Search results

This paper aims to study the default risk of small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction sector.

An unbalanced sample of 2,754 Portuguese companies from the construction sector, from 2008 to 2020, is analysed. Companies are classified in default or compliant following an ex-ante criterion. Then, using the stepwise analysis, the most relevant variables are selected, which are later used in the logit model. To verify the robustness of the results, a sample of legally insolvent companies is added (mixed criterion) and the initial sample is split into two subperiods.

Financial variables are the most relevant to predict the pattern for this sample. The main conclusions show that smaller and older companies, more indebted, with more liquidity and with higher EBIT have a higher probability of default. These conclusions are confirmed using a mixed criterion to classify companies as default or compliant and including a macroeconomic dummy.

This work not only contributes to enlarging the literature review but also makes relevant contributions to practice. Companies from the construction sector can understand which indicators must control to avoid financial problems. The government also has relevant information that can help in adapting or creating regulations for recovering or revitalizing companies.

This study proposed an ex-ante criterion that can be used for all types of companies. Most works use a legal or a mixed criterion that does not allow for detecting signs of financial problems in advance. Moreover, the sample used is almost unexplored – SMEs from a sector with great mortality rate.

This study aims to advance knowledge on the direct impact of the investor’s protection level on the stock market volatility, that is, whether investor’s protection is an important stock market volatility determinant.

A panel data was estimated using a sample of 48 countries, from 2006 to 2018, totalizing 31,808 observations. To measure stock market volatility and the investor protection level, a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model and the World Bank Doing Business investor protection index were used, respectively.

The results evidence that the protection of investors’ rights reduces the stock market volatility. This result indicates that a high level of investor protection, which is the result of a better quality of laws and policies in place that protect investor’s rights, promotes the country as a “safe haven.”

The relationship that the authors intend to analyze becomes important, given that investor protection will give outsiders guarantees on the materialization of their investments. This study contributes important knowledge for investors and for the establishment of government policies as a way of attracting investment.

Although there have been a few studies addressing this relationship, to the knowledge, none of them directly analyses the influence of investor protection on the stock market volatility.

Automatic, autonomous browsing has an increasingly important task in information discovery and assisted browsing on the Internet. Where users could once keep up to date with information of interest on the Internet, the recursive growth of the network has made this process increasingly time consuming and less rewarding. Presents two possible solutions to this problem: Data Agents and CollaborAgents which were developed with IBM’s Aglet Workbench – a particular implementation of mobile agents. Also surveys the agent technology and discusses the agent building package used to develop both mentioned applications. Concludes that the future of local interaction, reduced network loading, server flexibility and application autonomy which are supported by mobile agent technology, all help to provide a level agility above distributed problem solving.

The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that contribute to the number of reported coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths among low-income and high-income countries, and to understand the sources of differences between these two groups of countries.

Multiple linear regression models evaluate the socio-economic factors that determine COVID-19 deaths in the two groups of countries. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition is used to examine sources of differences between these two groups.

Low-income countries report a significantly lower average number of COVID-19 deaths compared to high-income countries. Community mobility and the easiness of carrying the virus from one place to another are significant factors affecting the number of deaths, while life expectancy is only significant in high-income countries. Higher health expenditure is associated with more reported deaths in both high- and low-income countries. Factors such as the transport infrastructure system, life expectancy and the percent of expenditure on health lead to the differences in the number of deaths between high- and low-income countries.

Our study shows that mobility measures taken by individuals to limit the spread of the virus are important to prevent deaths in both high- and low-income countries. Additionally, our results suggest that countries with weak health institutions underestimate the number of deaths from COVID-19, especially low-income countries. The underestimation of COVID-19 deaths could be affecting a great number of people in poverty in low-income economies.

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on COVID-19 and its relation to socio-economic factors by examining the differences in reported between deaths between rates in low-income and high-income countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the manifestations and interactions at work between the ecological, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development and the development of short food supply chains (SFSCs) in French fruit production.

The methodology is based on the theoretical framework associated with SFSCs and each pillar of sustainability. The authors use an original database of 176 surveys of peach and apricot producers from the major French production regions. Three composite indicators, one for each traditional pillar of sustainability, are calculated to evaluate a degree of sustainability at farm level. A simultaneous equations model is estimated on the basis of the calculated indicators.

The results show that in the choice of a supply chain design in the agricultural sector, the search for economic sustainability is opposed to a rationale of environmental and social sustainability, the latter appearing to be independent of one another.

This paper complements the previous studies on the issue of sustainability in agriculture and more specifically the relationship between the adoption of SFSCs and the pillars of sustainable development. The model reveals significant interdependencies, thus emphasizing an issue in reconciling economic imperatives with social or environmental requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine guests’ experiences at green hotels and the impact of green experience on customer satisfaction.

A total of 727 green reviews (reviews on green experiences) of the top ten green hotels in the USA were downloaded from TripAdvisor for content analysis. Descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regressions were then used.

Guests have both positive and negative experiences at green hotels. “Energy”, “purchasing” and “education and innovation” are the most frequently discussed green practices. Some guests’ green experiences, such as “guest training”, “energy”, “water”, “purchasing” and “education and innovation”, significantly influence their overall satisfaction with hotels. Compared with basic green practices, advanced green practices tend to have greater impacts on customer satisfaction.

This study provides insight into guests’ green experiences at hotels and their impact on customer satisfaction. More importantly, this study examines the contribution of different types of green practices to customer satisfaction. As the green hotels examined in this study were not randomly selected, the results should be interpreted with caution.

Different practices impact customer satisfaction in different ways, so hoteliers should refine their green strategies when they implement these green practices.

Very few studies have examined the relationship between green practices and customer satisfaction. A gap still exists in specifically what types of green practices affect customer satisfaction and whether different levels of green practices have different impacts on customer satisfaction. This study investigates guests’ actual experiences and fills the above research gap.