BACKGROUND Conventional wisdom identifies biodiversity hotspots as priorities for conservation investment because they capture dense concentrations of species. However, density of species does not necessarily imply conservation 'efficiency'. Here we explicitly consider conservation efficiency in terms of species protected per dollar invested. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We apply a dynamic ...

The aim of this paper is to examine the concentration of wealth among the group of top wealth holders, defined as those with wealth in excess of a high cut off. The paper begins by considering the definition of this cut off, analogous to the definition of a poverty line at the other end of the distribution. It then considers what can be learned about the proportion classified as ‘rich’ and abou...

We begin the development of a theory of Banach spaces in the definable setting of o-minimal structures. We outline several results which develop the theory of compact embeddings for explicitly given function spaces. One aim is to explain the substantive underpinnings of an important observation used in the proof of the Reparameterization Theorem of Pila and Wilkie in [2]. We place this observat...

The information technology (IT) management has become one of the critical factors that enterprises want to assess the business benefits and performances of ERP systems. This research tries to evaluate the relationship between ERP continuous investment and technical efficiency by using DEA approach. This study also utilizes the Tobit regression to investigate the relationship between efficiency ...

This is the first comprehensive experimental study about investigation the impacts of information technology on efficiency of Iran’s banks for a period of 22 years from (1990 to 2011) by using SFA model. Results of the study have shown the technical efficiency average of Iranian banks during the study is (79%) and technical efficiency of privatelyowned banks in Iran is higher than publicly-owne...

Financial crises, like Asian financial crisis in 1997 and credit crunch from USA in 2007, have huge influence worldwide. For the importance and uniqueness of China’s stock market, it is interesting and attractive to research it under influence of financial crises. The purpose for this research is to find out the influence of financial crises on Chinese stock market and focus on efficiency front...

Relying upon a rich and unique panel of Hungarian firms over 7 years, from 1992 up to 1998, this paper estimates simultaneously TFP, Total Factor Productivity, identified as efficiency, and the parameters of a model where investment depends upon internal funds, wages, and sales, as in Prasnikar J. and Svejnar J. (2000). It shows that while real investment is higher in foreign firms, the improve...

Now the investment promotion administration is carried out by the External Affairs Office of every city’s government without effective information integration. The building of City Investment Promotion Information Network System will be helpful for meeting the foreign investor’s information demands in a fast, easy and accurate way from all directions and levels. What’s more, it also helps to im...

The beef cattle investment decision provides an excellent opportunity to increase the economic efficiency of beef cattle production. The investment questions that face beef cattle producers are of interest to beef cattle producers, educators, and financial institutions involved in lending to beef cattle producing firms. This study develops a decision support aid utilizing expert system technolo...