Evaluating Freight Forwarders in the Air Cargo Industry

Freight forwarders are of great importance in the air cargo industry. As the cargo revenue constitutes an important source for airline companies, the evaluation of freight forwarders is vital for airlines’ success. This study employs DEMATEL method in order to prioritize the determined criteria for evaluating freight forwarders from the point of view of an airline. The calculated importance weights are used in an illustrative problem where the ranking of freight forwarders are obtained by employing the simple additive weighting method.

Evaluation of Efficiency and Its Determinants in Croatian Hotel Industry

The main objective of this research was to evaluate the efficiency of Croatian hotels and provide insights into the sources of their efficiency. In order to obtain set goals, a two-stage analysis was performed on a sample of 69 large and medium-size hotels that were operating in Croatia in 2019. In the first stage of analysis, the efficiency scores of hotels were obtained by using Data envelopment analysis (DEA), whereas in the second stage of analysis, achieved efficiency coefficients were served as dependent variable in a truncated regression model in which hotel’s ownership, age, location, size and star rating were applied as independent variables. As this is the first time that efficiency of Croatian hotel industry is investigated with the application of truncated regression analysis, this research contributes to the existing literature by shading new lights on the sources of hotels’ efficiency from the perspective of a country heavily relaying on seasonal seaside tourism. Results of the research showed that all analysed variables (except age) play significant and important role in determining the achieved level of efficiency.

Determinants of Tourism Demand in Croatia

Due to its significant contribution to the prosperity and growth of economies, tourism industry has always been the one that attracted the attention of many practitioners and researchers who have tried in different ways and from different aspects to identify the key variables that determine tourism demand. The importance of tourism is especially evident in Croatia for which the contribution of travel and tourism industry to GDP and total economy employment amounts 25% and 25.1% respectively. Having in mind the importance and the role that tourism has, the main objective of this research is to examine the influence of different factors on tourism demand for Croatia. The analysis is conducted on the sample of 16 countries of origin and 9 competitor countries during the period 2012-2019 with the application of dynamic panel data model. All variables encompassed in the model i.e., price, income, corruption, terrorism and investments, show statistically significant influence on tourist arrivals in Croatia.

The Analysis of Total Amount of Energy Consumption and Structure in China

This paper built up GM(1,1) models for energy production and consumption in China. Then predicted and analyzed total amount of energy production and consumption in China as well as the structure of energy. The study showed that GM(1,1) model can simulate and predict the trend of the total amount of energy consumption and the structure well. In the future, the structure of energy consumption will be optimized. The proportion of coal and oil will decrease and the proportion of gas and renewable energy sources will increase in order to fill the gap.

Development Against Poverty: A Systemic Model Design Based on Empirical Evidence

The world’s poor numbered almost 2.8 billion in 2001, and 2.5 billion in 2005. During a decade of participatory research in a village in Yucatan, Mexico, we built a systemic model of transition from poverty to wellbeing. Households are the basic units because they are the source of human biological and cultural reproduction. Poverty is characterized by low levels of basic needs (i.e. education, health, income and capital). We applied a strategy of innovation and multiple goals, and exploited interaction between variables, in successive approaches within time cycles. Model application improved child nutrition, investment and savings, and credits levels

Domain-specific Modelling of Business Processes

The paper deals with the value modelling of business processes using the REA ontology. This ontology, which has its roots in accounting systems, provides a comprehensive framework to business process modelling. The REA ontology is focused on modelling values of resources of business processes. A business process model, which uses this ontology, introduces two levels of abstraction - the operational level and the policy level. That fact allows a greater range of possibilities of usage compared to standard modelling methods. The paper describes the use of domain-specific modelling to create a modelling tool based on the REA ontology. This approach allows creating a tool that uses specific properties of the ontology to ensure validation of the model and automatic source code generation.

