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Lack of trust in construction projects will lead to poor project performance or project failure, indicating the importance of trust-building. Existing studies have developed various trust models, while most studies covered limited trust factors, failed to clarify their meanings and relationships or lacked qualitative or quantitative evidence. Thus, this study aims to develop a measurement model of trust in construction projects with theoretical justification as well as qualitative and quantitative data.

A literature review was conducted to identify conceptual types, factors and indicators of trust. Individual interviews and focus groups were performed to test the proposed framework with qualitative data. A survey and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) method were utilized to build the measurement model of trust using quantitative data in BIM-assisted projects.

The proposed trust framework covered the four conceptual types, four factors (integrity, competency, benevolence and commitment) and 13 indicators, supported by the results of interviews and focus groups. The measurement model of trust from CFA results supported the significant, positive, and one-to-one relationships between 13 indicators and four factors of trust in BIM-assisted projects.

Theoretically, the study provides new insights into the multi-dimensional nature of trust. In practice, the findings could facilitate trustors and trustees to better understand, build, measure and enhance trust in construction projects.

In September, 2000, the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) received a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to outsource legacy finding aids for conversion into EAD. By working cooperatively and adopting a novel Lancasterian structure in which early participants in the grant assisted later ones, the grantees developed a robust peer to peer network that resulted in the acquisition of significant local experience, and some expertise, in EAD application. We conclude with the proposition that much of the current digital anxiety besetting our profession is misplaced; rather than fall prey to anxiety over the constant need for adaptation to emerging technologies, archivists should concern themselves more with the critical skills of description, arrangement, and interpretation, the traditional archival skills that are in danger of eroding in the new digital world.

This paper examines the relationship between the procedural tax administration system and the characteristics of the decision-maker in the decision to comply with the tax code. Specifically, we examine the motor fuel tax system. The motor fuel tax system requires an organization to collect and remit taxes at both the federal and state levels. Using a path model, we find that the procedural complexity of the tax system contributes to an increase in tax non-compliance.

This paper attempts to critically question present IPE approaches and analyses that aim at assessing China’s role within the international political economy. Thus, unlike common theorizations that see the country as being integrated within US hegemony (Panitch and Gindin) or those accounts that claim that we are already witnessing the “terminal crisis” of US hegemony accompanied by a hegemonic transition toward China (Arrighi), the paper will argue that China was able to gain “relative geopolitical autonomy” as a result of the revolutionary processes it went through and eventually assert itself as a contender state, now just in the process of challenging US hegemony. Dissatisfied with existent theorizations of hegemony, I will be drawing on the critical edition of Gramsci’s Quaderni and attempt to offer a new perspective regarding the conceptualization thereof. Thus applying the elaborated framework of analysis to the current situation, I argue that unlike the US’s ability to counter the challenge of its traditional imperial rivals Germany and Japan as they developed under the grip of US hegemony, the country is facing difficulties in countering China’s ascent. However, while maintaining that China does indeed represent a challenge to US hegemony, particularly in East Asia, I will argue that the idea of a “crisis of US hegemony” is premature as China remains distant from fully realizing hegemonic relations, even at the regional level.

Several academic studies have examined the investment performance of initial public offerings (IPOs). Since the underwriters desire to have the offering sell out quickly, they have an incentive to underprice the securities offering. A number of studies have found that new equity issues are generally underpriced and produce positive abnormal short‐term returns. Like IPOs, spin‐offs are issues which are new to the public capital markets. However, unlike IPOs, spin‐offs do not involve an underwriter which determines the offering price of the security. Spin‐offs are also similar to corporate sell‐offs in that a parent company makes a decision to divest a division or subsidiary; however, in a spin‐off the business unit is not sold for cash or securities. Instead, spin‐offs occur when a parent corporation distributes its entire holdings of stock in a subsidiary on a pro‐rata basis to the parent's shareholders. These transactions have the effect of completing the separation of the assets and liabilities of the parent and the subsidiary. Thus, two separate public corporations with the same proportional equity holdings now exist whereas only one firm existed previously.

This chapter provides an alternative interpretation of the emergence of the “Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans” growth model, a framework which, alongside the overlapping generation model, is the dominant approach in today’s macroeconomics. By focusing on the role Paul Samuelson played through the works he developed in the turnpike literature, the author’s goal is to provide a more accurate history of growth theory of the 1940–1960s, one which started before Solow (1956) but never had him as a central reference. Inspired by John von Neumann’s famous 1945 article, Samuelson wrote his first turnpike paper by trying to conjecture an alternative optimal growth path (Samuelson, 1949 [1966]). In the 1960s, after reformulating the intertemporal utility model presented in Ramsey (1928), Samuelson began to propound it as a representative agent model. Through Samuelson’s interactions with colleagues and PhD students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and given his standing in the profession, he encouraged a broader use of that device in macroeconomics, particularly, in growth theory. With the publication of Samuelson (1965), Tjalling Koopmans and Lionel McKenzie rewrote their own articles in order to account for the new approach. This work complements a recently written account on growth theory by Assaf and Duarte (2018).

This paper situates geopolitical economy in light of a broader rethinking of the history of capitalism and international power. It discusses why the ideas of British and American hegemony are problematic. Specifically, it argues that categorizing these powers as hegemonic leaves out a more complex history that theories of hegemony have excluded, and cannot include, else the concept of hegemony would collapse. Finally, I suggest geopolitical economy may be a starting point for writing a new history of capitalism and world order.

Recent decades have witnessed great interest in Leon Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development (UCD) by Marxist scholars of International Relations (IR). A burgeoning literature has argued that one interpretation, Justin Rosenberg’s U&CD, resolves the question of ‘the international’ by offering a single, non-Realist theory capable of uniting both sociological and geopolitical factors in the explanation of social change across history. Evaluating this claim, this paper argues that the transhistorical ways in which U&CD has been developed reproduce, reaffirm and reinforce some of the more important shortcomings of Realist IR. I develop my argument through an internal critique of Rosenberg’s conception of U&CD, which, I argue, is illustrative of larger shortcomings within the literature. I conclude that the political and geopolitical economy of UCD and their dynamics must be grasped through the specific social and historical relations in which they are immersed.