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There is ample empirical evidence to show that larger banks are more efficient than smaller banks in developed countries. However, there is very little empirical evidence to show that in small developing economies, such as Vietnam, bank size is associated with increased risk, especially credit risk. This paper aim to provide empirical evidence to fill in this gap. This paper employs a slack-based directional distance function using the intermediation approach in measuring the inefficiency of banks in Vietnam during the period 2006–2015. Non-performing loans are used as an undesirable output to capture credit risk. The results show that small banks are more efficient than large banks at the mean level and across the entire distributions of inefficiency of the two groups. Input waste, output shortage and risk surplus of big banks are nearly three times higher than those of small banks. The results are robust under constant and variable returns to scale for production technologies. The study’s empirical results contribute to the ongoing debate on the merits of enlarging bank size in a small transitional economy and suggest that policy makers should pay attention to the risk and inefficiency of large banks to enhance the performance of Vietnam's banking system as a whole.

This paper uses the non-radial slack-based directional technology distance function developed by Färe and Grosskopf (2010) to estimate the efficiency of banks using the data envelopment analysis technique. Data for 44 commercial banks are used.

The empirical results of the paper contribute to the ongoing debate on the merits of enlarging bank size in a small transitional economy and suggest that policy makers should pay attention to the risk and inefficiency of large banks to improve the performance of Vietnam's banking system as a whole.

This paper extends the extant literature by examining whether efficiency is associated with size in a typical transitional developing economy. The classic Cournot model, the structure-conduct-performance and the efficiency structure hypotheses state that larger banks are more efficient than smaller banks (Bikker and Bos, 2008). Empirical studies of Berger (2003), Mester (2005), Wheelock and Wilson (2012) lend support to the statement in developed countries. However, not much empirical literature focuses on small developing economies such as Vietnam to show that bank size is associated with increased risk, especially credit risk. The study’s empirical results show that size enlargement is not positively associated with risk-adjusted efficiency. Input waste, output shortage and risk surplus of big banks are nearly three times higher than those of small banks. The results are robust under constant and variable returns to scale for production technologies.

TRAGEDY has touched many libraries in the past few weeks, but the really sporting manner in which has been met the worst that the Nazi bomber can do places librarians, we hope, fully in line with our people. Roofless rooms have been patched, sometimes merely with canvas and felt, empty houses have been taken over, and by similar expedients even in the worst places a library service has been continued. It has been used, too. There is no fear for the future of the book and reading, whatever difficulties impede them. It has become almost commonplace that reading is a main employment of war leisure; but we still have to get that over to the powers that be. Or have we? The Board of Education wrote to local authorities asking them to maintain and even to extend library facilities as their value in war was enhanced. Some have responded.

The literature of entrepreneurship has an urban focus and despite the emergence of the rural entrepreneurship literature, we know little about the characteristics, philosophies, operating practices and growth strategies of ordinary village entrepreneurs’ in a UK context. As a concept, the “village entrepreneur” is contentious as theoretically there should be little difference between urban and rural entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, there is! The concept is important because many villages are in decline and are marginal places in terms of entrepreneurial opportunity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A review of the fragmented literature is conducted to synthesise and develop greater understanding. Drawing on a “life-story” approach the empirical strand comprises of an analysis of five ethnographic interviews with village entrepreneurs.

The respondents did not consider themselves entrepreneurs whom they characterised as flash, rogues and even crooked. Their embedded village entrepreneur persona was constructed around tales-of-character, hard work and perseverance. They prided themselves in making “slow-money” which they retain over their lifetime. Embeddedness, self-efficacy, character and morality were key themes encountered.

From a research perspective the findings are based on a limited sample and the study was not specifically designed to capture data on characteristics, philosophies and operating practices. Further research on a larger scale is necessary to validate the findings.

From a practical perspective policy makers require to consider the notions of embeddedness, self-efficacy, character and morality when considering implementing growth strategies in rural areas.

This study contributes to the growing literature of rural entrepreneurship by expanding the typology of rural entrepreneurs and by detailing philosophies, operating practices, and growth strategies suitable and appropriate for small village and rural businesses.

I have been a liar, a thief, and a scoundrel. For fifteen years, my life revolved around heroin and amphetamines. Today, I am a person with AIDS (PWA). I am not gay, nor am I an AIDS “victim.”

In order to achieve anything, one side in the productivity bargain has to expose its position. The author argues that this side must be the management.

While quiet quitting is not an entirely new phenomenon, no published research has examined its relationship to existing concepts from a human resource management and organizational behavior perspective. Therefore, this study is a critical reflection that aims to demonstrate the relationship of quiet quitting with concepts researchers in tourism and hospitality have extensively used to study related phenomena.

Gray literature was mobilized to capture the momentum of this new phenomenon, whereas scholarly research was reviewed to identify existing concepts associated with quiet quitting and suggest directions for theory-building and empirical research.

In its contemporary form, quiet quitting mostly resonates with younger employees, due to the drastic changes in workplaces following the COVID-19 pandemic. While quiet quitting closely resembles collective industrial action such as “work to rule” and “acting one’s wage,” it also has a psychological dimension, and can be understood through concepts such as work withdrawal, employee cynicism, and silence. Multiple theories and concepts are proposed to facilitate the conceptualization and operationalization of quiet quitting (e.g. organizational citizenship behavior, social exchange, psychological contract, organizational justice, conflict theory, equity theory, two-factor theory, job demands-resources and conservation of resources theories).

