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In 2009, Newsweek published a report in which they ranked the 500 largest US companies and the 100 largest global companies based on its environmental performance measures (http://greenrankings2009.newsweek.com/). This ranking is referred to as Newsweek’s Green Ranking. Included in this ranking is information about water and air pollution, solid waste disposal, toxic wastes, carbon emissions, and enforcement actions. The question we are addressing in this study is how well it measures pollution performance? The question is relevant to environmental accounting/reporting since it is part of a dilemma yet to be answered: Aggregated environmental indices/scores are easy for average information users to percept, while specific information may not be preserved when it is aggregated into the overall score(s).

Specifically, we examine whether Newsweek’s Green Ranking is correlated with pollution measures based on Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) in order to determine how valid or reliable Newsweek’s Green Ranking is – in other words, how much Newsweek’s Green Ranking can explain the pollution by the toxic releases. We find that there is no significant correlation between Newsweek’s Green Ranking and the TRI measures except for the firms in the utilities industry. Concluding that on one measure, which we consider a very important one, there is no justification for the overall Green Ranking Score presented by Newsweek. However, in Newsweek’s three-part score the element that is termed the Environmental Impact Score captures pollution performance measured based on TRI. The contrast between the overall ranking and performance ranking indicates that a composite index that incorporates hard performance and soft measures can dilute the information carried by performance data.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges for the earth that is mostly driven by human actions. The rapid increase of world population forces the businesses to reach the economies of scale. Digital and technological transformation of the world, thanks to “Industry 4.0,” provides new opportunities for production as well as international trade. Today, the green production process of an imported product could produce lower emissions than producing domestically. However, the greenest countries in the world are developed ones such as Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria. Furthermore, nearly half of the goods' export belongs to developing economies. This chapter focuses on the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission of 18 countries that produce approximately 75% of the world's CO₂ emission and its determinants. The main target of the study is to investigate the impact of export on carbon emission. The convergence estimation and responsiveness scores (RSs) of countries' CO₂ emission levels are performed to find carbon emission convergent groups and the impact of emission determinants. Besides, the study divides the export of countries into broad economic categories (BEC) and evaluates the impact of capital goods, intermediate goods, and consumption goods groups over the emission. The findings demonstrate that intermediate goods export leads to 7.4% deviation of CO₂ emission whereas the effects of capital and consumption goods are neutral. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first research discussing the BEC classification impact over the carbon emission of that 18 countries. The results help to take necessary and effective measures of supranational organizations to have a sustainable trade policy especially for the post-Covid-19 period of the world.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Soil Conservation Services (SCS) rainfall-runoff model has been applied worldwide since 1954 and adopted by Malaysian government agencies. Malaysia does not have regional specific curve numbers (CN) available for the use in rainfall-runoff modelling, and therefore a SCS-CN practitioner has no option but to adopt its guideline and handbook values which are specific to the US region. The selection of CN to represent a watershed becomes subjective and even inconsistent to represent similar land cover area. In recent decades, hydrologists argue about the accuracy of the predicted runoff results from the model and challenge the validity of the key parameter, initial abstraction ratio coefficient (λ) and the use of CN. Unlike the conventional SCS-CN technique, the proposed calibration methodology in this chapter discarded the use of CN as input to the SCS model and derived statistically significant CN value of a specific region through rainfall-runoff events directly under the guide of inferential statistics. Between July and October of 2004, the derived λ was 0.015, while λ = 0.20 was rejected at alpha = 0.01 level at Melana watershed in Johor, Malaysia. Optimum CN of 88.9 was derived from the 99% confidence interval range from 87.4 to 96.6 at Melana watershed. Residual sum of square (RSS) was reduced by 79% while the runoff model of Nash–Sutcliffe was improved by 233%. The SCS rainfall-runoff model can be calibrated quickly to address urban runoff prediction challenge under rapid land use and land cover changes.

We examine the effects of pre-play communication in an experimental game with conflicting risk-dominant and payoff-dominant equilibria. We find that most players condition their choices on the messages received, and do so in an intuitive way, announcing an intention to play the payoff-dominant action, and choosing the payoff-dominant action if the opponent expresses the same intention. However, a significant minority of players misrepresent their intentions. In some sessions where these players appear, behavior converges to an equilibrium in which subjects misrepresent their intentions and play the risk-dominant equilibrium.

India's balance of payments (BoP) has gone though several merits and oddities over its long journey since her liberalization era. On its way forward it has faced three of the world's worst challenges from the global turmoil. Of them, the impact of first crisis on India was minimal. But the other two crises had a tremendous impact on its external sector. In effect, the current and capital account of India's BoP have undergone significant structural changes during these two and a half a decades (1990–1991 to 2014–2015). It is in this context this chapter evaluates the evolution of two and a half decades of India's BoP in the context of global changes and exchange rate fluctuations and instability.

While personal learning networks (PLNs) are not new (Warlick, 2009), social media technologies are now enabling us “to fashion new kinds of networks that extend far beyond our immediate location and face-to-face connections, and to grow our networks based not on explicit decisions, but through the ideas of other nodes (people and resources), whose ideas intersect with ours” (Warlick, 2010, para. 5). What is new then, and what is changing the nature of PLNs, is the rapid growth of information and the emergence of new technologies capable of filtering that information and connecting us to others we can interact with and learn from (Siemens, 2008). In this chapter, we discuss the steps involved in building, growing, and maintaining online connections made possible entirely through new technologies. We argue that in the context of higher education, PLNs should be viewed as an informal alternative to the more formal professional development programs that are commonplace in K-12 education.

Massively parallel desktop computing capabilities now well within the reach of individual academics modify the environment for posterior simulation in fundamental and potentially quite advantageous ways. But to fully exploit these benefits algorithms that conform to parallel computing environments are needed. This paper presents a sequential posterior simulator designed to operate efficiently in this context. The simulator makes fewer analytical and programming demands on investigators, and is faster, more reliable, and more complete than conventional posterior simulators. The paper extends existing sequential Monte Carlo methods and theory to provide a thorough and practical foundation for sequential posterior simulation that is well suited to massively parallel computing environments. It provides detailed recommendations on implementation, yielding an algorithm that requires only code for simulation from the prior and evaluation of prior and data densities and works well in a variety of applications representative of serious empirical work in economics and finance. The algorithm facilitates Bayesian model comparison by producing marginal likelihood approximations of unprecedented accuracy as an incidental by-product, is robust to pathological posterior distributions, and provides estimates of numerical standard error and relative numerical efficiency intrinsically. The paper concludes with an application that illustrates the potential of these simulators for applied Bayesian inference.

The purpose of this chapter is to present a general review of free or inexpensive methods of implementing the following mobile services in libraries: Library Websites, Short Message Service (SMS) reference, and Mobile Online Public Access Catalogs (MOPACs). The findings were based on a literature review of materials that discussed mobile technologies in libraries. The findings conclude that libraries with tight budgets should approach their mobilization project in terms of stages, developing content and services sequentially from passive formats, which require little input, to more dynamic items, which entail greater interaction. Most free and inexpensive mobile services are geared toward passive formats, providing a starting point for libraries with limited budgets. Scope of the chapter is limited to public and university libraries and initiatives for smartphones. Prices listed are in USD as of January 2011 and may be subject to change. The costs of training, management, and development time by libraries were not factored into the costs. Mobile services have become one of the biggest new library trends. Simply keeping abreast of library service options made possible through advances in mobile technology can be a challenge. In addition, tough economic times have prevented many libraries from actually implementing mobile services. This chapter discusses a number of ways for libraries to create their own mobile initiative with little to no money at all—except of course for the hidden cost of staff effort.