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This paper not only aims to validate the environment Kuznets curve concerning five Asian economies but also attempts to analyze the impact of some additional factors like financial development, energy consumption and foreign direct investment (FDI) on carbon emissions.

This paper applies pooled mean group approach on the variables of a panel of five Asian economies namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Malaysia for a period of 35 years from 1980 to 2014.

This study finds that while moderate economic growth as well as moderate financial development increase carbon emissions, accelerated or exponential economic growth as well as exponential financial development eventually reduce the level of carbon emissions. Energy consumption was found to have a direct and significant relationship with carbon emissions. FDI inflows when analyzed on a stand-alone basis were observed to have an inverse relationship with carbon emissions, while FDI inflows when clubbed with financial development were observed to have a direct relationship with carbon emissions.

The findings of this study, which validate the environmental Kuznets curve, suggest striving for higher economic growth, even if it causes increased carbon emissions to begin with, as the effects on carbon emissions would eventually get reversed when the economic growth accelerates at a higher rate. This study also suggests the appropriate routing of FDI through a mature and developed financial sector to leverage its impact on the environment in a positive way.

To the best of the knowledge of the authors of this paper, there has not been any research carried out so far, which has analyzed the impact of the combination of variables selected for this study concerning the five Asian economies covered in this paper.

The purpose of this study is to examine the differential impact of qualitative and quantitative informational signals within the merger and acquisition (M&A) press releases on deal completion and duration. A significant percentage of deals by emerging market acquirers get abandoned before completion, and those that are completed have a longer duration. The limited information about the operations of acquirers from emerging markets creates suspicion among the stakeholders involved in deal resolution, hindering the completion of deals. Thus, using the signal-feedback paradigm, authors investigate how informational signals in the M&A press release impact the deal resolution.

The study employs content analysis on M&A press releases announced by firms from five emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The technique is applied based on the exploration-exploitation framework developed by March (1991) to categorize the announced deal motives (qualitative information). Next, the authors identify the percentage of relevant quantitative information disclosed in the press release, following which results are obtained using logistic and ordinary least square regressions.

The study reports that deals with declared exploratory motives take longer to complete. Additionally, deals disclosing higher percentage of quantitative disclosure exhibit lower completion rate and increased deal duration.

This is the first study to provide evidence that familiarity bias impacts deal duration as relative to exploitation deals that are familiar to the stakeholders; exploratory deals take longer to conclude. Further, our analysis indicates that a greater percentage of quantitative disclosure may not always reduce information risk but rather be interpreted negatively in the form of the acquirer’s overconfidence in the deal’s potential.

In many UK mental health services, in-patient psychiatric care is being separated from community care by having dedicated in-patient medical team. We evaluated staff satisfaction in this functionalised in-patient care. A survey was conducted amongst multidiscipli-nary staff from various teams using a questionnaire survey. On an average 14.3% of staff returned a satisfactory response for function-alisation, 57.3% had unsatisfactory response and others were undecided or perceived no change. There was no difference in responses amongst age, gender and professional groups. Mean scores of all groups were within unsatisfactory domain; however community staff compared to in-patient staff and staff with more than 5 years of experience compared to those with 1-5 years of experience returned significantly more unsatisfactory responses regarding functionalisation. Many positive and negative aspects of functionalisation were raised. The results of this evaluation suggest the need for further studies on the effectiveness of in-patient functionalisation. Short and long term clinical outcomes and the satisfaction of the patients should also be studied.

Co-branding is popular with partnerships between well-known and new brands. In a laboratory study, this paper aims to examine the effects of a single ally and multiple allies on quality perception of a brand. The results suggest that the quality perception of the new brand depends on the co-branding strategy.

For dual-brand alliances, a single-factor design was used, with secondary brand quality level (high, medium and low) as the independent variable. Three advertisements were created by manipulating quality levels of the single partner. For multiple-brand alliances, a 2 × 3 between-subjects factorial design was used in the experiment. The two factors were diversification (homogeneous vs heterogeneous) and quality levels of the alliance (high-end, mixed and low-end).

The results suggest that the number of brand partners significantly affected the perceived quality of the primary brand. For both dual- and multi-brand alliances, the quality level of the secondary brand positively influenced the perceived quality of the primary brand. For multiple-brand alliances, even though the highest quality perceptions of the primary brand are in the heterogeneous conditions, the heterogeneity of partners (partners across different product categories) did not affect the quality perception of the primary brand.

One limitation of the current study is that it only addresses one type of brand alliance: co-promotion. The generalization of these findings to other forms of brand alliances (e.g. ingredient branding: Intel with IBM, Dell and HP) merits further investigation. Also, in this study, respondents processed the information in a relatively low-involvement condition (note that the target ad was presented along with filler ads). They were more likely to use brand names as heuristic cues to form their judgments. Because an alliance partner also assumes risks, future research should consider the effect of the alliances on the secondary brand.

