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The present study adopts the analytical framework of new managerialism (NM) to explore the progress, challenges and outlook of self-financing post-secondary institutions in Hong Kong since 2000. This study also identified issues and related managerial implications for developing this niche form of higher education in Hong Kong.

This study conducted a critical review of self-financing post-secondary institutions in Hong Kong, including the sub-degree and degree sectors, via collecting a series of policy documents and archives from the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, the Public Records Office and other government bodies. To supplement the findings, semi-structured in-depth interviews of 18 academic staff of Hong Kong's self-financing post-secondary institutions were carried out.

The study shows that self-financing post-secondary institutions not only encounter challenges related to insufficient resources but also face pressure from accreditation requirements of various international organisations. The study also suggests that massification and privatisation of self-financing post-secondary institutions, and embracing a managerial approach for operation and governance will induce a new wave of self-financing post-secondary institutions in the near future.

This study offers insights for self-financing post-secondary institutions into implementing appropriate strategies to maintain competitiveness and retain talents in the coming years.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the effects of 8Ps of services marketing affect students’ selection of self-financing sub-degree programmes in Hong Kong. The factors that affect students’ selection of self-financing sub-degree programmes have not been studied in higher education market of Hong Kong. This research is to fill the gap by examining the effects of 8Ps (“Product Elements”, “Price and Other User Outlays”, “Place and Time”, “Promotion and Education”, “People”, “Process”, “Physical Environment” and “Productivity and Quality”) on self-financing sub-degree programmes in Hong Kong.

The research taken was a quantitative survey of students at Community College at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

The results reveal that “Productivity and Quality” is the most important element of 8Ps of services marketing. Accreditation of programmes seeking recognition in Hong Kong and overseas can increase student enrolment. “Promotion and Education” element is the least important element of 8Ps of services marketing. Self-financed higher education institutions should develop strategies to build relationships with the secondary school teachers and counsellors rather than invest money on advertising.

The data were collected from a particular community college in Hong Kong only.

Management can increase student recruitment by allocating minimum amount of limited resources to recruit maximum number of students.

This research adds knowledge to the marketing of higher education in Hong Kong. The management of self-financing sub-degree programmes can use the findings of this research as a reference to develop their marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model to examine key employability skills that match workplace requirements and foster employability.

This research comprises a cross-sectional study from self-financing institutions in Hong Kong. The current study adopted structural equation modeling to examine key employability skills that match workplace requirements and foster employability.

Based on the empirical findings, the acquired employability skills of young graduates are entrepreneurship, professional development, work with others, self-management, communication and problem solving. Moreover, higher education institutions should work closely with industry stakeholders to get employers engaged with the work-integrating learning (WIL) programs and subsequently equip young graduates for better employability opportunities. In connection with employer engagement, employability skills of communication, problem solving and self-management would be improved. Furthermore, entrepreneurship and problem-solving skills could further be developed for young graduating students working in SME organizations during WIL.

As a notable gap exists in the current literature to examine young graduates' key employability skills in the context and content of Hong Kong self-financing tertiary education, this research explores key employability skills of self-financed young graduates and the relative importance of employability skills across company size using a quantitative approach.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a market for microfinance in a region of a developing nation in which all projects are either of high or low quality. There is adverse selection because only borrowers know whether their project is of high or low quality but the microfinance institutions (MFIs) do not. The MFIs are competitive, risk neutral, and they offer loan contracts specifying the amount to be repaid only if a borrower's project makes a profit. Otherwise, this borrower defaults on his contract.

A game theoretic model is used that explicitly accounts for adverse selection and then a study is made of the trinity of adverse selection, loan default, and self‐financing.

First, in the pooling equilibrium, a borrower with a low‐quality business project will obtain positive expected profit. In contrast, this borrower will obtain zero expected profit in the separating equilibrium. Second, for small enough values of the probability p that a business project is of high quality, MFIs will not finance any business project in the pooling equilibrium. Third, the cost of sending a signal is not too high and hence a separating equilibrium exists. Finally, under some circumstances, self‐financing can be used to mitigate adverse selection related problems

This paper studies a model with only two types of business projects. In addition, no allowance is made for repeated interactions between borrowers and MFIs.

This paper usefully shows that under some circumstances, a credible signaling device such as self‐financing can be used to mitigate adverse selection related problems that routinely plague interactions between poor borrowers in developing countries and MFIs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify business practices that may promote internal financing of growing SMEs. The authors expand the literature on entrepreneurial finance that reduces business practices to either financial management or bootstrapping, by exploring all management practices that may have an impact on liquidities. This study enriches the literature on business practices. This is an important consideration for managers of SMEs who intend to preserve their financial independence and their capacity to survive different crises.

The empirical study involved a sample of 235 growing Canadian SMEs. The sample was extracted from a private database using a questionnaire that covered a wide range of business practices. Variance testing of business practices between SMEs with a line of credit and those without (and lower overall debt) was supplemented by a logistic regression.

