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This study aims to investigate the association of demographic characteristics, market conditions and risk taking with the disposition effect using data on Brazilian individual investors.

This study uses a unique data set with monthly data from June 2007 to February 2017 provided by one of the largest asset management firms in Brazil. This paper computes the proportion of gains realized and the proportion of losses realized to see if investors incur the disposition effect. This paper then performs logistic regressions to verify the association between investors’ disposition effects and demographic and portfolio characteristics. This paper analyses the prevalence of cognitive biases depending on market conditions (bull or bear markets) and include regressions by asset class as robustness checks.

This paper finds evidence that risk averse investors are more prone to the disposition effect, male subjects are less prone to this cognitive bias and age is not associated with the disposition effect. This paper observes that the tendency to incur the disposition effect decreases during bull markets but increases during bear markets. Also, this paper finds that sophisticated investors are more prone to selling winning assets and holding on to losses.

First, paper gains and losses are based on the highest and lowest prices of the month and not on the price at the moment the sale occurred. Second, this paper had access only to end-of-month information, not to actual daily trading records. Third, because the data set relates to individual investors who trade investment funds, this paper cannot determine whether firm size is associated with the disposition effect. Fourth, age may not necessarily be a proxy for investor experience, so one should interpret the lack of significance for age in terms of generational differences.

This paper demonstrates that the disposition effect is prevalent even among wealthier and more educated investors with delegated asset classes. This paper also presents evidence on the association between demographic characteristics and cognitive biases considering a liquidity-constrained, highly volatile and developing market.

This paper demonstrates that gender is an important characteristic to understand cognitive biases and that investor sophistication may not necessarily be an attenuation factor for the disposition effect in a liquidity-constrained market.

This is the first study to analyse the role of demographic characteristics and risk taking to explain the disposition effect using real information at the individual level about Brazilian investors. It is also the first to analyse the intensity of cognitive biases during bull and bear markets in the Brazilian economy.

This paper aims to identify a possible mismatch between the theory found in academic research and the practices of investment managers in Brazil.

The chosen approach is a field survey. This paper considers 78 survey responses from 274 asset management companies. Data obtained are analyzed using independence tests between two variables and multiple regressions.

The results show that most Brazilian investment managers have not adopted current best practices recommended by the financial academic literature and that there is a significant gap between academic recommendations and asset management practices. The modern portfolio theory is still more widely used than the post-modern portfolio theory, and quantitative portfolio optimization is less often used than the simple rule of defining a maximum concentration limit for any single asset. Moreover, the results show that the normal distribution is used more than parametrical distributions with asymmetry and kurtosis to estimate value at risk, among other findings.

This study may be considered a pioneering work in portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation in Brazil. Although academia in Brazil and abroad has thoroughly researched portfolio construction, risk management and performance evaluation, little is known about the actual implementation and utilization of this research by Brazilian practitioners.

Given the heavy pollution feature of the construction industry, construction corporations need to adopt an effective environmental governance strategy. The quality and quantity of environmental information disclosure (EID) implementation, as an essential part of a corporate environmental governance strategy, is impacted by the characteristics of the top management team (TMT). This paper aims to analyze the relationship between the demographic characteristics of the TMT (i.e. gender, age, tenure, educational level, and duality) and corporate EID.

Using data from listed construction corporations generated between 2014 to 2018 in China, this study employs the Tobit regression model to test the research hypotheses. Also, this study applies a novel analytical approach, necessary condition analysis (NCA), to conduct a series of additional tests.

The results reveal that tenure and educational level are significantly and positively related to EID, while gender, age, and duality in the executive role are not significantly related to EID. When considering the TMT size as a moderator, the TMT age is positively related to the corporate EID, and the size of the TMT acts as a moderator to weaken the positive effect of the TMT age on the EID. The NCA results show that TMT gender, age, tenure, and educational level are necessary when the levels of EID exceed 40%.

Our findings suggest that TMT characteristics have a relatively significant effect on corporate EID levels, which extends EID research to the construction industry. Corporate planners can endeavor to shape TMT characteristics to improve EID levels. The results of NCA provide insights into what TMT characteristics construction corporations need to satisfy in their pursuit of transparent EID, as well as the levels at which these characteristics are desired.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the factors affecting customer lifetime value (CLV) for Internet service providers in Jordan, namely, technical quality, functional quality, brand credibility, confidence benefits, special treatment benefits, customer satisfaction and commitment.

An online survey was conducted involving a sample of 481 respondents. SPSS was used to analyse the data and test the proposed relationships, while SmartPLS was used to examine the robustness of our results.

Results showed that confidence benefits, special treatment benefits and brand credibility had a significant and positive impact on customer satisfaction and commitment, with brand credibility appearing as the most influential factor leading to customer satisfaction and commitment, and ultimately CLV. Furthermore, research reveals an insignificant relationship between functional quality, technical quality and customer satisfaction.

Services' providers seeking to increase CLV need to build strong and sustainable relationships with their customers.

This study incorporates a set of crucial customer relationship management strategies that could be universally applied to enhance customers benefits and business performance. This is also the first study of its kind conducted in the Middle East, particularly in Jordan.

