2,591 research outputs found

    Corporate Social Responsibility and Operational Inefficiency: A Dynamic Approach

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    Sustainability is currently a common term used more and more frequently in the academic literature and in the public communications of companies. This is an indicative that suggests that more and more sustainability is understood as a challenge that involves not only environmental aspects, but also as an integrative concept including economic, environmental and social aspects that should be a key pillar of the most highly innovative and advanced companies in the twenty first century. This study has been developed over several years, collecting detailed information on more than two hundreds different ESCO projects (Energy Service Company) in Spain, developed during five years (2010 to 2014). The aim of this research is related to obtaining a better understanding of an issue that is a concern: to what extend these projects that are seeking the efficient reduction of energy from collaboration between companies, could contribute to the integrated vision of sustainability, as a platform for the integration of economic and environmental.This research was funded by the National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) in Poland grant number DEC-2016/23/B/HS4/03398

    The Application of the Genetic Algorithm in Promoting Stock Trading Performances

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    This thesis joins the debate on utilizing the Genetic Algorithm (GA) to discover profitable trading strategies by providing an out-of-sample test of GA-based trading strategies on the CSI 300 index. Our results suggest that, with trading costs taken into consideration, GA-based trading rules consistently beat the buy-and-hold strategy in daily trading of CSI 300 index. Besides, we open up the black box of the evolution process of the GA by testing the statistical significance of the GA-based profitable trading strategies through the Fama-MacBeth regressions. In addition, this study connects the literature on the regime switching with studies on the GA-based trading strategies to construct one regime-switching Genetic Algorithm (RSGA) model and makes a comparison between the GA-based and the RSGA-based trading strategies. The empirical results show that trading strategies generated from the RSGA model consistently outperform those obtained from the GA model

    An Investigation into Factors Affecting the Chilled Food Industry

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    With the advent of Industry 4.0, many new approaches towards process monitoring, benchmarking and traceability are becoming available, and these techniques have the potential to radically transform the agri-food sector. In particular, the chilled food supply chain (CFSC) contains a number of unique challenges by virtue of it being thought of as a temperature controlled supply chain. Therefore, once the key issues affecting the CFSC have been identified, algorithms can be proposed, which would allow realistic thresholds to be established for managing these problems on the micro, meso and macro scales. Hence, a study is required into factors affecting the CFSC within the scope of Industry 4.0. The study itself has been broken down into four main topics: identifying the key issues within the CFSC; implementing a philosophy of continuous improvement within the CFSC; identifying uncertainty within the CFSC; improving and measuring the performance of the supply chain. However, as a consequence of this study two further topics were added: a discussion of some of the issues surrounding information sharing between retailers and suppliers; some of the wider issues affecting food losses and wastage (FLW) on the micro, meso and macro scales. A hybrid algorithm is developed, which incorporates the analytic hierarchical process (AHP) for qualitative issues and data envelopment analysis (DEA) for quantitative issues. The hybrid algorithm itself is a development of the internal auditing algorithm proposed by Sueyoshi et al (2009), which in turn was developed following corporate scandals such as Tyco, Enron, and WorldCom, which have led to a decline in public trust. However, the advantage of the proposed solution is that all of the key issues within the CFSC identified can be managed from a single computer terminal, whilst the risk of food contamination such as the 2013 horsemeat scandal can be avoided via improved traceability

    A multidimensional analysis of post-acquisition performance : the case of research and development in the pharmaceutical sector

