebif 44?mcg was CAD $10 672. Results were consistent across a wide range of one-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. Conclusions: Based on traditional cost-effectiveness thresholds in Canada (CAD $50 000–60 000), DMF can be considered a cost-effective option compared to other first-line DMTs.