Understanding brand alliances (especially multiple-brand alliances) is critical for new product managers and marketers. Introducing a new brand has higher risk and failure rates. Companies may lower these risks by co-branding with established brands. However, they should carefully consider the diversification and quality level of the partners. If brand managers position their product as “high quality (luxury)” or “low quality (budget)”, they should choose high- (or low-) quality partners from different product categories (heterogeneous high-end or low-end alliances) because diversification strengthens the primary brand. For a single-partner alliance, the secondary brand should be of high quality.

This paper extends the brand alliance literature beyond single-partner to multiple-partner alliances. With multiple partners, one can explore several critical aspects of an alliance, e.g. quality variance and product class diversity across the partners.

This study aims to measure the staff satisfaction achieved with regard to the recently furnished modular operation theaters (MOTs).

A cross-sectional study through questionnaire-based interviews was done. Desired sample size for ANOVA design came out to be 25 per level at a level of significance of 5 per cent and a power of 85 per cent.

Overall, mean rating of the satisfaction of the staff was 7.52 with a standard deviation (SD) of 2.35. Mean ratings (with standard deviations) of surgeons, nurses and anesthetists were 7.14 (1.26), 7.21 (0.95) and 8.21 (0.48), respectively. One sample t-test showed that all the three categories of staff were satisfied. Post-hoc test revealed that the anesthetists were significantly more satisfied than the surgeons (p = 0) and the nurses (p = 0.001). Maximum satisfier was aseptic environment provided by the MOTs. Hatch box with ultraviolet technology also attracted high ratings from all the three categories. Staff considered all the probable advantages of MOTs, except air showers, significant with regard to its satisfaction and morale.

Findings suggest that initiatives such as effectively designed MOTs may contribute toward the satisfaction of all categories of staff working in operation theaters (OTs), which, in turn, may probably lead to better overall performance of these facilities. It is desirable that hospital planners in modern health-care systems give adequate importance to finer aspects of OT designing.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether Indian firms follow the pecking order theory under situations of deficiency as well as surplus.

The study examines Indian firms included in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) 500 index, covering a time span of ten years (2003-2012). An extended model of pecking order theory is tested for deficit and surplus firms separately. The authors use ordinary least square regressions to test the results.

The findings indicate that the pecking order theory is an excellent descriptor for deficit firms, but a poor one for surplus firms. Deficit firms frequently issue debt to fill up deficiency requirements but keep their debt ratios in limit. In marked contrast, surplus firms have low debt to equity ratios and only occasionally redeem debt. They tend to retain funds for future expansion and other operational needs.

The study is limited to firms included in the BSE 500 index, but could be extended to others. Future research work could also focus on debt sub-components.

The present study is useful for firms that are considering capital structure decisions and supports finding that deficit and surplus firms behave differently.

This is the first study separately testing the pecking order between deficit and surplus firms in an emerging market.

Modern interactionism asserts that both the P (person) and the E (environment or situation) should be considered simultaneously in predicting attitudes and behaviors. In this paper, we apply the interactionist view to salesforce research. Specifically, we use salesforce socialization as an example to illustrate how interactionist concepts from psychology can be effectively applied in salesforce research. The role of qualitative research in this context is explored.

In this paper one considers a model representing a two‐unit identical system with one unit operating online, and the other unit in warm standby. The online unit is controlled by a protective unit which protects the online unit from any damage occurring. The online and protective units may fail due either to a hardware failure or to a shock failure. The failure and repair rates for the online, standby and protective units are constant but different. Expressions for the time‐dependent availability, steady‐state availability, reliability, mean time to failure and profit function are obtained by the Laplace transform technique. Finally graphs are also drawn for the above model to illustrate the various characteristics obtained. Some applications of the model are also given.

Investors who can transfer their savings to investments in a well-regulated market benefit not only themselves but also economic development. Hence, it is crucial for fund owners to evaluate their stock market investment decisions. The goal of the study is to understand which model determines the asset returns most efficiently. In this regard, the validity of single and multi-index asset pricing models (capital asset pricing model-CAPM and Fama–French models) has been examined in the Turkish Stock Exchange for 2009–2020, with the quantile regression (QR) approach.

On 18 portfolios comprised of quoted stocks in the Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 (ISE-100/BIST-100), we test the CAPM, the Fama and French three factor model (FF3) and the Fama and French five factor model (FF5). Empirical analyses have been carried out via QR approach regressing the portfolios' average weekly excess returns on risk premium/market factor (Rm-Rf), firm size, book value/market value (B/M), profitability and investments factors. QR estimation has been employed since QR is more effective and provides a better definition of the distribution’s tails.

Our empirical findings have revealed that the average excess weekly returns can be explained more strongly via CAPM. Moreover, Fama and French models are expected to give more reliable result with more data, whereas the market premium would give robust results for the Turkish Capital Market.

Individuals investing in financial assets must find the price model that best fits the market. The return can be approximated in the most appropriate manner using the right variables.

The study differs from other research by comparing the asset pricing models via examining the assets' weekly returns with QR in the Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 (ISE-100).