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This study aims to obtain the more precise decision map to fuse the source images by Coefficient significance method. In the area of multifocus image fusion, the better decision map is very important the fusion results. In the processing of distinguishing the well-focus part with blur part in an image, the edge between the parts is more difficult to be processed. Coefficient significance is very effective in generating the better decision map to fuse the multifocus images.

The energy of Laplacian is used in the approximation coefficients of redundant discrete wavelet transform. On the other side, the coefficient significance based on statistic property of covariance is proposed to merge the detail coefficient.

Due to the shift-variance of the redundant discrete wavelet and the effectiveness of fusion rule, the presented fusion method is superior to the region energy in harmonic cosine wavelet domain, pixel significance with the cross bilateral filter and multiscale geometry analysis method of Ripplet transform.

In redundant discrete wavelet domain, the coefficient significance based on statistic property of covariance is proposed to merge the detail coefficient of source images.

We searched JM from 1990 to 2005 to identify all studies that employed OLS regression.¹ The search resulted in 83 articles with 147 OLS regressions. Many authors specifically state that they used OLS and these were promptly included in the sample. Other authors acknowledged regression as a methodological procedure without explicitly specifying an estimation technique. To inquire whether OLS was used, we communicated with all of these authors. In all, 51 authors were contacted, with 44 responding. Of the 44 that responded 43 had used OLS; the only exception was subsequently excluded from the analysis. The remaining seven articles were checked once more, and consensus was reached that OLS had most likely been used. Therefore, they were also included in the study.

The manner in which publicly traded companies’ management teams handle their firm’s free cash flows (FCF) has been an issue for many decades, because it is difficult to determine whether these management teams work for their own benefit or for that of their shareholders. Recent financial scandals have heightened mistrust of management. This mistrust, in turn, may have increased the pressure to reduce the portion of FCF left under management’s control. Boards of directors control dividend payout decisions, thus determining the portion of FCF available to corporate management. This paper examines whether the 2002 legal response to corporate financial reporting scandals, which came in the form of many new initiatives and requirements imposed by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) on all publicly traded firms, was relevant to dividend payouts. This question is investigated by noting that the impact of these new requirements differed among firms. Some firms had already introduced the use of independent directors and fully independent committees prior to SOX making them compulsory in 2002. This paper examines whether these “pre-adopters” experienced less change in their dividend payout policies than those firms that were forced to change the composition of their board and committees.

This investigation examines the effect on dividend payouts for listed firms attributable to the SOX and concurrent changes in stock exchange regulations that compelled increased use of independent directors and fully independent committees. To study the impact of SOX and the associated, required, changes in the composition of boards of directors for many firms, the difference-in-differences methodology is employed to overcome the endogeneity concerns that have consistently challenged prior governance studies. This was accomplished by examining the effects on dividend payouts associated with the exogenously forced addition of independent directors to the boards of publicly listed firms. The results reveal that there is a significant positive relationship between firms that were compelled by law to change their boards and increases in average changes in dividend payouts and percentage changes in dividends paid, when compared to firms that had pre-adopted the Sarbanes–Oxley corporate board composition requirements. A further exploratory analysis showed that the same significant positive relationship is detected for increases in average changes in total dollars distributed, where stock repurchase dollars are combined with dividend payouts. These findings imply that these board composition changes led to decisions that increased dividend payouts in percentage terms, as well as dividend payouts and total dollars distributed in aggregate dollar amount terms.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the association of earnings quality with corporate performance of publicly listed firms of China and tries to provide a new explanation. Poor earnings quality is normally characterized by unhealthy profitability and/or untrue financial information, which leads to a misallocation of capital and low corporate performance. The largest emerging economy of China has experienced a fast and fluctuant growth, while the companies have been thought of low earnings quality.

Initial univariate and multivariate analyses are conducted using four earnings quality measures and either accounting-based corporate performance or market-based corporate performance. Further analyses apply unmanaged earnings, earnings-increase management and financially distressed firms.

The authors find that low earnings quality is associated with high corporate performance for the Chinese publicly listed firm in their sample period. Further evidence shows that earnings management is only a contributor to the negative relationship, not its main driver. They argue that the negative association of earnings quality with corporate performance is a phenomenon of a new emerging market within an economy booming period, particularly in China.

The results and argument of this paper may not totally follow the traditional literature. But they provide a new research question that requires further studies.

In theoretical discussion, this paper partitions earnings quality into two components: One results from reporting accuracy and the other results from firm’s operating outcome. In empirical analyses, this paper examines both accounting-based performance and market-based performance, and both managed earnings and unmanaged earnings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the correlation between university libraries and academic research achievement and analyze if university library resources correlate with academic research achievement.

