Search results for "Cash"
showing 10 items of 112 documents
Development of a low-alcoholic fermented beverage employing cashew apple juice and non-conventional yeasts
2019
Cashew apples are by-products in the production of cashew nuts, which are mostly left to rot in the fields. Cashew apple juice (CAJ), a highly nutritious beverage, can be produced from them. It is rich in sugars and ascorbic acid, but its high polyphenol content makes it bitter and astringent, and therefore difficult to commercialize. The kingdom of fungi contains more than 2000 yeast species, of which only a few species have been studied in relation to their potential to produce aroma compounds. The aim of this research was to develop a new low-alcoholic fermented beverage to valorize cashew apples. For this purpose, a screening was carried out employing non-conventional yeast species and …
Agricultural feedstocks of two Brassica oilseed crops and energy cogeneration with pure vegetable oil for a sustainable short agro-energy chain in Si…
2018
Abstract Potential energy feedstocks from conventional agriculture usually include pure vegetable oil (PVO) and agricultural/forest residues. Their uses can represent a starting point for the development of short agro-energy chains in the south areas of the Mediterranean region. This paper focused on testing and awareness raising of biofuel production for the cogeneration of electricity and heat from PVO of two Brassica oilseed crops in Sicily (Italy). The main aims of this study were: i) to evaluate the agronomic performance of rapeseed (Brassica napus L. var. oleifera D.C.) and Ethiopian mustard (Brassica carinata A. Braun) in semi-arid climate condition; ii) to analyze the quality of PVO…
Tropical Fruits as an Opportunity for Sustainable Development in Rural Areas: The Case of Mango in Small-Sized Sicilian Farms
2018
Over the last decades, in many rural areas in Southern Europe, farmers have abandoned agricultural activity, especially on small-sized farms, leading to an exodus from rural areas towards urbanized ones. In this context, in the early 1980s, some Sicilian farmers introduced mango on their small-sized farms, as certain areas of Sicily are well suited to tropical and subtropical crops, but also to meet increasing consumer interest for these fruits, as they are perceived as functional foods. This paper aimed to evaluate the economic sustainability of mango and to determine whether its introduction could be considered as an alternative to traditional crops. In particular, an economic-financial a…
Economic feasibility of stationary electrochemical storages for electric bill management applications: The Italian scenario
2016
Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are expected to become a fundamental element of the electricity infrastructure, thanks to their ability to decouple generation and demand over time. BESSs can also be used to store electricity during low-price hours, when the demand is low, and to meet the demand during peak hours, thus leading to savings for the consumer. This work focuses on the economic viability of BESS from the point of view of the electricity customer. The analysis refers to a lithium-ion (Li-ion), an advanced lead-acid, a zinc-based, a sodium-sulphur (NaS) and a flow battery. The total investment and replacement costs are estimated in order to calculate the cumulated cash flow, …
Global, regional, and national levels of maternal mortality, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015
2016
BACKGROUND: In transitioning from the Millennium Development Goal to the Sustainable Development Goal era, it is imperative to comprehensively assess progress toward reducing maternal mortality to identify areas of success, remaining challenges, and frame policy discussions. We aimed to quantify maternal mortality throughout the world by underlying cause and age from 1990 to 2015.METHODS: We estimated maternal mortality at the global, regional, and national levels from 1990 to 2015 for ages 10-54 years by systematically compiling and processing all available data sources from 186 of 195 countries and territories, 11 of which were analysed at the subnational level. We quantified eight underl…
Sustainable Growth Rate: An Analysis Regarding the Most Traded Companies on the Bucharest Stock Exchange
2018
The concept of sustainable growth rate was originally developed by Robert C. Higgins. In the case of companies with given stable financial policies, it is considered to be the link between growth-return rate combinations that gives a balanced growth line. This indicates the possibilities for a company to grow without generating deficits or cash surpluses. Increased sales require more assets, which can be financed by new debt, external equity, and internal equity through retained earnings. The sustainable growth rate is the maximum rate at which company sales can increase without decreasing its financial resources. The aim of this paper is to determine if the last year most traded companies …
Exposure-Based Cash-Flow-At-Risk for Value-Creating Risk Management Under Macroeconomic Uncertainty
2010
A strategically minded CFO will realize that strategic corporate risk management is about finding the right balance between risk prevention and proactive value generation. Efficient risk and performance management requires adequate assessment of risk and risk exposures on the one hand and performance on the other. Properly designed, a risk measure should provide information on to what extend the firm's performance is at risk, what is causing that risk, the relative importance of non-value-adding and value-adding risk, and the possibilities to use risk management to reduce total risk. In this chapter, we present an approach – exposure-based cash-flow-at-risk – to calculating a firm's downsid…
Unveiling the Antecedents of International Diversification: An Agency Theory Approach
2014
While various studies have developed hypotheses about the antecedents of international diversification drawing mainly on the resource-based view, the behavioral theory of the firm, and the transaction costs literature, we advance our understanding by investigating the explanatory power of agency costs of free cash flow arguments. Using a sample panel of 167 Italian firms longitudinally evaluated during the 1980-2010 period, this study tests whether the firm’s choice to spread operations in multiple foreign countries is conditioned by excess of free cash flow and debt, especially in firm-contexts where agency problems are exacerbated by managers or large shareholders’ opportunism. We find th…
Applying Dynamic Performance Management to Enterprises
2016
This chapter will illustrate two examples of DPM applied to enterprises. Cases will show how DPM can support a learning-oriented approach into the P&C processes of business organizations.
Micro-investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income
2018
In this article, we explore the prospects of Basic Income (BI) as a development policy tool. Our approach is to analyse the BI as a tool for promoting micro-investments and as a general development policy instrument, thus deliberately departing from the perception of cash transfers as targeted poverty reduction tools. As experiences in testing BI systems in developing country contexts are limited to local and regional experiments in Namibia and India (Haarmann et al., 2009; Haarmann & Haarmann, 2012; Davala et al., 2015), conclusive assessments about the impacts of the BI cannot be drawn. Therefore, we aim to estimate potential impacts of the BI by synthesising existing knowledge. This esti…