Search results

This paper aims to investigate the current status of manpower capability, and to identify the key factors that influenced the development of manpower capability within private house building companies in Libya.

The aim and the proposition of the research are set out after a literature review and synthesis. Then a multiple case study approach is adopted to conduct exploratory case studies into joint venture housing projects.

The findings of the study confirm that there should be an interlinked tripartite strategy between the Government, foreign investors and local private house building firms to improve manpower capability so that the Government's housing targets are achieved and sustained. The proposed integrated framework offers a targeted approach to achieve a stepped change in achieving both a quantitative and qualitative growth in housing.

The paper makes an original contribution to the knowledge on joint venture house building in developing countries. The research identifies the current strengths and weaknesses of manpower in professing a stepped change in the area to meet the needs of the Government's housing target, and while the majority of the changes are applicable within the Libyan case study context, opportunities exist to generalise towards other developing countries thereby to gain further value out of this research.

The purpose of this work is to improve the air entrainment capacity of a concrete by using fine mineral admixtures such as fly ash (FA) and silica fume (SF) as cement substitute, and coal bottom ash (CBA) as fine aggregate substitute. Air entrainment capacity has been studied indirectly as a measure of heat resistance of concrete. Literature has suggested that mineral admixtures improve the air absorption in the paste component of the concrete, on the one hand, whereas they perform pore and grain size refinement, on the other, thereby reducing the air entrainment. CBA, which being porous, creates the possibility of air adsorption by the aggregate component. Therefore, the study finds out whether a double benefit of adding both of these materials will be achieved, or CBA will try to improve the deficiency in the air entrainment created by the mineral admixtures.

Air-entrained concrete (AEC) mixes were constituted in three groups. First group represents mixes with natural fine aggregates only, and second with 25% fine aggregates substituted by CBA. Progressively, the third group has 50% fine aggregates substituted with CBA. In all the three groups, cement was substituted with FA and SF @ 0%, 20% and 40%, and 0%, 5% and 10%, respectively, thereby creating four binary and four ternary mixes corresponding to each group. Compressive and flexural strength tests were conducted at 28 days on the concrete mixes pre and post high-temperature heat treatment, i.e. 100°C, 200°C and 400°C, respectively. This study also examines the microstructure characteristics of AEC after 14 days of curing via X-ray diffraction. Sorptivity test was also conducted to estimate the capillary and air-entrained voids in concrete.

It was found that a concrete mix containing 20% FA and 10% SF along with 50% CBA could give similar post-heated strength to a normal (without mineral admixtures) AEC. In AECs where only CBA is present and cement paste is not substituted, both of the pre- and post-heated strengths of concrete reduce. Also, some mixtures containing large amounts of mineral admixtures in concrete with nil CBA show a high reduction in post-heated strength though they show good pre-heated strength. Therefore, mineral admixtures and CBA complement each other in improving the post-heated strength. Air pore structure found from sorptivity test also verifies these results.

AEC is very helpful for insulation of buildings during summer season by absorbing heat waves. AEC containing FA and CBA reduces carbon footprint because of substitution of cement and it also helps to conserve natural resources by the use of CBA in place of fine aggregates.

In the present study, we investigate whether enhanced momentum strategies outperform price momentum strategies and if they show greater resilience and stability under adverse market conditions. We also examine if such strategies are explained by prominent asset pricing models or are a result of behavioral mispricing.

Data consist of the equity shares of all companies listed on National Stock Exchange over the study period. To check the efficacy of enhanced momentum over price momentum, six momentum strategies have been designed and their raw as well as risk-adjusted returns using multi-factor models have been observed. Behavioral mispricing has been examined by constructing an investor attention index. Finally, few robustness tests have been performed to confirm the results.

We find that an enhanced momentum strategy which combines relative and absolute strength momentum outperforms conventional price momentum strategy in India. We also demonstrate that rational pricing models are not able to explain momentum profits for any of the strategies. Finally, we observe that investor overreaction is the possible explanation of momentum profits in India. Thus, our results confirm the role of behavioral mispricing in explaining momentum returns.

Our research is the first major attempt to study enhanced momentum strategies in the Indian context. We experiment with several new enhanced momentum strategies which have not been explored in prior literature. The findings have strong implications for global portfolio managers who wish to design profitable trading strategies.