Download or read book Benchmarking and Firm Heterogeneity in Electricity Distribution a Latent Class Analysis of Germany written by Astrid Cullmann and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Handbook of Production Economics written by Subhash C. Ray and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 1797 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This three-volume handbook includes state-of-the-art surveys in different areas of neoclassical production economics. Volumes 1 and 2 cover theoretical and methodological issues only. Volume 3 includes surveys of empirical applications in different areas like manufacturing, agriculture, banking, energy and environment, and so forth.

Download or read book The Interrelationship Between Financial and Energy Markets written by Sofia Ramos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-09 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decade, energy markets have developed substantially due to the growing activity of financial investors. One consequence of this massive presence of investors is a stronger link between the hitherto segmented energy and financial markets. This book addresses some of the recent developments in the interrelationship between financial and energy markets. It aims to further the understanding of the rich interplay between financial and energy markets by presenting several empirical studies that illustrate and discuss some of the main issues on this agenda.

Download or read book A Practitioner s Guide to Stochastic Frontier Analysis Using Stata written by Subal C. Kumbhakar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-26 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Practitioner's Guide to Stochastic Frontier Analysis Using Stata provides practitioners in academia and industry with a step-by-step guide on how to conduct efficiency analysis using the stochastic frontier approach. The authors explain in detail how to estimate production, cost, and profit efficiency and introduce the basic theory of each model in an accessible way, using empirical examples that demonstrate the interpretation and application of models. This book also provides computer code, allowing users to apply the models in their own work, and incorporates the most recent stochastic frontier models developed in academic literature. Such recent developments include models of heteroscedasticity and exogenous determinants of inefficiency, scaling models, panel models with time-varying inefficiency, growth models, and panel models that separate firm effects and persistent and transient inefficiency. Immensely helpful to applied researchers, this book bridges the chasm between theory and practice, expanding the range of applications in which production frontier analysis may be implemented.

Download or read book Performance Benchmarking written by Peter Bogetoft and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-01-04 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book, Peter Bogetoft - THE expert on the theory and practice of benchmarking - provides an in–depth yet very accessible and readable explanation of the best way to do benchmarking, starting from the ground up." Rick Antle William S. Beinecke Professor of Accounting, Yale School of Management CFO, Compensation Valuation, Inc. "I highly recommend this well-written and comprehensive book on measuring and managing performance. Dr. Bogetoft summarizes the fundamental mathematical concepts in an elegant, intuitive, and understandable way." Jon A. Chilingerian Professor, Brandeis University and INSEAD "Bogetoft gives in his book Performance Benchmarking an excellent introduction to the methodological basis of benchmarking." Christian Parbøl Director, DONG Energy "This book is the primer on benchmarking for performance management." Albert Birck Business Performance Manager, Maersk Oil "This excellent book provides a non technical introduction for performance management." Misja Mikkers, Director, Dutch Health Care Authority "With this very well written and comprehensive introduction to the many facets of benchmarking in hand, organizations have no excuse for not applying the best and cost effective benchmarking methods in their performance assessments." Stig P. Christensen Senior R&D Director, COWI

Download or read book Benchmarking with DEA SFA and R written by Peter Bogetoft and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-11-19 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers recent advances in efficiency evaluations, most notably Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) methods. It introduces the underlying theories, shows how to make the relevant calculations and discusses applications. The aim is to make the reader aware of the pros and cons of the different methods and to show how to use these methods in both standard and non-standard cases. Several software packages have been developed to solve some of the most common DEA and SFA models. This book relies on R, a free, open source software environment for statistical computing and graphics. This enables the reader to solve not only standard problems, but also many other problem variants. Using R, one can focus on understanding the context and developing a good model. One is not restricted to predefined model variants and to a one-size-fits-all approach. To facilitate the use of R, the authors have developed an R package called Benchmarking, which implements the main methods within both DEA and SFA. The book uses mathematical formulations of models and assumptions, but it de-emphasizes the formal proofs - in part by placing them in appendices -- or by referring to the original sources. Moreover, the book emphasizes the usage of the theories and the interpretations of the mathematical formulations. It includes a series of small examples, graphical illustrations, simple extensions and questions to think about. Also, it combines the formal models with less formal economic and organizational thinking. Last but not least it discusses some larger applications with significant practical impacts, including the design of benchmarking-based regulations of energy companies in different European countries, and the development of merger control programs for competition authorities.

Download or read book Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling PLS SEM Using R written by Joseph F. Hair Jr. and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has become a standard approach for analyzing complex inter-relationships between observed and latent variables. Researchers appreciate the many advantages of PLS-SEM such as the possibility to estimate very complex models and the method’s flexibility in terms of data requirements and measurement specification. This practical open access guide provides a step-by-step treatment of the major choices in analyzing PLS path models using R, a free software environment for statistical computing, which runs on Windows, macOS, and UNIX computer platforms. Adopting the R software’s SEMinR package, which brings a friendly syntax to creating and estimating structural equation models, each chapter offers a concise overview of relevant topics and metrics, followed by an in-depth description of a case study. Simple instructions give readers the “how-tos” of using SEMinR to obtain solutions and document their results. Rules of thumb in every chapter provide guidance on best practices in the application and interpretation of PLS-SEM.

