Search results

This study aims to identify the key barriers and enablers within a developing country context (Sri Lanka) to tackle the public health impacts during road construction projects. The current impact assessment process of the country and the better ways of integrating public health impacts into the road construction projects are discussed in this study.

The first phase of empirical investigations on barriers and enablers to address public health impacts during road construction projects was conducted via expert interviews. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 academic and industry experts with at least two years of experience in road construction, public health and environmental management. Data collection for the case studies followed the initial expert interview guidelines to identify the barriers and enablers to integrating public health impacts and vulnerabilities during road construction projects. Multiple case studies were selected to better understand the barriers and enablers in Sri Lanka to consider public health during road construction projects. Four road construction projects in Sri Lanka were selected as the cases for this research.

This study identified four main categories of barriers and enablers, including knowledge, partnerships, management and the appraisal process. Research findings show that partnership, resource and management-related barriers are the most perceived issues in tackling public health in Sri Lankan road projects. Among them, the lack of institutional collaboration and funds and resources were frequently expressed as the main barriers to addressing public health during road construction projects. These findings provided lessons on the governance and policy framework regarding integrating public health impacts into road construction projects, including the potential to integrate health into other forms of impact assessment of road constructions, such as EIAs and SIAs.

This study was limited to four case studies in Sri Lanka. The empirical evidence is limited to the expert’s opinion on a particular subject. Public health data was not gathered or analysed in this research.

These findings provided lessons on the governance and policy framework regarding integrating public health impacts into road construction projects, including the potential to integrate health into other forms of impact assessment of road constructions, such as EIAs and SIAs. They can also aid decision-makers and project managers in more comprehensive impact assessment and monitoring during road construction activities while mitigating public health impacts.

A lack of empirical evidence in the public health impacts and vulnerability literature in road construction and a shortage of public health impact assessment in the current EIA process in the global and Sri Lankan context highlighted the need for public health-related research in road construction projects. This study contributes to the theory by identifying key barriers and enablers during the construction process of road projects to tackle public health impacts.

This paper examines the profitability and performance measurement of U.S. regional banks during the period 1994–2011, using the GMM estimator technique. Our study extends prior research by including several factors not previously considered using U.S. data.

We use bank-specific, industry-specific, and macroeconomic determinants of profitability contemporaneous with our performance indicators. We follow the accounting fundamental analysis path in explaining the bank performance.

Among the performance measures, the efficiency ratio and provisions for credit losses are negatively and equity scaled by assets is positively related to profitability. However, these relationships either reverse (efficiency ratio and provisions for credit losses) or become insignificant (equity scaled by assets) when the target becomes change in profitability. The level of nonperforming assets is negatively related to profitability across all measures of profitability used. Macroeconomic variables are largely unrelated to profitability during the year they are measured. However, they have a significant relationship with earnings change measures, suggesting they have a lagged effect on profitability. The slope of the yield curve is especially strong in this regard.

We use our determinants to model changes in bank profitability one year ahead, in addition to including several factors not previously considered, using the predictive focus of the fundamental analysis research.

Property market models have the overriding aim of predicting reasonable estimates of key dependent variables (demand, supply, rent, yield, vacancy and net absorption rate). These can be based on independent drivers of core property and economic activities. Accurate predictions can only be conducted when ample quantitative data are available with fewer uncertainties. However, a broad-fronted social, technical and ecological evolution can throw up sudden, unexpected shocks that result in the econometric outputs sceptical to unknown risk factors. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate Australian office market forecast accuracy and to determine whether the forecasts capture extreme downside risk events.

This study follows a quantitative research approach, using secondary data analysis to test the accuracy of economists’ forecasts. The forecast accuracy evaluation encompasses the measurement of economic and property forecasts under the following phases: testing for the forecast accuracy; analysing outliers of forecast errors; and testing of causal relationships. Forecast accuracy measurement incorporates scale independent metrics that include Theil’s U values (U1 and U2) and mean absolute scaled error. Inter-quartile range rule is used for the outlier analysis. To find the causal relationships among variables, the time series regression methodology is utilised, including multiple regression analysis and Granger causality developed under the vector auto regression (VAR).