This study used phenomenological narrative methodology to get insights into lived experiences of 10 Asian immigrant woman scholars in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in US institutions of higher learning. A feminist research approach overall guided the study. The concepts and theories of intersectionality, cultures of the academy, mindset, and mind tools framed the examination of the impacts of gender and work–family–community environments on the career pipeline of this group of women. The data were from two sources: (1) 48 documents on the participants and their institutions and (2) in-depth semi-structured interviews with these 10 participants. The findings show that gender and environment impacted the Asian women scholars’ career pipeline and advancement differently. On the negative side, barriers separately or jointly rooted in gender-based, racial, and hierarchical biases at stages of their career pipeline, from professional education to faculty appointment and leadership, challenged them. On the positive side, other gender-based and environmental agents and interventions supported them to overcome obstacles to their upward career mobility. This chapter has implications for how higher education institutions can improve their gender-based and environmental policies and praxis and facilitate the advancement of Asian immigrant women in STEM. It also has implications for how Asian women can prepare themselves to be successful in academic STEM careers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current state of corruption in Pakistan and evaluate attempts by the government to combat its entrenched corruption culture.

The paper shows that Pakistan’s legacy of British colonial rule, its ethno-linguistic conflict and alternating civilian governments and military coups have weakened institutional capabilities, hindered capacity building and allowed systemic corruption to flourish there. Pakistan’s many anti-corruption efforts failed because they were used to attack political foes instead of strengthening institutional capabilities.

Pakistan has maintained its highly authoritarian form of governance inherited from the British in 1947. The ruling elite view the state as a milch cow for their personal enrichment and this attitude is also reflected in the performance of its bureaucracy. Existing rules of conduct and administration are not enforced as citizens encounter corruption in their dealings with officials. At the policy level, key decisions are often made to benefit the decision makers. The paper concludes that without political will no significant improvement in the state of corruption in Pakistan is likely to occur.

This paper will be useful for scholars, policy-makers and anti-corruption practitioners who are interested in corruption in Pakistan and whether the apparent institutionalization of parliamentary democracy has reduced corruption there.

This study aims to explore students’ interests in multimodal texts by focusing on videos of social issues.

Data from 50 students in a first-year multilingual composition course were analyzed in two phases. Phase One examined 14 students’ reasons for self-selecting videos for multimodal analysis essays in one section of the course. Phase Two explored 50 students’ selected videos in four sections of the course across four semesters. The videos were classified as either problem- or solution-oriented to examine the students’ interests.

Analyzing the students’ responses in Phase One revealed that most of the selected videos included solutions to a social problem, and the students advocated the compelling ways in which the characters therein dealt with those problems. The findings for Phase Two revealed that the students’ selections were equally divided between problem- and solution-oriented videos. Nevertheless, a gradual increase in the selection of solution-oriented videos was observed over time.

A significant implication of this study is that it can help teachers expand their understanding of interesting and meaningful texts and make more engaging and effective instructional decisions.

The study contributes to the literature on text selection as it highlights students’ inclination toward what type of learning content interests them.

This paper analyses the role of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister from June 1959 to November 1990, in minimising corruption by implementing a zero-tolerance policy toward corruption in Singapore.

This paper is based on the analysis of Lee’s beliefs and the policies he introduced to curb corruption in Singapore.

Lee’s disdain for corruption and his beliefs in meritocracy and the importance of good leadership shaped his commitment to a zero-tolerance policy against corruption, which was enforced impartially and sustained in Singapore for the past 62 years.

This analysis of how Lee transformed Singapore into one of the least corrupt countries in the world would be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners and scholars concerned with minimising corruption in their own countries.

There are few veterinary libraries or information centres in sub‐Saharan Africa, on average one to two per country. This scarcity makes cooperation all the more vital. For successful cooperation, effective communication structures are a prerequisite. These structures are not only necessary for library staff but for the faculty members they serve as well, in their communication with colleagues in related research fields or veterinary extension projects. (1) The steps taken by the Veterinary Science Library of the University of Pretoria to promote electronic communication in particular, in order to render a more effective information service to its clients and others beyond South Africa's borders are described namely: — the use of the Internet listserv VETLIB‐L; — the use of the non‐university networks SANGONET and HealthLink mainly for community outreach projects; — making the University of Pretoria Academic Information Service's own network, ROMINFO, available to non‐university persons via dial‐in facilities; — the creation of a unique electronic forum facility by the Faculty of Veterinary Science and the Library in conjunction with the CSIR's NIBS, called VETAFRICA, mainly for practising veterinarians needing information. (2) Veterinary lecturer involvement in teaching and research is increasingly dependent on Veterinary Computer‐Mediated Communications (VC‐MC), in Africa and globally. A sampling of some of the dynamically expanding information sources globally available to online veterinary teams and animal health workers, as well as a starter list of contact details of currently available online veterinary faculties, libraries and institutions in Southern Africa, is provided.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relative importance of climate normals (average long-term temperature and precipitation) in explaining net farm revenue per hectare (NRh) for supplementary irrigated and rainfed cocoa farms in Nigeria.

NRh was estimated for 280 cocoa farmers sampled across seven Nigerian states. It was regressed on climate, household socio-economic characteristics and other control variables by using a Ricardian analytical framework. Marginal calculations were used to isolate the effects of climate change (CC) on cocoa farm revenues under supplementary irrigated and rainfed conditions. Future impacts of CC were simulated using Six CORDEX regional climate model (RCM) ensemble between 2036-2065 and 2071-2100.

Results indicate high sensitivity of NRh to Nigerian climate normals depending on whether farms use supplementary irrigation. Average annual temperature increases and precipitation decreases are associated with NRh losses for rainfed farms and gains for supplementary irrigated cocoa farms. Projections of future CC impacts suggest a wide range of NRh outcomes on supplementary irrigated and rainfed farm revenues, demonstrating the importance of irrigation as an effective adaptation strategy in Nigeria.

This paper uses novel data sets for simulating future CC impacts on land values in Nigeria. CORDEX data constitute the most comprehensive RCMs projections available for Africa.