This research provides practical suggestions to managers in tourism and hospitality to prevent the occurrence of quiet quitting in the first place, as well as effectively handling it once it occurs.

Studies addressing quiet quitting are rare. This paper attempts to synthesize diverse concepts and theories associated with quiet quitting to understand its meaning, potential causes and to suggest avenues for future research.

This paper aims to offer viewpoints on the emergence of Quiet Quitting. Particularly, this paper reviews the reasons behind the phenomenon and analyzes its potential influences on the hospitality workforce. This study also proposes theory-driven solutions addressing this issue.

This paper is based on the relevant literature, industry reports and a critical reflection of the authors’ experiences, research and insights.

This paper reveals that Quiet Quitting can be a major obstacle for the hospitality business to reach service excellence. This paper also finds that Quiet Quitting is driven by several antecedents and correlates and affects employees, customers and various businesses in the hospitality and tourism industries.

This paper proposes several suggestions to properly address this issue, including enhancing the person–organization fit, work flexibility and employee well-being.

Quiet Quitting emerged as a new trend among the young workforce shortly after the pandemic. Despite the popularity of such odd terminology, academic discussions surrounding this issue have been limited. As one of the early attempts, this paper offers a critical analysis of the phenomenon and actional insights to respond to this ongoing challenge.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the influence of corporate governance variables relating to the board of directors, audit and ownership on the agency problems that inflict a firm's investments in capital and research and development (R&D) expenditures. This study posits that the R&D investments are inflicted by the agency problem of “quiet life” whereas “empire-building” agency problem affects capital expenditure decisions.

This study analyses the investment behaviour of non-financial and non-utility firms listed on NIFTY 200 from FY 2009 to FY 2018 using a static and dynamic model.

The results from the static model suggest that ownership concentration mitigates the agency problem of the “quiet life” that affects R&D expenditures. However, no corporate governance attribute has a significant impact on R&D investments under the assumption of the dynamic model. In respect of capital expenditures, the analysis of static model yields that audits by large auditor firms and usage of non-audit services ameliorate the agency problem of “empire-building”. The results from the dynamic model show that independent boards worsen it. They also continue to provide empirical evidence in favour of large auditors.

This paper contributes to the literature on the corporate governance-investment association by simultaneously examining the impact of multiple corporate governance attributes on the agency problems of “quiet life” and “empire-building” that affect R&D and capital expenditures, respectively, in a static and dynamic context for a sample of Indian firms.

The study examines the relationship between the consequential social cost of market power (i.e. welfare performance of banks) and cost efficiency using data covering the period 2009 to 2017 from the Ghanaian banking industry.

The study adopts the ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effect (FE) panel regression and the quantile regression (QR) approaches to control for heterogeneity and provide increased room for policy relevance. The two-stage least squares instrumental variables (2SLS-IV) regression is used to ensure the robustness of the findings against the problem of possible reverse causality.

The results indicate a positive relationship between banks' welfare performance and cost efficiency, which suggests that greater cost efficiency hedges welfare losses. In other words, welfare gains and cost-efficient banks are not mutually exclusive. Also, the results show evidence that the sensitivity of welfare gain to cost efficiency depends on the knowledge of local market dynamics. Further, the findings from the QR estimation suggest that, but for welfare loss at low (Q.25) to the median (Q.50) quantiles, cost efficiency is a necessary and sufficient condition to hedge the welfare losses.

The results demonstrate that financial consumer protection cannot be achieved without cost efficiency in the presence of both foreign banks and high market knowledge. Therefore, our paper suggests an integrated cost efficiency policy approach that has the complementary effect of a robust information sharing mechanism and incentives to hedge against welfare losses in the banking sector of emerging economies. Moreover, if welfare gain is synonymous with cost-efficient banks, then the presence of a quiet life is typical of financial consumer protection.

This study provides insight into the importance of cost efficiency to the public policy of financial consumer protection in an era of foreign banks' dominance. From the review of prior literature, this paper is the first to apply the QR estimation technique to examine the effect of cost efficiency throughout the conditional distribution of bank welfare performance rather than just the conditional mean effect of cost efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the empirical effect of competition on cost and profit efficiency in the South African non-life insurance market in a three-stage analysis.

Using annual firm level data on 80 non-life insurance companies from 2007 to 2012, the authors first employ the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate cost and profit efficiency scores. In the second stage, the authors measure insurance market competition using the Panzar-Rosse (P-R) H-statistics. In the final stage, the authors estimate a fixed-effects panel regression model which controls for heteroskedasticity to examine the effect of competition on the estimated efficiency scores. Firm size, diversification, age, risk, reinsurance and leverage are employed as control variables.

From the SFA, the authors find average cost and profit efficiency of 80.08 and 45.71 per cent, respectively. This suggests that non-life insurers have high levels of efficiency in cost and low efficiency in profit. The annual estimates of the P-R H-statistics also suggest that firms in the market earn revenues under conditions of monopolistic competition. The authors find a positive effect of competition on cost and profit efficiency to validate the “quiet-life” hypothesis which posits that competition improves efficiency.

Regulatory policies should be directed towards enhancing competition to improve on the low profit earning potential of firms in the non-life market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study presents the first application of a non-structural measure of competition to examine the empirical relationship between competition and efficiency in insurance markets.