The paper seeks to verify the correlation between university libraries and academic research achievement and to examine which university library resources relate to research achievement. A variety of research questions were posed concerning the relationship between a university's library resources and academic research achievement. Structural equation models (SEMs) were developed to answer the research questions. Most research questions posed were affirmatively answered using the SEM process.

This study confirmed that labor and budget, investment in e‐resources and an investment in university libraries enhances academic research achievement.

An SEM for verifying the correlation between university libraries and academic research achievement was developed in the study.

This study is the first including an investment factor in e‐resources for verifying the correlation between university libraries and academic research achievement.

Good market timing skills can be an important factor contributing to hedge funds’ outperformance. In this chapter, we use a unique semiparametric panel data model capable of providing consistent short period estimates of the return correlations with three market factors for a sample of Long/Short equity hedge funds. We find evidence of significant market timing ability by fund managers around market crisis periods. Studying the behavior of individual fund managers, we show that at the 10% significance level, 17.12% of funds exhibit good linear timing skills and 21.32% of funds possess some level of good nonlinear market timing skills. Further, we find that market timing strategies of hedge funds are different in good and bad markets, and that a significant number of managers behave more conservatively when the market return is expected to be far above average and more aggressively when the market return is expected to be far below average. We find that good market timers are also likely to possess good stock selection skills.

The purpose of this paper was to determine whether a model utilizing a number of economic variables in combination with financial ratios results in a model superior to the traditional models including the financial ratios alone. A sample of 110 manufacturing companies which had become bankrupt between 1990 and 1997 were identified from the F & S Index and matched to 110 non‐failed companies on the basis total assets, financial statement date and four digit industry code. The proposed model predicted correctly 87.82 and 87.50 percent of the estimation and holdout samples, respectively. The significance of the coefficients in each year’s model was evaluated by using the t‐statistic corresponding to each coefficient’s value. The overall models are significant at ∝‐level of 0.05.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of environmental pollution and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution in different stages based on the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of economic development level and industrial structure upgrading level in eastern, central and western regions of China and discuss whether there is adjustment effect and threshold effect in the process of economic growth affecting environmental pollution, and finally realizes sustainable economic development.

Based on panel data from 30 provincial-level administrative regions of China (excluding Tibet and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) from 2000 to 2019, this paper uses the environmental Kuznets curve, regulating effect model and panel threshold model to analyze the impact of economic growth and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution.

The results present that the uneven distribution of natural resources leads to different levels of economic development and industrial structure upgrading in eastern and western regions, and its impact on environmental pollution is also different. Economic growth and industrial structure upgrading have a positive effect on environmental pollution, and the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution is inverted U-shaped. At present, the eastern, central and western regions of China are at the right end of the inverted U-shaped relationship. In general, industrial structure upgrading in eastern, central and western regions has a significant inhibitory effect on environmental pollution. Industrial structure upgrading has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution, and the regulating effect is most significant in the central region, followed by the eastern region, and not significant in the western region. The results of panel threshold model show that the industrial structure upgrading can slow down the positive impact of economic growth on environmental pollution and strengthen the negative moderating effect of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution.

The innovation of this study is to bring economic growth, industrial structure upgrading and environmental pollution into a unified analytical framework, analyze the impact of economic development and industrial structure upgrading levels in different periods on environmental pollution, and select industrial structure upgrading as the moderating variable and threshold variable. It provides a thought for the influence mechanism of different levels of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution. Based on the panel data in China, this study emphasizes the concept of sustainable development, adheres to green development and proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution. And this paper proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution from the perspective of transforming economic growth mode and optimizing industrial structure in China, which also has reference significance for developing countries to realize sustainable economic development.

One of the ways of convincing investors, in particular foreign ones, to take part in the implementation of host country economic policies is the development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) designed to ensure more favourable business environment than those available in other locations. Poland has created and develops the SEZs. They play a positive role in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) or creating new jobs but also may have negative consequences, such as deepening regional disproportions in the country.

This paper aims at examining why certain SEZs in Poland attracted more FDI than other. In our opinion that may result from the location in a particular region (understood as a unit of administrative division of the country at the level of a voivodeship) and from endogenous conditions characteristic of the zone, such as the land it owns, infrastructure and its accessibility and finally high quality performance of the company that manages the zone.

Our calculations have shown statistically significant positive relationships between FDI inflow to SEZ and overall and some partial coefficients that describe investment attractiveness of voivodeships. Test results also suggest that efforts of managing companies with regard to wooing investors (e.g. through promotions, infrastructure development) are important in increasing the inflow of foreign investment.