Search results for "PRODUCTIVITY"

Evaluating European railway deregulation using different approaches

2012

Abstract There has recently been a great deal of interest in the impacts of the deregulating and restructuring measures in the European railway sector. A vast amount of literature is devoted to analyzing the effects of these deregulation and restructuring measures on efficiency and productivity and the results are not totally unambiguous. However, while most of the papers show that the introduction of competition within the sector (in both passenger and freight markets) has had a positive impact in terms of efficiency and productivity, the impact of vertical separation has produced different results in the literature. The contribution of this paper to the existing literature is twofold. Fir…

Are you a good employee or simply a good guy? Influence costs and contract design

2013

We develop a principal–agent model with a moral hazard problem in which the principal has access to a hard signal (the level of output) and a soft behavioral signal (the supervision signal) about the agent's level of effort. In our model, the agent can initiate influence activities and manipulate the behavioral signal. These activities are costly for the principal as they detract the agent from the productive task. We show that the agent's ability to manipulate the behavioral signal leads to low-powered incentives and increases the cost of implementing the efficient equilibrium as a result. Interestingly, the fact that manipulation activities entail productivity losses may lead to the desig…

A DEA-based transport heliports' efficiencies evaluation

2015

Purpose - The purpose of the study is the evaluation of the efficiencies of a group of small Italian airports and the comparison with a set of transport heliports to show the difference in the productivity of the two types of infrastructures. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology used for the evaluation is the data envelopment analysis (DEA). Findings - The better performance of the heliports compared to the small inefficient airports. Research limitations/implications - This research is limited by the field of application and the weaknesses of the DEA methodology. However, it could be the first step for further works that will include more accurate models. Practical implications - …

Learning Pros and Cons of Model-Driven Development in a Practical Teaching Experience

2016

Current teaching guides on Software Engineering degree focus mainly on teaching programming languages from the first courses. Conceptual modeling is a topic that is only taught in last courses, like master courses. At that point, many students do not see the usefulness of conceptual modeling and most of them have difficulty to reach the level of abstraction needed to work with them. In order to make the learning of conceptual modeling more attractive, we have conducted an experience where students compare a traditional development versus a development using conceptual models through a Model-Driven Development (MDD) method. This way, students can check on their own pros and cons of working w…

Morphological and agronomical characterization of eggplant genetic resources from the Sicily area

2013

The eggplant is a vegetable crop widely grown throughout Sicily both in greenhouse and open field. This study was carried out by the Department of Agri-Environmental Systems at the University of Palermo in the Spring/Summer of 2011 in open fields. The aim of the study was to characterize 6 eggplant ecotypes (G1-G6) and three eggplant varieties (Birgah, Black bell and Viola di Firenze) from a morphological, phenological and production point of view, gathered from Sicily and the smaller islands. The genotypes G1 and G3 were found to be more productive than the varieties used in the test field. Ecotype G1 produced fruits which were dark violet and highly glossy, and produced the lowest percent…

The map of biodiversity : from local to global scales

2018

Species richness is not homogeneous in space and it normally presents differences when comparing among different sites. These differences often respond to gradients in one or several factors which create biodiversity patterns in space and are scale-dependent. At a local scale, diversity patterns depend on the habitat size (species-area relationship), the productivity, the environmental harshness, the frequency and intensity of disturbance, or the regional species pool. Regional diversity may be influenced by environmental heterogeneity (increasing dissimilarity), although it could act also at smaller or larger spatial scales, and the connectivity among habitats. Finally, at a global scale, …

2021

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an unusually high submission rate of scholarly articles. Given that most academics were forced to work from home, the competing demands for familial duties may have penalized the scientific productivity of women. To test this hypothesis, we looked at submitted manuscripts and peer review activities for all Elsevier journals between February and May 2018-2020, including data on over 5 million authors and referees. Results showed that during the first wave of the pandemic, women submitted proportionally fewer manuscripts than men. This deficit was especially pronounced among more junior cohorts of women academics. The rate of the pee…

Multinationality, foreignness and institutional distance in the relation between R&D and productivity

2012

Abstract This paper empirically examines to what extent being foreign and part of a multinational affects the endogenous relation between R&D and productivity. Our findings indicate that multinationals obtain in general higher R&D returns. Also, there is a negative foreignness effect in that domestic-owned multinationals outperform foreign subsidiaries. However, these effects are somehow moderated by the institutional distance between the home and host countries. These results, obtained for a panel of UK firms, are largely consistent with a set of hypotheses derived from the institutional and international business theories.

THE PRODUCTIVITY AND COMPETITIVENESS PROBLEMS OF LATVIA IN THE CONTEXT OF THE GLOBAL ECONOM

2019

In the article the dynamics of labour productivity in Latvia was analyzed and the factors which have influenced the labour productivity in last 5 years were detected, to compare the productivity in Latvia with EU average. Analysing changes in productivity and labour costs in Latvia from 2013 till 2017, we can see that growth of labour costs exceeds the growth of productivity by more than 2 times in both, tradable sector and total economy. Slow growth in productivity compared with the labour and other production expenses lead to an increase in the price of final goods and services, which negatively corresponds with producers’ competitiveness in both internal and external market. Also, the at…

Prospects of Innovative Development of Agricultural Production on the Example of the Republic of Kazakhstan

2021

The relevance of the study is conditioned by the need to revise the methods of farming with a focus on the use of innovative technologies to improve the quality and quantity of output. The purpose of the study is to analyse the problems and prospects of agricultural production in the Republic of Kazakhstan to create a comprehensive innovative model for the further development of the agro-industrial sector. The study of the prospects for the modernised improvement of the agro-industrial complex of the Republic of Kazakhstan was carried out in three stages based on the functional and logical, systemic, and structural approaches using methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, systematisation…