Search results for "Macroeconomic"
showing 10 items of 503 documents
Cost-effectiveness of prison system development - comparison of the European countries
2020
The possibility to achieve successful resocialization of former prisoners back into society is an ongoing public debate, making it challenging for policymakers to implement prisoner rehabilitation programs capable of maintaining the public safety while allocating public funds in the most efficient way. The main aim of this study is to examine what is necessary for an investment in prison system development to be justified. The hypothesis of this study suggests that such investment can be cost-effective by reducing crime and recidivism rates in the long term by ensuring proper rehabilitation of prisoners. Accordingly, this research compares various European countries regarding their imprison…
Environmental sustainability in hotels: a matter of category?
2012
As in other economic activities, companies in the hospitality industry have proposed several practices and implemented technology solutions to pursue environmental sustainability of their activities and minimise their impact on climate change. Some applications of information and communication technologies (ICT) may contribute to the reduction of the demand of supplies, water and energy by hotels. In the present paper, we aim at exploring the influence of the hotel category on the implementation of environmental-friendly technologies in hotels. Considering a sample of Spanish hotels in the most important cities, we evaluate the relationship between the level of implementation of certain tec…
Resilience and Convergence: Short vs.Long-Run Regional Effects of Economic Crises and Macroeconomic Policies
2020
Before the outbreak of the Great Recession, considerable attention was devoted to what makes a region successful, and why some regions grow faster than others, but researchers often overlooked how regions react to shocks and why this happens in a heterogeneous way. Furthermore, the classic literature on regional inequalities has mainly focused on the longterm relationship between economic growth and regional disparities and on the role of labor mobility, sometimes also as a mechanism of adjustment to labor demand idiosyncratic shocks. This literature trend has reversed since 2008, when investigation of the heterogeneous impact of shocks across areas became prominent in regional studies beca…
A methodological approach for assessing businness investments in renewable resources from a circular economy perspective
2018
Abstract In this paper, we have analyzed a feasibility project for the realization of a biogas plant at a company in the viticulture sector located in south-central Sicily. Using engineering formulas, we identified the electrical power that the plant could produce using waste products created by the vineyard itself, examined the new and interesting opportunities that have arisen with the encouragement and development of biogas production in Italy, and then assessed the economic feasibility of the investment itself, considering an investment scheme of total capital self-financing. The possibility of using wastes from wine production comes from an in-depth study of the circular economy, that …
Current Account Adjustment and Retained Earnings
2018
This paper develops a formal strategy to calculate current accounts with retained earnings (RE) on equity investment and analyzes their adjustment during the global financial crisis. RE are the part of companies' profits which are reinvested and not distributed to shareholders as dividends. International statistical standards treat RE on foreign direct investment and RE on portfolio investment differently: while the former enter the current and financial account, the latter do not. We show that this differential treatment strongly affects current accounts of several advanced economies, frequently referred to as financial centers, with large positions in equity (portfolio) investment. Our em…
Internationalisation process of Spanish banks: strategic orientation after the mergers
2003
The present globalisation of the economy is one of the main forces driving the internationalisation process of firms, a phenomenon that has been one of the most widely studied in the literature and which has given rise to numerous explanatory theories. The manufacturing sectors of machinery, food, textiles, furniture have already consolidated their presence in international markets, induced by the increased competition deriving from liberalisation of foreign trade and the desire to conquer new markets. If in manufacturing sectors globalisation has been high, the service sector has not been far behind. One of the sectors that has been most influenced by changes in the competitive framework i…
The entangled scalarities of football clubs in a competitive metropolitan space: investment, identity and international events
2021
Football clubs located within competitive metropolitan spaces and owned by local municipalities develop their socio-spatiality through strong multiscalarities. Drawing from the sociology of footbal...
Energy Performance and Indoor Comfort of a 1930s Italian School Building: A case study
2021
Reducing energy consumption in the building tertiary sector, which accounts for a big share of the total energy use (and related CO 2 emissions) at European and Italian level, represent a strong element of safety for the EU-28. On the other hand, it is important to improve the, often overlooked, indoor comfort conditions of Italian schools since they have a significant impact on the well-being, productivity, health and safety of their occupants. Thus, it is appropriate to take into account the combination of both needs, also in light of the climate change scenario, in order to identify adequate improvement measures and justify such economic investment. This paper brings a contribution to th…
Variation between Self- and Mutual Assessment in Animal Contests
2014
Limited resources lead animals into conflicts of interest, which are resolved when an individual withdraws from a direct contest. Current theory suggests that the decision to withdraw can be based on a threshold derived from an individual’s own state (self-assessment) or on a comparison between their own state and their opponent’s (mutual assessment). The observed variation between these assessment strategies in nature does not conform to theory. Thus, we require theoretical developments that explain the functional significance of different assessment strategies. We consider a hawk-dove game with two discrete classes that differ in fighting ability, in which the players strategically decide…
Self-organizing maps could improve the classification of Spanish mutual funds
2006
In this paper, we apply nonlinear techniques (Self-Organizing Maps, k-nearest neighbors and the k-means algorithm) to evaluate the official Spanish mutual funds classification. The methodology that we propose allows us to identify which mutual funds are misclassified in the sense that they have historical performances which do not conform to the investment objectives established in their official category. According to this, we conclude that, on average, over 40% of mutual funds could be misclassified. Then, we propose an alternative classification, based on a double-step methodology, and we find that it achieves a significantly lower rate of misclassifications. The portfolios obtained from…