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    This thesis provides an additional perspective of the Merger Paradox, namely that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) continue to be transacted when historically their results seem to be disappointing overall. The thesis shows that when a theoretically sound basis (related to the Resource Based View and expressed as twelve design principles) is used to design a performance measurement framework, then there is no association between a firm's post-acquisition performance and the scale of a firm's previous acquisitions; the thesis then shows, by contrast, that there is a positive association between firms with an above-average level of past acquisitions (by value) and higher financial performance. This divergence provides both a motive and an ability to continue to undertake M&A, despite a lack of association of acquisitions with longer-term operational performance and very strong evidence of diseconomy of scale in the most crucial business process, for the case examined, which is the research and development (R&D) process in the research-based pharmaceutical sector. Additionally, the thesis examines the relative merits of Return on Sales and Return on Assets as financial metrics of performance, and establishes statistically significant differences in the measurement of performance by these two metrics. The thesis also establishes a contrast between the findings at the level of the firm and at the level of the sector, namely acquisitions considered in aggregate are associated with gains at the sector level, even though this association was not observed when acquisition was considered at the level of the acquiring firm. The thesis provides a new application of Data Envelopment Analysis and establishes a scale efficiency relationship for the pharmaceutical R&D process. A further empirical contribution is the examination of the statistical distribution of acquisitions in the pharmaceutical sector and confirmation of the consistency of that distribution with a power-law

    Testing of Equity Portfolio Selection by Using Momentum- and Value strategies : Evidence of Nordic Markets

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    Momentum and value investing are different investment strategies that have been researched a lot during the past six decades. The results of previous studies have slightly varied, however, finding that both strategies have indicated ability to predict future returns. While momentum strategy focuses on buying of recently well performed stocks, i.e., winners and selling the losers and is based on relatively short-term investing, value investment strategy, however, aims to find and buy undervalued stocks and hold them long-period of time. Approximately 30 years ago, Asness (1997) decided to combine these aforementioned investment strategies and found that the methodology turned out be efficient way to gain abnormal returns despite the negative correlation of these two strategies. Since then, the topic has been researched widely and for example small companies have proved their potential to provide higher abnormal returns under momentum and value investment strategy. The majority of previous studies have however focused on studying especially US and global markets, which motivates to study more recent data from the Nordic markets from the period between 2001 and 2020. The study is using quantitative research methods in which the companies are divided into six different decile portfolios based on their valuation status, i.e., value, growth and neutral. Additionally, the companies are divided into small and large portfolios based on their market value. An identical split will be repeated when using momentum and value investment strategies. The goodness of the method is measured with widely used four factor-regression model and t-test. The study finds that combining momentum and value investment strategies works efficiently and the strategies can be combined also in the Nordic markets. The model indicates similar negative correlation between the strategies as in the previous studies, however all findings are not statistically significant at acceptable conventional levels. Additionally, the results indicate that momentum and value investment strategies work especially among small companies, and the results are statistically significant in most of the decile portfolios. The last interesting finding of the study indicates that usage of balance sheet-based profitability metrics works better in value investing compared to earnings-based metrics.Momentum- ja arvosijoittaminen ovat kaksi erilaista sijoitusstrategiaa, joita on viimeisen kuuden vuosikymmenen ajan tutkittu paljon erillisinä sijoitusstrategioina. Aiemmat tutkimustulokset ovat hieman vaihdelleet, mutta pääasiass molemmat strategiat ovat osoittaneet kykyä tulevaisuuden tuottojen ennustamisen osalta. Siinä missä momentum- keskittyy ostamaan edellisiä voittajia ja myymään häviäjiä lyhyellä ajanjaksolla arvosijoittaminen pyrkii löytämään aliarvostetut osakkeet, ostamaan ne halvalla ja pitämään niitä pitkän ajanjakson. Myöhemmin noin 30-vuotta sitten Asness (1997) päätti yhdistää kyseiset strategiat ja havaitsi yllättävän käänteen, sillä menetelmä osoittautui toimivaksi strategiaksi ansaita epänormaaleja tuottoja, näiden kahden sijoitusstrategian negatiivisesta korrelaatiosta huolimatta. Sittemmin aihetta on tutkittu entisestään ja esimerkiksi pienet yhtiöt ovat osoittaneet kykynsä tuottaa epänormaaleja tuottoja paremmin, yhdistäessä momentum- ja arvosijoittamisen strategiat. Suurin osa edellisistä tutkimuksista on kuitenkin keskittynyt analysoimaan etenkin Amerikan tai maailman laajuista markkinaa, joka motivoi tässä tutkimuksessa keskittymään nimenomaan Pohjoismaisiin osakemarkkinoihin vuosilta 2001-2020. Tutkimus toteutettiin kvantitatiivista menetelmää käyttäen, jossa yhtiöt jaettiin kuuteen erilaiseen desiili-portfolioon sen mukaan, oliko kyseessä arvo-, kasvu- vai neutraaliyhtiö. Lisäksi yhtiöt edelleen jaettiin markkina-arvoon perustuen joko suuriin tai pieniin yhtiöihin. Sama jako toistettiin sekä momentum- että arvosijoitusmenetelmää käyttäessä. Metodin hyvyys ja toimivuus puolestaan mitattiin paljon käytetyn neljän-tekijän regressiomallin ja t-testin avulla. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että momentum- ja arvosijoitusstrategian yhdistämien toimii tehokkaasti ja strategiat ovat yhdistettävissä myös Pohjoismaiden osakemarkkinoilla. Malli osoittaa aiemmissakin tutkimuksissa havaittua negatiivista korrelaatiota strategioiden välillä, mutta tulokset eivät kaikkien portfolioiden osalta ole tilastollisesti merkittäviä. Lisäksi tulokset osoittavat, että momentum- ja arvosijoitusstrategiat toimivat etenkin pienten yhtiöiden keskuudessa. Tilastollinen merkitsevyys on tämän osalta havaittavissa lähes kaikkien desiili-portfolioiden osalta. Viimeisenä mielenkiintoisena havaintona tutkimus osoittaa, että tasepohjaiset tunnusluvut toimivat tulospohjaisia tunnuslukuja paremmin arvosijoittamisessa

    AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURERS SUPPLY CHAIN PERFORMANCE IN CHINA

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    The research develops a framework for the evaluation of automotive supply chain performance in China. In addition, the research presents indications from a study of Chinese automotive companies with regards to their evaluation and attempts to propose some alternatives for future improvement

    Efficiency and competition in English and Welsh universities

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    There is a paucity of efficiency studies on the higher education sector in Britain. Only a small subset of those utilise stochastic frontier analysis (Izadi et al., 2002; Stevens, 2005). This paper bolsters the existing UK higher education stochastic frontier analysis literature through application of the conditional heteroscedasticity approaches to modelling environmental variables suggested by Coelli et al. (1999). Our database consists of 142 higher education institutions within England and Wales from 2004 to 2009. Application of the net and gross efficiency concepts allows the paper to distinguish between factors which affect the level of frontier cost faced by an institution, from those which only impact on efficiency. The analysis shows that institutions with higher proportions of female students, non-EU students, and STEM students suffer from lower efficiency. Conversely higher levels of female staff, membership to the Russell Group, and offering a Law programme are associated with greater efficiency of institution. Additionally, we provide evidence against the efficiency impact of geographical location and changing fee regime before reporting overall efficiency scores. The disparity in efficiency between all institutions will enable Institutional managers to identify key examples of best practice within the Sector, allow managers to separate increased levels of cost from increased inefficiency, and will suggest potential future areas of regulation and legislation to policy makers. Furthermore, this paper contributes a newly derived measure for research output. This extends measures of research output currently used and improves the precision of the estimated frontier enabling future benchmarking analysis to be more robust. The efficiency measures generated suggest that there may be benefits to mergers within the higher education sector. Following the Bogetoft and Wang (2005) model we evaluate the potential gains in efficiency to be realised through merging various institutions. We find that in several instances there are indeed benefits to be achieved through merger, particularly through joining institutions with specific, narrow curricula to those with broader curricula. Additionally there is also benefit to scale efficiency through merging institutions which occupy similar geography such as Birmingham which hosts five institutions. This thesis finally considers the competitive nature of the higher education sector and how intense that competition is. Through a novel application of the Boone (2008) model we evaluate the change in efficiency over the period of the sample find that there was an increase in competition across the full sample immediately following the fee increase in 2006-2007, though interesting the effects of competition are different between Russell Group and non-Russell Group subsamples. The effects of merger and competition within the higher education sector could inform policy decisions with further fee increases looking ever more certain. Encouraging mergers amongst smaller, focused institutions may provide additional resilience within the system, however the effect on competitiveness within the system must also be considered to ensure ever increasing standards
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