Issaka Dialga and Thomas Vallée
The purpose of this paper is to deal with methodological issues in the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) building by using principal components analysis (PCA) and benefit of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to deal with methodological issues in the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) building by using principal components analysis (PCA) and benefit of the doubt (BOD) methods to generate component- and country-specific weights in computing the scores.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses endogenous model and country-specific weight system to generate country-specific score unlike the equal weight used by the Heritage Foundation.
Findings
The PCA and BOD analyses provide consistent results that differ dramatically with the baseline ones (results using equal weights).
Research limitations/implications
The limitation of the paper is that the results change depending on the method used.
Practical implications
Given results provided by the PCA and BOD analysis, the IEF would receive broad legitimacy basing the calculation of its scores on endogenous weighting models.
Social implications
As composite indicators are essential in public debates and policies, their construction must be objective and well-known by a large public, making the methodological matters in composite indexes building one of the big challenge to researchers and a major democratic issue.
Originality/value
The originality of the paper is to use endogenous approach to generate weights and countries’ scores.
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Outlines the development of genetic algorithms (GA), explains how they generate solutions to problems and applies four GA models incorporating different factors (e.g. risk…
Abstract
Outlines the development of genetic algorithms (GA), explains how they generate solutions to problems and applies four GA models incorporating different factors (e.g. risk, transaction costs etc.) to financial investment strategies. Uses 1987‐1996 share price data from the Madrid Stock Exchange (Spain) and a buy‐and‐hold strategy in the IBEX‐35 index as a benchmark. Shows that all four GA models generat superior daily returns of long positions with lower risk; and discusses the variations between them in detail.
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This study aims to assess the spread of environmental literacy graduation requirements at public universities in the USA, and to highlight factors that mediate the adoption of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to assess the spread of environmental literacy graduation requirements at public universities in the USA, and to highlight factors that mediate the adoption of this curriculum innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The author analyzed the undergraduate general education curriculum requirements at all 549 public BA-granting higher education institutions in the USA between 2020 and 2022.
Findings
The study found that only 27 US public universities out of 540 have an environmental literacy graduation requirement, which represents 5% of universities and is substantially lower than previous estimates.
Originality/value
First, this study provides a more complete, more reliable and more current assessment of the graduation requirement’s presence at US tertiary institutions, and shows the number of universities that have implemented this innovation is lower than was estimated a decade ago. Second, it draws from the scholarship on the infusion of sustainability into the university curriculum to provide a comprehensive discussion of factors that mediate the pursuit and implementation of the graduation requirement. As well, it identifies factors that played a key role in one pertinent case.
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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the aforementioned literature on the linkage between economic activity and human preference by estimating the cross-sectional…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the aforementioned literature on the linkage between economic activity and human preference by estimating the cross-sectional determinants of farmers’ participation in participation in crop insurance programs (CIPs) and identifying the impediments preventing the remaining farmers from participating.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the unique data sets of risk preference experiments and maize producer surveys pertaining to the maize production areas of China, this paper explores the determinants of farmers’ CIPs and scrutinizes the role of risk aversion in farmers’ CIP purchase decisions under the expected utility maximization framework. And a “non-zero threshold probit model” is used for the analysis.
Findings
The results show that risk aversion plays an important role in CIP purchase decision-making, not only in the form of its direct effect but also with regard to the interaction term and expected loss. Furthermore, if the insured amount is high enough, then risk aversion will no longer affect insurance purchase. Additionally, purchase experience, CIP environment (village purchase ratio), and contract items (insured amounts) are significant determinates in these decisions. There is no significant evidence to suggest that serious adverse selection exists in the sampling areas.
Originality/value
One theoretical model is established which considered not only general variables like farmers’ production and household information, but also conditions and terms in the insurance policies. The unique experimental method is used to measure farmers’ risk aversion. Both the role of risk aversion and its’ interaction terms with others in CIP participation are scrutinized to identify complicated influences under the context of real society.
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Tom Henkel, Jim Marion and Debra Bourdeau
In this paper, we examined managers’leadership behavior when working on a simulated team project regarding task-oriented versus relationship-oriented leadership behavior to…
Abstract
In this paper, we examined managers’leadership behavior when working on a simulated team project regarding task-oriented versus relationship-oriented leadership behavior to effectively achieve successful project completion.Managers attending an advanced project management development program responded to the Fielder Leadership Behavior Style Self-Assessment, which is a useful framework to determine task-orientedversus relationship-oriented leadership behavioral styles.The degree oftask-oriented versus relationship- oriented leadership behavior styles was assessedto determine the approach taken by the managers forachievingsuccessfulprojectcompletion.APearson’schi-squaretestwasconductedtodeterminewhether the observed values were significantly different from an expected value of five.The findings can contribute to better understanding the leadership styles, which characterize project management accomplishment.
A certain number of theoretical trends consider a firm's reputation as valuable intangible assets. For companies in dematerialized e‐commerce, which is not protected by…
Abstract
A certain number of theoretical trends consider a firm's reputation as valuable intangible assets. For companies in dematerialized e‐commerce, which is not protected by traditional entry barriers, reputation may be one of the key sources of competitive advantage. Assuming that firms’ assets result from flows of strategic actions, this research examines – over the 1999‐2002 period – the strategic actions underlying the reputations of Lastminute.com and Ebookers.com. Relying on an inductive approach, this research shows how Lastminute managed to build up its reputation through three types of actions – symbolical, competitive and relational – on the one hand, and through achieving a balance between those three types of action and the frequency of those actions, on the other hand. Finally, this research suggests a system linking the properties of those strategic actions to the firm's reputation building.
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France has a long tradition of research on labor and employment issues dating back to the emergence of the “Social Question” in the 1830s. Yet, the field identified as industrial…
Abstract
France has a long tradition of research on labor and employment issues dating back to the emergence of the “Social Question” in the 1830s. Yet, the field identified as industrial relations (IR) emerged slowly in France and has not achieved the institutional status it did in Anglo-Saxon countries. French universities have no IR departments and there are no academic journals with IR on the title. Teaching takes place within different disciplines and research produces an abundant literature, which does not always claim the IR label.
The concept of “industrial relations”, translated as “relations professionnelles”, started to be used in France only after World War II (WWII). The terms commonly used both before WWII and even nowadays alongside IR are “relations du travail” (labor relations) or “relations sociales” (social relations). Even though “industrial relations” might not always be the label used, a distinctive French IR tradition exists nonetheless which this paper identifies and presents.
The paper starts with the forerunners at the origins of the field of IR in France, high ranking civil servants who played a role not only in the development of French but even of international industrial relations, and represented a “problem-solving” approach to IR. The emergence of IR as a field of research with a self-recognized academic community bent on “science building”, however, mostly followed the evolution of IR practice in France in the post-WWII period, which the paper then analyzes, presenting the IR milieu in France through its research structures, theoretical debates and challenging prospects.