Evaluating airline operational performance: A Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indicator

This study proposes a by-production Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen indicator that includes undesirable outputs, here CO2 emissions, in airline performance analysis. We use capital and staff as inputs and tonne-kilometres available as a desirable output to evaluate operation stage efficiency and productivity of the world\u27s major airlines between 2007 and 2013. Our results demonstrate European airlines are relatively stronger performers in terms of both pollution-adjusted operational efficiency and productivity. Middle-Eastern airlines have made gains in terms of output growth but perform poorly in terms of pollution-adjusted productivity, evidence that ETSs may produce greener airlines

Have Asian airlines caught up with European Airlines? A by-production efficiency analysis

This paper extends previous approaches to meta-efficiency measures by incorporating meta-frontiers using good-output, bad-output and by-production efficiencies to compare European and Asian airlines. We also examine whether the heterogeneity in environmental regulatory standards between these regions has emboldened Asian airlines to be less eco-friendly and/or more market-share seeking. We find that the environmental performance of European airlines improved continuously between 2007 and 2013, unlike their competitors in Asia. We argue that this improvement in the environmental performance of the European airlines could be an outcome of the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), which set incentives for European airlines to renew their fleets and optimise their operations. Our technological gap ratio estimates also point to some Asian airlines outperforming all other airlines on technological measures, indicating they operate in a more favourable business environment. Overall, our method contributes to the methodological enhancement of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and allows deeper insights into firm operations in general, and environmental efficiency analysis of European and Asian airlines in particular

Active Teaching Strategies and Student Engagement: A Comparison of Traditional and Non-traditional Business Students

Using survey data, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of student engagement for different groups of students, many of which may be classified as non-traditional . The analysis presented in this paper is based on Kahu\u27s framework for student engagement. Both the antecedents as well as consequences of engagement are incorporated in the framework used in this paper. The research highlights the role that active teaching strategies may play in this engagement framework. An important contribution of this research is to show that non-traditional students generally display greater engagement than traditional students. However, while there is a strong connection between active teaching strategies and engagement for traditional students, this link is weak for non-traditional students. The results presented in this paper highlight the need for greater inclusiveness in the design of active teaching strategies

Does corporate governance affect Australian banks' performance?

Worldwide, recent corporate collapses have added to the insecurity of financial markets, triggering regulatory responses. This study provides empirical evidence of the relationship between corporate governance and the efficiency of Australian banks between 1999 and 2013, using two-stage double-bootstrap data envelopment analysis. Of the five corporate governance factors considered, we find board size and committee meetings have robustly significant and positive effects on efficiency. We also find evidence of improvements in overall industry efficiency following the 2003 introduction of the Principles of Good Corporate Governance, but not of any statistically-significant influence of the GFC