Evaluating the potential contribution of urban ecosystem service to climate change mitigation

Urban Ecosystems - Promoting urban greenery through tree planting strategies has been considered as a measure to mitigate climate change. While it is essential to understand the temporal dynamics...     

Statistical inference for discrete middle-censored data

In this paper we consider the discrete middle censoring where lifetime, lower bound and length of censoring interval are variables with geometric distribution. We obtain the likelihood function of observed data and derive the MLE of the unknown parameter using EM algorithm. Also we obtain the Bayes estimator of the unknown parameter under squared error loss (SEL) function and credible interval of unknown parameter using Monte Carlo methods.     

Savings–Investment Correlation and Capital Outflow: The Case of Pakistan

This study explores the savings–investment relationship in the context of financial liberalization and flexible exchange rate regime in Pakistan. Ng–Perron test is employed to examine the order of integration of the variables used in the model. For long-run analysis, ARDL bounds testing approach is used and short-run dynamics are captured from error correction model (ECM). Time series data are utilized covering the period 1976–2006. Empirical findings indicate that in the case of Pakistan, there is a weak correlation between savings and investment. The study suggests that in the presence of inadequate capital mobility within the country, domestic investors have financed investment projects from international market. Furthermore, devaluation and inflation have stimulated investment activities in the country and significantly contributed in closing the gap between domestic savings and investment.     

Impacts of institutional pressures and the strength of market supporting institutions in the host country on the ownership strategy of multinational enterprises: theoretical discussion and propositions

The ownership strategy of multinational enterprises (MNEs) i.e. the choice between wholly owned subsidiary (WOS) or international joint venture (IJV) is an extensively studied topic in international business studies. Many past studies concentrated on transactional, economic, location attraction, resource seeking and learning rationales for the ownership strategy of MNEs. However, it is important to note that MNEs enter a new institutional environment also when they enter new international markets. Therefore, the ownership strategy of MNEs is also influenced by the external as well as internal institutions. This paper attempts to address the impacts of different institutional pressures on ownership strategy of MNEs using the arguments from institutional theory. The paper also includes discussion about the strength of market supporting institutions in the host country and its impacts on the ownership strategy of MNEs. On the basis of the theoretical discussion, several propositions are developed in this paper. These propositions relate the ownership strategy of MNEs with the impacts of internal and external institutional pressures on it. It is also proposed to consider the impact of strength of market supporting institutions in the host country on the ownership strategy specifically. When the host country has well developed institutions supporting market conforming values, they can moderate the impacts of coercive and normative pressures from external institutions on the MNEs.     

Enterprise systems and performance of future city logistics

Abstract

Future cities are driven by the developments in Information and Communication Technology to support the triple bottom line requirements of sustainability. Logistics will play a critical role in future cities due to the increasingly micro-dynamic nature of socio-economics of these cities and globalised production and consumption patterns. Enterprise systems (ES), the founding applications to automate and integrate different business processes, will be the key enablers for providing the necessary support required by the future city logistics. However, the implementation of ES and realisation of proposed benefits within the estimated time frame is challenging due to the huge resource requirements in terms of manpower, budget and time. This study takes the antecedent (critical success factors) approach for the implementation process to establish a success predictive model for the realisation of ES benefits. The partial least square regression has been used to test the model. Moreover, this study explores the impact of ES benefits on the logistics performance indicators to explore the synergies between them. This is fundamentally important because future city logistics will rely heavily on appropriately designed and implemented (enterprise) information systems.     

Framing inter-religious dispute: a comparative analysis of Chinese-, English-, and Malay-language newspapers in Peninsular Malaysia

Religious and ethnicity issues in multicultural societies have always been difficult to report. This study aims to conduct a framing analysis of the coverage of the biggest inter-religious dispute in Malaysia to date – the “Allah” dispute. Specifically, the study compares the coverage of Chinese-, English-, and Malay-language newspapers and assesses the factors that lead to differences in frame building. The findings showed that these newspapers reported the dispute with different degrees of intensity and prominence, and they employed different news sources. Although conflict appeared to be the salient frame used by the dailies, the aspects highlighted by them varied. Sin Chew (Chinese-language daily) was the most vocal in its coverage, which reflected a counter-hegemonic discourse. The Star (English-language daily) used a moderate approach, while Utusan (Malay-language daily) strongly supported the status quo. The frames built by The Star and Utusan could be attributed to the fact that these two newspapers were inclined to serve the politically vested interests of their owners.     

Bayesian inference for the randomly censored Burr-type XII distribution

The article presents the Bayesian inference for the parameters of randomly censored Burr-type XII distribution with proportional hazards. The joint conjugate prior of the proposed model parameters does not exist; we consider two different systems of priors for Bayesian estimation. The explicit forms of the Bayes estimators are not possible; we use Lindley's method to obtain the Bayes estimates. However, it is not possible to obtain the Bayesian credible intervals with Lindley's method; we suggest the Gibbs sampling procedure for this purpose. Numerical experiments are performed to check the properties of the different estimators. The proposed methodology is applied to a real-life data for illustrative purposes. The Bayes estimators are compared with the Maximum likelihood estimators via numerical experiments and real data analysis. The model is validated using posterior predictive simulation in order to ascertain its appropriateness.