Download or read book Applied Latent Class Analysis written by Jacques A. Hagenaars and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-24 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Applied Latent Class Analysis introduces several innovations in latent class analysis to a wider audience of researchers. Many of the world's leading innovators in the field of latent class analysis contributed essays to this volume, each presenting a key innovation to the basic latent class model and illustrating how it can prove useful in situations typically encountered in actual research.

Download or read book The Complexity Turn written by Arch G. Woodside and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-16 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes the reader beyond net effects and main and interaction effects thinking and methods. Complexity theory includes the tenet that recipes are more important than ingredients—any one antecedent (X) condition is insufficient for a consistent outcome (Y) (e.g., success or failure) even though the presence of certain antecedents may be necessary. A second tenet: modeling contrarian cases is useful because a high or low score for any given antecedent condition (X) associates with a high Y, low Y, and is irrelevant for high/low Y in some recipes in the same data set. Third tenet: equifinality happens—several recipes indicate high/low outcomes.

Download or read book Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean written by Inter-American Development Bank and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.

Download or read book Graph Representation Learning written by William L. William L. Hamilton and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Graph-structured data is ubiquitous throughout the natural and social sciences, from telecommunication networks to quantum chemistry. Building relational inductive biases into deep learning architectures is crucial for creating systems that can learn, reason, and generalize from this kind of data. Recent years have seen a surge in research on graph representation learning, including techniques for deep graph embeddings, generalizations of convolutional neural networks to graph-structured data, and neural message-passing approaches inspired by belief propagation. These advances in graph representation learning have led to new state-of-the-art results in numerous domains, including chemical synthesis, 3D vision, recommender systems, question answering, and social network analysis. This book provides a synthesis and overview of graph representation learning. It begins with a discussion of the goals of graph representation learning as well as key methodological foundations in graph theory and network analysis. Following this, the book introduces and reviews methods for learning node embeddings, including random-walk-based methods and applications to knowledge graphs. It then provides a technical synthesis and introduction to the highly successful graph neural network (GNN) formalism, which has become a dominant and fast-growing paradigm for deep learning with graph data. The book concludes with a synthesis of recent advancements in deep generative models for graphs—a nascent but quickly growing subset of graph representation learning.

Download or read book An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change written by Richard R. Nelson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1985-10-15 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

Download or read book The Long Shadow of Informality written by Franziska Ohnsorge and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2022-02-09 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.

Download or read book Handbook of Labor Economics written by Orley Ashenfelter and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1999-11-18 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the continually evolving field of labour economics.

Download or read book Advanced Concepts for Renewable Energy Supply of Data Centres written by Jaume Salom and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapid increase of cloud computing, high performance computing (HPC) and the vast growth in Internet and Social Media use have aroused the interest in energy consumption and the carbon footprint of Data Centres. Data Centres primarily contain electronic equipment used for data processing (servers), data storage (storage equipment), and communications (network equipment). Collectively, this equipment processes, stores, and transmits digital information and is known as information technology (IT) equipment. Advanced Concepts for Renewable Energy Supply of Data Centres introduces a number of technical solutions for the supply of power and cooling energy into Data Centres with enhanced utilisation of renewable energy sources in order to achieve low energy Data Centres. Because of the high energy density nature of these unique infrastructures, it is essential to implement energy efficiency measures and reduce consumption before introducing any renewable energy source. A holistic approach is used with the objective of integrating many technical solutions such as management of the IT (Information Technology) load, efficient electrical supply to the IT systems, Low-Ex air-conditioning systems, interaction with district heating and cooling networks, re-use of heat, free cooling (air, seawater, groundwater), optimal use of heat and cold storage, electrical storage and integration in smart grids. This book is therefore a catalogue of advanced technical concepts that could be integrated into Data Centres portfolio in order to increase the overall efficiency and the share of renewable energies in power and cooling supply. Based on dynamic energy models implemented in TRNSYS some concepts are deeply evaluated through yearly simulations. The results of the simulation are illustrated with Sankey charts, where the energy flows per year within the subsystems of each concept for a selected scenario are shown, and graphs showing the results of parametric analysis. A set of environmental metrics (as the non-renewable primary energy) and financial metrics (CAPEX and OPEX) as well of energy efficiency metrics like the well-known PUE, are described and used to evaluate the different technical concepts.

Download or read book Germany s New Security Demographics written by Wenke Apt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military recruitment will become more difficult in times of demographic aging. The question arises whether demographic change will constrain the capacity of aging states like Germany to conduct foreign policy and pursue their national security interests. Since contemporary military operations still display a strong human element, particular scrutiny is given to the empirical analysis of the determinants of military propensity and military service among youth. An additional human capital projection until 2030 illustrates how the decline in the youth population will interact with trends in educational attainment and adolescent health to further complicate military recruitment in the future. A concluding review of recruiting practices in other NATO countries provides insight in best-practice policy options to reduce the military’s sensitivity to demographic change. Following this approach, the book gives prominence to a topic that has thus far been under-represented in the greater discussion of demographic change today, namely the demographic impact on international affairs and strategic calculations.

Download or read book Capital as Power written by Jonathan Nitzan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 853 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.