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This study aims to understand master’s students’ experiences of service-learning, following their participation in a workshop with local social innovators whose activities had contributed to combating poverty in East Africa and to determine how this participation affected work on the students’ theses. The authors also explored possible gender differences in this context.

The study was based on pretest–posttest mixed methods research design. Data were collected from master’s students within the social sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, respectively, in Kenya and Uganda, via surveys and interviews before the workshop, immediately afterwards and six months later.

Students’ immediate experience was that the workshop contributed to increased critical awareness, adoption of transdisciplinary community-serving approaches and strengthened self-confidence. Six months later, most had related their projects to social problems (e.g. poverty) in their communities. Moreover, the results motivated integration of gender-sensitive curricula based on service-learning in East Africa.

Based on the results, the authors suggest a framework for gender-sensitive curriculum development that can stimulate service-learning in master’s students. Implementation of such a curriculum could eventually contribute to community development, including, e.g. poverty reduction.

Studies on service-learning are rare in Africa, especially in postgraduate education. Gender-sensitive studies on service-learning are generally scarce and the same holds for studies on encouraging STEM students to integrate social innovation into their thesis work. By combining these aspects, this study presents an original contribution to existing research.

This paper recommends new criteria for selecting seaports of embarkation during military deployments. Most importantly, this research compares the current port selection criterion, which is to select the seaport with the shortest inland transport time from the deploying installation, to the proposed port selection criteria, which are to select the seaport based on the shortest combined inland and oceanic transit time to the destination theater.

The authors construct an original integer program to select seaports that minimize the expected delivery timeline for a set of notional, but realistic, deployment requirements. The integer program is solved considering the current as well as the proposed port selection criteria. The solutions are then compared using paired-samples t-tests to assess the statistical significance of the port selection criteria.

This work suggests that the current port selection criterion results in a 10–13% slower delivery of deploying forces as compared to the proposed port selection criteria.

This work assumes deterministic inland transit times, oceanic transit times, and seaport processing rates. Operational fluctuations in transit times and processing rates are not expected to change the findings from this research.

This research provides evidence that the current port selection criterion for selecting seaports for military units deploying from the Continental United States is suboptimal. More importantly, logistics planners could use these recommended port selection criteria to reduce the expected delivery timelines during military deployments.

Several military doctrinal references suggest that planners select seaports based on habitual installation-to-port pairings, especially for early deployers. This work recommends a change to the military's current port selection process based on empirical analyses that show improvements to deployment timelines.

The authors investigate whether the effects of stock buyback announcements on credit default swap (CDS) spread changes for US firms depend on macroeconomic conditions. The authors find that abnormal CDS spreads increase for small-sized firms announced to repurchase a higher share ratio during the normal period. In contrast, abnormal CDS spreads decrease for big-sized firms regardless of the magnitude of the repurchase ratio during the crisis period. The results of this study suggest that the wealth transfer effect dominates the signaling effect for small-sized firms with higher target ratios during the normal period. In contrast, the signaling effect is stronger for bondholders of big-sized firms during the crisis period.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between intensity of competition and technical efficiency of large European container ports, accounting for regional diversities and spatial aspects of inter-port competition.

The analysis consists of applying a stochastic production frontier approach to a dataset of 77 large European container ports over the period 2002-2012, with inefficiency terms simultaneously modeled as a function of (among other factors) a constructed index of competitive intensity at different spatial levels.

The results indicate that there is no significant negative effect of competitive intensity on efficiency. In fact, for competing European ports within a proximity of 300 km, a higher level of competition is found to be associated with a higher level of technical efficiency.

The originality of the paper stems from its particular focus on European port regions and its novel findings in this context, which have implications for the discussions regarding pro-competitive port policy and regulation in the European Union.

This study aims to investigate the existence of contagion between liquid and illiquid assets in the credit default swap (CDS) market around the recent financial crisis. The authors perform analyses based on vector autoregression model and the dynamic conditional correlation model. The estimation of vector autoregression models reveals that changes in liquid CDS (LCDS) spreads lead to changes in illiquid CDS spreads at least one week ahead during the financial crisis period, whereas the leading direction is reversed during the post-crisis period. Moreover, the results are robust after controlling for structural variables which are proven as determinants of CDS spreads and are empirically supported. This study interprets that information was incorporated first into the LCDSs because of the flight-to-liquidity during the recent crisis period but there is a default contagion effect by reflecting illiquidity-induced credit risk after the crisis. Finally, the dynamic conditional correlation analysis also confirms the main results.

This study investigated the impacts of the environment, social and governance (ESG) and its components on global bank profitability considering the COVID-19 outbreak.

This study used a system generalized method of moments (GMM) proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) to investigate the relationship between ESG and bank profitability using an unbalanced sample of 487 banks from 51 countries from 2006 to 2021.

The findings generally found that ESG activities may reduce bank profitability, thus supporting the trade-off hypothesis that adopting ESG standards could increase bank costs while lowering profitability. In addition, there is a U-shaped relationship between ESG and bank profitability, suggesting that ESG activities can help improve bank performance in the long term. Such an effect is the first time observed in the global banking sector. This study’s results are robust across different models and settings (e.g., developed vs. developing countries, different levels of profitability, and samples with vs without US banks).

This study provides empirical evidence to support many countries' sustainable development policies. It also provides empirical incentives for bank managers to be more ESG-oriented.

This study provides a better understanding of the roles of ESG activity and its components in the global banking system, considering the recent crises.