SMEs which make use of efficiency-promoting technology, carry out preventive maintenance and control their costs and turnover during their growth are more inclined to use less external financing.

This is the first study that associates business practices, beyond bootstrapping, with financing and which answers a critical question posed by SME executives on how to preserve their financial and decision-making autonomy through growth stages. In addition, the desire to retain control of the company does not compel the SME manager to limit the size of the company.

In this chapter, the performance of Swiss mountain ropeway companies in the period from 2011 to 2016 have been analyzed. The sample includes 194 observations from 43 companies, covering about 90% of the market. In order to explain the levels of cash-flow returns, the degree of self-financing and revenue growth for ropeway companies, firm-specific characteristics, meteorological data, infrastructure information and market-specific factors were taken into account. The results, which are based on a general method of moments estimates, reveal that a high equity ratio and consistent capital expenditures are important for performance. Also, the market environment, including such factors as exchange rates and brand recognition of ski areas in Europe and Asia, are important for firm performance. Overall, the Swiss market is a unique country for this type of analysis, given either that the required data on mountain ropeway companies in other countries are unavailable or that a few rather large companies dominate the market.

By using higher moments, this paper extends the quadratic local risk-minimizing approach in a general discrete incomplete financial market. The local optimization subproblems are convex or nonconvex, depending on the moment variants used in the modeling. Inspired by Lai et al. (2006), the authors propose a new multiobjective approach for the combination of moments that is transformed into a multigoal programming problem.

The authors evaluate financial derivatives with American features using local risk-minimizing strategies. The financial structure is in line with Schweizer (1988): the market is discrete, self-financing is not guaranteed, but deviations are controlled and reduced by minimizing the second moment. As for the quadratic approach, the algorithm proceeds backwardly.

In the context of evaluating American option, a transposition of this multigoal programming leads not only to nonconvex optimization subproblems but also to the undesirable fact that local zero deviations from self-financing are penalized. The analysis shows that issuers should consider some higher moments when evaluating contingent claims because they help reshape the distribution of global cumulative deviations from self-financing.

A detailed numerical analysis that compares all the moments or some combinations of them is performed.

The quadratic approach is extended by exploring other higher moments, positive combinations of moments and variants to enforce asymmetry. This study also investigates the impact of two types of exercise decisions and multiple assets.

There is a wealth of literature on the financing structure of a company. For this reason, the authors considered it useful to present a theoretical and empirical literature review of classical and new theories of the financial structure. The purpose of this study is to realize on a panel of 15 nonfinancial Moroccan companies listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange, over a period of 11 years.

The results obtained indicate that only a few variables from financial theory have an important role in the financing policy of Moroccan companies. The authors have presented the positive role of size and self-financing on the debt ratio. The analysis of the effects of profitability shows in this study that it is negative related on the debt ratio which asserts the predictions of the pecking order theory. Also, the age of the company and the growth opportunities explain the level of indebtedness.

Econometric analysis is used to ascertain the nature of the financial structure of listed companies. For this purpose, a large number of companies listed on the Casablanca stock exchange were used.

The authors have presented the positive role of size and self-financing on the debt ratio. Regarding the influence of profitability, this analysis shows that it is negative related on the debt ratio which asserts the predictions of the pecking order theory. Also, the age of the company and the growth opportunities explain the level of indebtedness.

The purpose of this paper is to set out to critically review the approaches developed for the assessment of the equity gap, extending the quantitative approaches to the equity gap and developing a demand‐side model that allows accurate prediction of the future demand for equity.

The first part of the paper deals with financial constraints for innovative SMEs and the possible existence of an equity gap. The next step concentrates on calculating the additional amount of equity needed in order to finance the expected growth in sales.

With regard to the approaches developed to estimate the scale of the equity gap, our main finding is that demand‐side analysis is the least well developed. Through the application of an original model to a sample of Italian firms, we find that the degree of innovation cannot be considered the main discriminating factor when it comes to the differences in equity requirement per unit of marginal sale; the analysis reveals the pivotal role played by the enterprise's year of foundation.

The empirical data considered in this paper are from a large database that does not cover the period before the company starts to sell its goods on the market; moreover, the estimation of the amount of equity needed cannot be considered explicit evidence of an equity gap problem, since the gap itself implies an unfulfilled demand for additional sources of finance, only measurable in qualitative terms.

The research will be of interest to policy makers and practitioners in defining appropriate mechanisms for bridging the equity gap for SMEs.

The attempts to quantify the scale of the equity gap at the international level have been limited by the availability of data. As a result, they have tended to be largely qualitative, and their conclusions anecdotal. The model presented here allows precise prediction of the future demand for equity: the results could indirectly confirm that there is indeed a gap in the availability of risk capital for SMEs.