Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and assess the trends of bilateral services trade in the world segmented by trade for final consumption and intermediate usage across several service sectors. The differential trends, if any, are studied while examining the role of free trade agreements which have a chapter on services trade as well as the role of services trade restrictions. The study unravels differences across service sectors in this respect.

The author uses an augmented gravity model to address the above using OECD- World Trade Organization (WTO) TiVA data for bilateral trade in intermediates and final products (October 2015 release) and World Bank Services Trade Restrictions Index (STRI). The poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimation technique is used in light of the structure of the data. Trade creating and diverting effects are identified controlling for time and country-time specific effects. The following sectors are specifically looked at: total business sector services, computer and related services, financial intermediation, post and telecommunication, transport and storage, R&D and other business services, hotels and restaurants, construction, and wholesale and retail trade.

First, services free trade agreements (FTAs) have had a trade creating impact with no trade diverting impact for services trade in aggregate with stronger effects on services traded for intermediate usage. Second, financial intermediation and post and telecommunication have been left unaffected by services FTAs. While no trade diversion is concluded for any sector, R&D and other business services, transport and storage and wholesale retail trade show maximum trade creation effects in response to FTAs. Third, trade restrictions of mainly OECD countries are responsible for lowering exports for most sectors. Finally, in terms of policy implications, at a general level, the author does not find a significant difference in the author’s results for services traded for intermediate usage or final consumption except for a stronger effect of FTAs on intermediate services trade. Hence, the policies to foster services trade on both counts are concluded to be the same and deal with behind-the-border policies of domestic industrial policy reforms like national treatment of foreign firms, licensing requirements, FDI policies, etc.

Statistics for services trade are limited. The data are only available for the years 1995, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. Additionally, the conclusions on services trade restrictions are based on statistics for 2011 alone, since this is the only year for which the statistics are available. A complete time series for the entire sample period would increase robustness of the study with a better time variant version of the trade restrictiveness variable. Finally, in the construction of the OECD-WTO-TiVA database of a world IO table, there may have been approximations in constructing statistics for services traded for intermediate usage and final consumption. The results remain sensitive to the same but this is the best possible statistics available for the purposes.

This is the first study which looks at services trade segmented by trade for final consumption and intermediate usage taking advantage of the available data for a number of service sectors. The role of restrictions is also studied for the first time segmented by trade in intermediates and final consumption. The stronger effects of FTAs on intermediate services trade as well as financial intermediation and post and telecommunication services being insulated from effects of FTAs are important findings, especially since services are mainly thought to be traded for final consumption. Similar trends of results for services traded for intermediate usage and final consumption and restrictions affecting exports from exporter countries and imports by importer countries highlight the importance of behind-the-border domestic policies in facilitating or inhibiting services trade on both counts and more importantly for intermediate usage which, in turn, would improve goods tradability.

Estimating the sizes of query results and intermediate results is crucial to many aspects of query processing. All database systems rely on the use of cardinality estimates to choose the cheapest execution plan. In principle, the problem of cardinality estimation is more complicated in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) domain than the relational domain. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel framework for estimating the cardinality of XQuery expressions as well as their sub‐expressions. Additionally, this paper proposes a novel XQuery cardinality estimation benchmark. The main aim of this benchmark is to establish the basis of comparison between the different estimation approaches in the XQuery domain.

As a major innovation, the paper exploits the relational algebraic infrastructure to provide accurate estimation in the context of XML and XQuery domains. In the proposed framework, XQuery expressions are translated into an equivalent relational algebraic plans and then using a well defined set of inference rules and a set of special properties of the algebraic plan, this framework is able to provide high‐accurate estimation for XQuery expressions.

This paper is believed to be the first which provides a uniform framework to estimate the cardinality of more powerful XML querying capabilities using XQuery expressions as well as their sub‐expressions. It exploits the relational algebraic infrastructure to provide accurate estimation in the context of XML and XQuery domains. Moreover, the proposed framework can act as a meta‐model through its ability to incorporate different summarized XML structures and different histogram techniques which allows the model designers to achieve their targets by focusing their effort on designing or selecting the adequate techniques for them. In addition, this paper proposes benchmark for XQuery cardinality estimation systems. The proposed benchmark distinguishes itself from the other existing XML benchmarks in its focus on establishing the basis for comparing the different estimation approaches in the XML domain in terms of their accuracy of the estimations and their completeness in handling different XML querying features.

The current status of this proposed XQuery cardinality estimations framework does not support the estimation of the queries over the order information of the source XML documents and does not support non‐numeric predicates.