Fraud Diamond Theory in Detecting Financial Reporting Manipulation: A Case of Mining Companies Listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange

Forensic accounting helps auditor in collecting information while conducting necessary assessment to discover fraud practice. One popular theory in the field is the fraud diamond theory. This study implements the theory to detect the existence of financial statement fraud on mining sector in Indonesia. The diamond fraud model as the enhancement of the triangle theory of fraud concerns budget priorities, financial stability, inefficient monitoring, adjustments to the auditor and changes to the manager. As a dependent variable, financial statement manipulation funded by income control is used. The sampling of 9 companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange in the mining sector in 2017-2019 was chosen using purposeful sampling methods, resulting in 27 data observations. The data testing was performed by a multi-linear regression method. This study showed that financial targets and financial stability affect the occurrence of fraud in financial reports. Simultaneously, insufficient monitoring, auditing and change of the director have no impact on the financial statements.

Technical Efficiency and the Factors that Affect it in Rice Production in Central Sulawesi of Indonesia

Most of the population of Asia depends on consuming rice to support their lives. This implies that rice production needs attention. The existence of inefficiencies in lowland rice production could reduce rice yields for consumption, so the measurement of technical efficiency in lowland rice production needed to be studied. This research aimed to analyze the level of technical efficiency in lowland rice cultivation and identify the factors that affected it. The research was done in Palolo and Torue Sub-District Indonesia. The number of samples used was 249 lowland rice farmlands consisting of 106 farmers of organic lowland rice cultivation and 143 farmers of inorganic lowland rice cultivation. The results show that land, fertilizer, seeds, and labor had a positive and significant effect on lowland rice production. The average technical efficiency of lowland rice cultivation was around 78.2%. The results also show that manager education, extension contacts, superior seeds, and organic lowland rice cultivation have a significant effect on the level of technical efficiency in lowland rice production. We concluded that there was an opportunity for farmers to increase lowland rice yields if they could manage production factors in an efficient manner. The government could provide support for farmers, such as formal and informal education, extension, superior seeds, and ready-to-use organic materials.

Are Resource-Rich Regions Impacted More by Covid-19 Pandemic? Comparing Economic and Mobility Impact in Indonesia’s Provinces

The coronavirus pandemic has caused negative impact on economy as it limits people interactions from their normal life. This paper tries to compare the effects on economic growth and visits by locals to central economic places (retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy stores, parks, and workplaces) of Covid-19 in Indonesia’s provinces as social restrictions applied. By using Google’s mobility report data combined with the second quarterly GRDP data across Indonesia’s sub-national level, we compare economic and mobility performances between “the treated provinces” located in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua Islands (SKP) who’s their economy has been dominated by natural resources-based sectors (e.g., palm oil, natural gas, oil and coal) and “the untreated provinces” in Java-Bali-and Eastern Regions (Sulawesi, Maluku, Nusa Tenggara), henceforth JBE. We visualize and provide scatterplots to depict relationships between selected variables. We also test whether each impact differs between SKP and JBE. Our study finds that while almost all provinces have been impacted negatively during the pandemic, its effects graphically differ among regions, while Java’s provinces have looked to be affected strongly. However, our statistical analyses based on Welch’s and Levene’s tests provide weak evidence that the pandemic harms regions disproportionately.

Determinants of Productivity in Brazil: an empyrical analysis of the period 1996-2020

Empirical studies regarding the determinants of productivity in developing countries, including Brazil, have demonstrated the negative impact of high inflation rates on the industrial capacity. However, the recent Brazilian experience clearly shows that stabilization since 1996, in and of itself, is not capable of recovering the investment rates. With this in mind, this study's goal is to answer, with the help of econometric simulation models, the questions: (i) what are the key-drivers to assess the Brazilian economy since 1996?; and (ii) what are the key-factors to be considered when investments are made, particulary in productivity? To answer the questions we evaluated the impacts of macro-economic variables on private investments, using a strategic bias and a long term vision plan. The estimates demonstrate empirical crowding-in evidence of public investments in infrastructure over private investments as a real impact to productivity. As for public invetsments (noninfrastructural) we suggest that the crowding-in impact dislocates private investments. All these indicators were obtained as presented in the therory, with the exception of the real interest rates variable (r), in which we observed that the coefficient is positive and insignificant in the estimated equation.