The Effect of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis on the Efficiency of Large U.S. Commercial Banks

The 2008 financial crisis, originated by securitization of sub-prime mortgage loans, had a huge impact on U.S. financial institutions and markets. We hypothesize that due to this crisis, the commercial banking industry has changed their portfolio structures and risk-taking behavior. To shed light on the response of U.S. banks to the 2008 financial crisis, we use the non-parametric approach to measure and compare the overall efficiency of large U.S. banks pre- and post-2008 financial crisis. We then decompose the overall measure of efficiency into allocative, overall technical, pure technical, and scale efficiency measures to better understand the sources of banking inefficiencies. The results indicate that large U.S. banks indeed changed their portfolios structure, and the efficiency of large commercial banks in the United States declined substantially during the financial crisis. Although it has been recovering since then, it still has not reached to the pre-crisis efficiency level.

Romania’s Research and Innovation Area: The Beginning of a SWOT Analysis

The global, “soft-power” role of research, development and innovation (R&D) has increased drastically over the last decades and the expectations regarding the societal and economic benefits of R&D as a natural effect of investment are greater than ever. Although Romania has implemented some of the most up-to-date concepts and strategies in the R&D field, the results are still modest and far below expectations, the country ranging last places among international scoreboards.This study briefly surveys some of the most relevant indicators and statistics in the field and builds the fundamentals of a more complex SWOT analysis of the Romanian R&D area. It highlights key interconnected aspects like research national policies, public and private funding, human resources, key players in the field, R&D output and infrastructure.Some of the strong points in the area are generated by a handful of poles of excellence – performing research entities based on highly qualified personnel and state-of-the-art infrastructure, stimulated by funding instruments under competitive conditions. The weaknesses belong to a complex of shortcomings and malfunctions related to the system’s funding and overall structure. These raise serious questions regarding the participation of the national R&D system to the sustainable development of Romania.

The Analysis of the Economic Impact of VAT on the Economic Growth in Southern Europe

The Southern Region of Europe is economically well-developed with highly industrialized urban areas and with great agricultural potential. The empirical analysis is based on an econometric assessment that measures the impact of the VAT on the rate of economic growth for years between 1996 and 2017. The empirical evidence highlighted a significant positive impact of VAT on economic growth, but a poor and ineffective use of the tax revenues during the period under review. Moreover, evidence revealed relatively high rates of VAT in the countries analyzed, with negative impact on the aggregate consumption and a diminishing effect of the consumer’s income.

Frequency Domain Causality Relationship Analysis Between Poverty, Economic Growth and Financial Development in Algeria

Since the previous periods, poverty reduction has been a big concern for many countries especially in developing countries like Algeria; in this paper, we shall explore the causal relationship between poverty reduction, economic growth and financial development in Algeria during the period of 1970-2017, the aim of this research is to answer the question which sector causes the poverty reduction: real sector or financial sector? Therefore, we employed the modern frequency domain causality presented by Breitung and Candelon (2006) with a comparison with the time domain causality under Lutkepohl (2006) procedure, the results suggest that there is unidirectional causality running from the real sector (economic growth) to poverty rates in the short and long run terms, also, we found that there is an unidirectional causality running from the financial sector to poverty rates only in the long run term, while another causality running from poverty rates to the financial sector but in the short run term. This article aims at contributing to enlarge the literature review by utilizing the frequency domain causality in the field of poverty studies because of its effectiveness to test the causalities in different frequencies.

Segmentation Techniques for Innovation Support Services

Segmentation of clients is a strategy widely used by companies and marketing units to sell their process. However, this concept is not so well established and widespread in public agencies supporting SME innovation. What are the benefits of designing advanced segmentation strategies for development agencies? Economic development practitioners agree that it’s necessary to provide customised innovation services to companies to get a greater impact. This paper presents how nine development agencies from seven European countries carry out their segmentation strategies to provide tailored initiatives of SMEs’ innovation support. The analysis also identifies common challenges RDA face, and how introducing Big Data Analysis can help them enhance innovation support in their regions.