The experiments of this XQuery cardinality estimation system demonstrate its effectiveness and show high‐accurate estimation results. Utilizing the cardinality estimation properties during the SQL translation of XQuery expression results in an average improvement of 20 percent on the performance of their execution times.

This paper presents a novel framework for estimating the cardinality of XQuery expressions as well as its sub‐expressions. A novel XQuery cardinality estimation benchmark is introduced to establish the basis of comparison between the different estimation approaches in the XQuery domain.

The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of a rule that affects tertiary students progressing from an introductory level finance course to intermediate level. The rule restricted students from progressing until they achieved a higher grade than just a “pass” mark.

Archival data were gathered from 11 semesters regarding student performance pre and post the rule being introduced.

Results show that the rule was associated with an increase in the chances of success at intermediate level for those students enrolled after the rule was introduced.

This paper’s main contribution regards the evidence that increasing prior learning at an introductory level has a positive follow-on effect for students learning at intermediate level. This has a practical implication for educators, as the rule has shown to increase the chance of success for knowledge development in the first year of studies.

The setting for this paper is unique and could potentially be replicated elsewhere. In 1980, Schaffer and Calkins called for an evaluation of the pre-requisites necessary for finance education at the tertiary level, and this paper answer this call stating that pre-requisites can contribute to the academic success of finance students.

Recycling has experienced rapid growth as a technique to reduce the solid waste stream volume. Despite the public appeal and acceptance of recycling, the reverse logistics channels used in recycling have received minimal attention. However, the reverse channels′ membership and capabilities have a significant impact on the efficiency of processing recyclable material for remanufacture into recycled products. Differing product characteristics, extensive handling, and low density shipments pose considerable obstacles to establishing an efficient reverse channel for recyclable commodities. A framework, based on interviews and current literature, describes the reverse logistics channel structure, membership and functions, and provides a foundation for identifying the issues affecting efficiency and marketability, and possible future directions for improving efficiency within the reverse channel structure.

The purpose of this paper is to align the implementation of the manufacturing execution systems (MES) functionalities with the manufacturing competitive dimensions of two companies of the metal-mechanics industry.

The research object comprises two Brazilian manufacturers that use MES. The research method is quantitative modeling. A literature review organized 24 functionalities of MES. The study prioritized the functionalities and the manufacturing competitive dimensions, evaluated the contribution and the quality of the implementation and classified the functionalities.

Two functionalities in the first and five in the second case have high contribution and quality. Three functionalities in the first and six in the second case have low contribution and quality. The first group should be more explored and updated. The second should be discontinued. The rest has intermediate graduations and should be studied case-by-case. The main contribution of the paper is the method, which can be replicated in other applications in the same or in other industries.

The study relies on two case studies of the same industry. Further research shall encompass the entire industry and cases in industries others than the metal-mechanics.

MES users and vendors may benefit from the study as they can apply the method to align the implementation with the manufacturing strategy and therefore enhance the effectivity of the system.

The authors did not find a study that associates the performance or the contribution of the MES functionalities to the competitive priorities with the quality, integrity or consistency of the implementation.

Despite the importance of assessing business performance, there is limited research on the ways of measuring marketing effectiveness. Aims to redress this issue.

This paper focuses on six categories of marketing effectiveness measures to compare the ways of measuring marketing performance in two groups of Spanish firms (Tourism and Hospitality firms and Industrial firms) in an exploratory study; and also studies the effect of business orientation (customer and competitor orientation) on the measures used to evaluate marketing performance.

It was found that consumer‐based measures have a leading role in the evaluation of marketing effectiveness in Tourism and Hospitality companies and customer orientation affects the importance of these consumer‐based measures.

Research is exploratory and subjective measures of business performance were used.

The main implications are addressed to the Tourism and Hospitality managers for improving the ways of measuring marketing effectiveness.

This is a study of the measurement of marketing effectiveness in Tourism and Hospitality companies in comparison with the industrial counterparts.

Given the critical importance of green innovation (GI) for organizations in developing economies, this study aims to examine the interrelationship between knowledge management (KM) enablers, KM processes and GI. The research also indicates that certain combinations of KM enabler dimensions and KM processes can lead to better GI.

The study sample consists of 328 participants from Pakistan's medium- and large-sized manufacturing enterprises. Smart PLS 3.2.9 is used to verify the relationships. Moreover, the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) investigates configurational paths for improving GI.

The results demonstrate that KM enablers significantly affect two aspects of GI – green product and process innovation – and KM processes. Moreover, KM processes significantly enhance two aspects of GI. The fsQCA findings indicate multiple combinations of KM enablers and KM processes dimensions that result in better GI.