The credibility of economic and property forecasts was questionable around the period of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC); a significant man-made Black Swan event. The forecast accuracy measurement highlighted rental movement and net absorption forecast errors as the critical inaccurate predictions. These key property variables are explained by historic information and independent economic variables. However, these do not explain the changes when error time series of the variables were concerned. According to VAR estimates, all property variables have a significant causality derived from the lagged values of Australian S&P/ASX 200 (ASX) forecast errors. Therefore, lagged ASX forecast errors could be used as a warning signal to adjust property forecasts.

Secondary data were obtained from the premier Australian property markets: Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth. A limited ten-year timeframe (2001-2011) was used in the ex-post analysis for the comparison of economic and property variables. Forecasts ceased from 2011, due to the discontinuity of the Australian Financial Review quarterly survey of economists; the main source of economic forecast data.

The research strongly recommended naïve forecasts for the property variables, as an input determinant in each office market forecast equation. Further, lagged forecast errors in the ASX could be used as a warning signal for the successive property forecast errors. Hence, data adjustments can be made to ensure the accuracy of the Australian office market forecasts.

The paper highlights the critical inaccuracy of the Australian office market forecasts around the GFC. In an environment of increasing incidence of unknown events, these types of risk events should not be dismissed as statistical outliers in real estate modelling. As a proactive strategy to improve office market forecasts, lagged ASX forecast errors could be used as a warning signal. This causality was mirrored in rental movements and total vacancy forecast errors. The close interdependency between rents and vacancy rates in the forecasting process and the volatility in rental cash flows reflects on direct property investment and subsequently on the ASX, is therefore justified.

The paper provides an overview of research published in the innovation and operations management (IOM) literature on 15 methods for cost management in new product development, and it provides a comparison to an earlier review of the management accounting (MA) literature (Wouters & Morales, 2014).

This structured literature search covers papers published in 23 journals in IOM in the period 1990–2014.

The search yielded a sample of 208 unique papers with 275 results (one paper could refer to multiple cost management methods). The top 3 methods are modular design, component commonality, and product platforms, with 115 results (42%) together. In the MA literature, these three methods accounted for 29%, but target costing was the most researched cost management method by far (26%). Simulation is the most frequently used research method in the IOM literature, whereas this was averagely used in the MA literature; qualitative studies were the most frequently used research method in the MA literature, whereas this was averagely used in the IOM literature. We found a lot of papers presenting practical approaches or decision models as a further development of a particular cost management method, which is a clear difference from the MA literature.

This review focused on the same cost management methods, and future research could also consider other cost management methods which are likely to be more important in the IOM literature compared to the MA literature. Future research could also investigate innovative cost management practices in more detail through longitudinal case studies.

This review of research on methods for cost management published outside the MA literature provides an overview for MA researchers. It highlights key differences between both literatures in their research of the same cost management methods.

Since 1991 with the advent of globalization and economic liberalisation, basic conceptual and discursive changes are taking place in housing sector in India. The new changes suggest how housing affordability, quality and lifestyles reality is shifting for various segments of the population. Such shift not only reflects structural patterns but also stimulates an ongoing transition process. The paper highlights a twin impetus that continue to shape the ongoing transition: expanding middle class and their wealth - a category with distinctive lifestyles, desires and habits and corresponding ‘market defining’ of affordable housing standards - to articulate function of housing as a conceptualization of social reality in modern India. The paper highlights the contradictions and paradoxes, and the manner in which the concept of affordability, quality and lifestyles are embedded in both discourse and practice in India. The housing ‘dream’ currently being packaged and fed through to the middle class population has an upper middle class bias and is set to alienate those at the lower end of the middle-and low-income population. In the context of growing agreement and inevitability of market provision of ‘affordable housing’, the unbridled ‘market-defining’ of housing quality and lifestyles must be checked.

Transfer pricing stands at the heart of a MNE management control system. We review the theories of TCE and RBV and develop antecedents and consequences of transfer prices based on these theories. We propose viewing transfer pricing decisions through a TCE and RBV value chain framework. We review a sample of transfer pricing literature based on this theoretical perspective and show how it fits within our framework. Our framework suggests that setting transfer pricing policy is indeed a complex problem that includes many factors and has many consequences, some of which may be at odds with each other. We give some suggestions for future research based on this framework.