The purpose of this paper is to study and present the impact of maintenance as one of the competitive factors in the business strategy. A financial maintenance model is developed to illustrate that maintenance can have a significant impact on a firm's profitability. The model incorporates return on capital as a means to measure the effectiveness of maintenance activities. The results from simul...

To clarify and validate the factors that influence hospital profitability in the United States of America, we used a cross-sectional design to examine data for 1998. Several changes and government regulations introduced in the early 1990s influenced hospital performance. We included those variables to give a better understanding of the hospital payment system. Among the explanatory variables co...

Working capital management is an essential part of the short-term finance of a firm. With an efficient working capital management, a firm can release capital for more strategic objectives, reduce the financial costs, and improve profitability. The present research studies the relationship of working capital management on performance of firms Listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Average Collec...

This paper attempts to explain the growth slowdown in Japan as a structural adjustment to the emergence of lower cost producers of manufacture goods. Prior to the 1990s Japan had achieved significant market power and hence profitability in producing various manufacture goods. This profitability led to an allocation of resources towards this sector; indeed, the fraction of resources in the manuf...

In the past China’s rural areas, home to 70% of its population, suffered energy shortages. China’s indigenous energy resources are limited, with the exception of coal. The widespread use of coal requires large investments in production and transport –making it costly-, and degrades the environment. As a result the Chinese government has implemented an energy policy that aims at the use of renew...

The question of whether or not mergers and acquisitions have helped to enhance banks’ efficiency and profitability has not yet been conclusively resolved in the literature. We argue that this is partly due to the severe methodological problems involved. In this study, we analyze the effect of German bank mergers in the period 1995-2000 on banks’ profitability and cost efficiency. We suggest a n...

This is the non-confidential version. Confidential information has been redacted. Redactions are indicated by [  ]. Pay TV statement – Annex 3 – non-confidential version Contents Section Page 1 Introduction 1 2 The use of IRR in profitability analysis 7 3 Have Sky's returns exceeded its cost of capital? 12 4 Why have Sky's returns exceeded its cost of capital? 16 5 Are Sky's returns likely to ...

In this paper we propose a financial trading system whose strategy is developed by means of an artificial neural network approach based on a recurrent reinforcement learning algorithm. In general terms, this kind of approach consists in specifying a trading policy based on some predetermined investor’s measure of profitability, and in setting the financial trading system while using it. In part...

Does BPO pay off at the firm-level? Although there are several studies which analyze the potential benefits of BPO, there is a virtual absence of research papers on BPO outcomes. Based on an analysis of 137 Business process outsourcing (BPO) ventures at 254 German banks in a period between 1994 and 2005, we found that the outsourcer’s financial performance in terms of profitability and cost eff...

The authors investigate the relay-aided multicell multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) cellular network by comparing both the signal forwarding and interference forwarding relaying paradigms, each employing the adaptive MIMO relay scheme. The spectral, energy and economic efficiency values are utilised as key performance metrics. Furthermore, both radio frequency and circuit power consumption ...