To better understand the critical role of knowledge resources, future studies should explore the potential mediating mechanisms of KM processes or the moderating effects of strategic organizational factors in the relationship between KM enablers and GI.

The study offers valuable insight and a unique approach for policymakers and executives of corporations in developing countries to enhance their organizations' GI capacity through KM enablers and KM processes.

This research contributes to bridging research gaps in the literature and advances insights into the interrelationship among KM enablers, KM processes and GI. In addition, the study offers methodological significance by combining direct and configurational techniques to address two distinct facets of GI.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how within-industry diversification affects the financial performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets (EMs). The authors draw on both the resource-based view and the institutional perspective and argue that within-industry diversification can enhance the financial performance of SMEs in EMs. Due to institutional voids in emerging economies, SMEs can gain additional benefits from scope economies, as well as from market returns, by filling product market voids and gaps in business ecosystems, while also enjoying low input and labor costs that reduce the coordination costs of diversification. This, in turn, enhances benefits of within-industry diversification, thereby resulting in higher financial profitability.

This study employs panel data econometrics to estimate the model. The authors test hypotheses on 195 firms, originating from five countries in Southeast Asia, during the period of 2009–2014.

The empirical results support the arguments. Within-industry diversification has a positive impact on the performance of SMEs in EMs. These effects become weaker when the institutional contexts are more developed. Nevertheless, such effects become stronger when SMEs in EMs are more efficient.

The relationship between within-industry diversification and performance is a positive linear pattern, which differs from the pattern in advanced economies. In addition to unrelated diversification, the related diversification is preferable for firms in EMs.

The paper provides implications for SMEs that aim to enhance their performance by engaging in single product lines and within-industry diversification.

This paper examines the different ways within-industry diversification can enhance SMEs performance in EM contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how within-industry diversification affects the financial performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets (EMs). The authors draw on both the resource-based view and the institutional perspective and argue that within-industry diversification can enhance the financial performance of SMEs in EMs. Due to institutional voids in emerging economies, SMEs can gain additional benefits from scope economies, as well as from market returns, by filling product market voids and gaps in business ecosystems, while also enjoying low input and labor costs that reduce the coordination costs of diversification. This, in turn, enhances benefits of within-industry diversification, thereby resulting in higher financial profitability.

This study employs panel data econometrics to estimate the model. The authors test hypotheses on 195 firms, originating from five countries in Southeast Asia, during the period of 2009–2014.

The empirical results support the arguments. Within-industry diversification has a positive impact on the performance of SMEs in EMs. These effects become weaker when the institutional contexts are more developed. Nevertheless, such effects become stronger when SMEs in EMs are more efficient.

The relationship between within-industry diversification and performance is a positive linear pattern, which differs from the pattern in advanced economies. In addition to unrelated diversification, the related diversification is preferable for firms in EMs.

The paper provides implications for SMEs that aim to enhance their performance by engaging in single product lines and within-industry diversification.

This paper examines the different ways within-industry diversification can enhance SMEs performance in EM contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine zeroing jurisprudence under the WTO’s Anti-Dumping Agreement and to see if the jurisprudence can still be applied to situations of targeted dumping where dumping takes place in a specific region, at specific timing, or for specific consumer groups.

This paper examines the prior decisions of the WTO panels and the Appellate Body relating to the zeroing practice. It categorizes the key elements of these prior decisions where the zeroing practice has been found WTO-inconsistent. While there has been no specific dispute addressing targeted dumping per se, this paper proves that core elements of the zeroing practice have been anatomized and dissected by the panels and the Appellate Body in prior proceedings. The paper then analyzes whether these key elements still exist in the specific context of targeted dumping and thus whether application of zeroing is still prohibited in targeted dumping situations.

The existing jurisprudence on zeroing from previous WTO disputes should apply to targeted dumping situations as well. Unbridled application of zeroing in the targeted dumping situations will effectively nullify the existing zeroing jurisprudence accumulated through a decade of WTO disputes. If unchecked, this calculation methodology in the context of targeted dumping may open the back door wide open for “zeroing” negative anti-dumping margins. The paper concludes that the existing jurisprudence on zeroing stands for the proposition that zeroing in targeted dumping should also be prohibited.

This paper examines the legality of the zeroing practice in targeted dumping situations, which has been one of the most controversial issues among WTO members for the past several years. The analyses and discussions contained in this paper will provide legal guideline to evaluate zeroing in targeted dumping within the WTO framework. The outcome of the research will provide a platform for continued research and discussion in this area.