Is the Religious Orientation A Determinant of the Entrepreneurial Intentions? A Study on the Romanian Students

The specialized literature offers relevant support for the idea that the entrepreneurship and the private initiative represent the foundation of the economic growth. Despite this evidence, there are a lot of debates regarding the influence of the different religious orientations on the intention to become an entrepreneur. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the impact that religion has on the entrepreneurial intentions of the Romanian students. To achieve this objective, the research methods consisted in an extensive investigation of the specialized literature and in empirical research, conducted on a sample of 682 Romanian students. Our results underline that the young Orthodox individuals are more optimistic regarding their future ability to develop businesses than the Roman-Catholics. Yet, this optimism has not been proven by the assessment of their personality traits, which may be very important for the business success.

Shadow Banking in India: Nature, Trends, Concerns and Policy Interventions

While the origin of shadow banks may be traced to the 1970s, developing countries have witnessed a massive growth of shadow banks in more recent decades. India too has seen a similar growth in shadow banks; however, the recent 2018 collapse of IL&FS Group, a major shadow bank, disrupted the credit cycle, stalled investment and even affected overall GDP growth. With experts warning that shadow banks are susceptible to systemic risks and crisis, it becomes imperative to understand the shadow banking system better. In this paper, we use exploratory data analysis – both quantitative and qualitative – to draw attention to the need for definitional clarity in the concept of shadow banks and how they operate. Trends in Indian shadow banking are discussed using data drawn from secondary sources. Systemic risks in India’s shadow banking sector are identified and policy interventions are discussed. The study is imperative for highlighting the importance of shadow banking in India, its growth and the evolving policy interventions regulating this important component of the financial system.

The Innovation Perspective of the Acquirers: Empirical Evidence Regarding Patent-Driven M&As

Economic entities get involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) because they are interested in external growth strategies which can lead to an increase in the wealth of the shareholders of the participating entities. In M&As, from an acquirer or a target’s perspective, a company brings its resources, which can be material or immaterial (knowledge). In the post-M&A phase, through the integration process the shareholders expect synergy gains, or that the combined firms to report efficiency gains higher than if they would activate separately. In nowadays, in a boundaryless economy, one of the most appreciated resources is knowledge. In this respect, the intangible assets, in general, and patents, in particular, are the accounting representation of knowledge in a company. They are also considered to be predictors for the deal value paid to the target company. To those we add the size of the target company, its core activity and the value of the research and development expenses, the latter being a significant mediator variable for the proposed models.

From the Handicap Principle to Brand Strategy – Are Gender Equality Practices And CSR Related?

There is increasing interest in determining the impact that employment of women in management positions may have on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Various authors suggest that gender equality practices should be factored into the broader framework of CSR. Public policy could adopt an ethic that strengthens the moral commitment to social involvement of men and women alike, and expresses public responsibility for women’s experiences in both the public and private spheres. Following this logic, the research question for the present article is: What marketing strategy factors can be utilized by women to influence their attainment of senior managerial positions?This article deals with the qualitative stage of a mixed method study that will answer the research question. The aim of the qualitative research design is to examine attitudes toward motivational factors and the environment that affect the strategic marketing of women to management positions. The research tool is a semi-structured in-depth interview, followed by a content analysis of data from transcripts. The research population includes ten women of different ages presently employed in managerial positions in Israel’s Ministry of Education. Future research directions and managerial implications are derived from this qualitative study.

Evaluating the performance of alternative blended learning designs using DEA

The extensive demand for blended learning programs imposes the problem of selecting the most appropriate instructional design from amongst a variety of alternatives that may be feasible for a particular program. The decision-making process should consider a number of qualitative factors such as the satisfaction of learning needs, educational efficiency, ease of implementation and total financial cost. In this paper, we propose that Bates’ (1995) e-learning instructional design model ACTIONS, which describes seven qualitative dimensions pertinent to selecting a design, can be used in conjunction with Data Envelopment Analysis to provide a distinct decision-making framework to aid administrators in determining which blended learning programs are the most effective. The first stage in the analysis is to explain which ACTIONS dimensions can be regarded as inputs and which can be treated as outputs for the sake of the decision process, with all seven dimensions being measurable by ordinal scores assessing the expected performance of alternative designs. In the second stage of analysis, we use Data Envelopment Analysis with ordinal data to obtain an overall expected performance index that is able to discriminate the designs most efficient and most suitable for implementation. The methodology is illustrated by an example. Discussion and Conclusions follow.