bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The influence of the market power of Chinese commercial banks on efficiency and stability
Authors: Wang Xiangning , Zeng Xianming , Zhang Zhiyang 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to estimate the cost and profit efficiency (PE) of Chinese commercial banks in the last ten years and investigate how market power affects bank efficiency and stability.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper builds a stochastic frontier analysis model to evaluate the cost and PE of commercial banks. The paper then uses a Lerner index and Z-index to represent market power and stability, respectively. In addition, the paper empirically analyzes the relationship between market power and bank efficiency, stability in the last ten years.

Findings
– The results show that the efficiency of banks on the Chinese mainland increased during the study period, but is still lower than that of banks in Hong Kong; moreover, the efficiency of four state-owned commercial banks is lower than that of medium and small banks. Market power has a negative relationship with efficiency while its relationship with stability varies among Chinese banks.

Research limitations/implications
– The results imply that the promotion of financial liberalization and banking reform to introduce an appropriate competition mechanism has had a positive effect on the efficiency and stability of Chinese commercial banks.

Practical implications
– Thus, the paper will contribute to deepen reform and opening up the banking sector in China.

Social implications
– The healthy development of banking can enhance the ability of banks to withstand financial risks, to promote the harmonious development of society.

Originality/value
– The paper estimates the cost and PE of Chinese commercial banks using SFA model and investigates how market power affects bank efficiency and stability. The study design has a certain novelty, where Lerner index and Z index are used, respectively, to measure market power and stability and management efficiency of commercial banks is investigated from two aspects – PE and cost efficiency – by the translog cost function, instead of Douglas production function. In addition, the paper tries to put some of Hong Kong banks included in the study sample, and has a certain reference value.
Multi-period investment decision problem based on time consistent generalized convex risk measure and extremum scenarios
Authors: Yang Li , Chen Zhiping , Hu Qianhui 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– To help investors find an investment policy with strong competitiveness, the purpose of this paper is to construct a multi-period investment decision model with practicality and superior performance.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper uses a suitable multi-period risk measure to construct a multi-period portfolio selection model, where target returns at intermediate periods and market frictions are taken into account simultaneously. An efficient scenario tree generation approach is proposed in order to transform the complex multi-period portfolio selection problem into a tractable one.

Findings
– Numerical results show the new scenario tree generation algorithms are stable and can further reduce the tree size. With the scenario tree generated by the new scenario tree generation approach, the optimal investment strategy obtained under the multi-period investment decision model has more superior performance and robustness than the corresponding optimal investment strategy obtained under the single period investment model or the multi-period investment model only paying attention to the terminal cash flow.

Research limitations/implications
– The new risk measure and multi-period investment decision models can stimulate readers to find even better models and to efficiently solve realistic multi-period portfolio selection problems.

Practical implications
– The empirical results show the superior performance and robustness of optimal investment strategy obtained with the new models. What's more important, the empirical analyses tell readers how different market frictions affect the performance of optimal portfolios, which can guide them to efficiently solve real multi-period investment decision problems in practice.

Originality/value
– The paper first derives the concrete structure of the time consistent generalized convex multi-period risk measure, then constructs a multi-period portfolio selection model based on the new multi-period risk measure, and proposes a new extremum scenario tree generation algorithm. The authors construct a realistic multi-period investment decision model. Furthermore, using the proposed scenario tree generation algorithm, the authors transform the established stochastic investment decision model into a deterministic optimization problem, which can provide optimal investment decisions with robustness and superior performance.
CGIJ review
Authors: MacVane Fiona 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the content of the current issue of CGIJ.

Design/methodology/approach
– This review is prepared by the review editor to highlight key points within each article.

Findings
– Enables readers to scan content and select articles of most interest or relevance to their needs.

Originality/value
– CGIJ is the only Emerald health journal providing this service to its readers.
Attitudes of law university library users towards the use of Web OPAC in Karnataka
Authors: Naik Devendra , Nikam Khaiser 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of two law university libraries in the Karnataka state of southern India and their web-based online public access catalogue (web OPAC). Results from a survey of library users’ attitudes towards the use of the web OPAC, methods adopted to learn how to use the web OPAC, guidance sought to use the web OPAC and the extent of use of the web OPAC search facilities in select law school libraries in Karnataka are reported.

Design/methodology/approach
– To study the users’ attitudes towards the use of the web OPAC in law university libraries in Karnataka, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to 300 users, including Bachelor Of Legislative Law students, Master of Laws students, research scholars and teaching staff. The sample population was chosen using the convenience sample method, and the researcher received 256 completed and usable questionnaires. A five-point Likert scale was used in the research questionnaire. Typical statistical tests such as mean and standard deviation were applied for the purpose of accuracy.

Findings
– The results of the survey indicated that 92.1 per cent of respondents were using the web OPAC. Most of the web OPAC users strongly agreed that they learned to use the web OPAC from a library orientation programme. It was found that there are positive attitudes towards the web OPAC search facility. The survey also found that the web OPAC search page has not given satisfactory guidance to web OPAC users.

Practical implications
– This research paper produces findings of relevance to any academic library to develop and implement a user-friendly web OPAC service.

Originality/value
– There have been no previous published research studies of the web OPAC and users’ attitudes in the law university libraries in Karnataka state.
On maximum achievable speeds for field solvers
Authors: Löhner Rainald , D. Baum Joseph 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– Prompted by the empirical evidence that achievable flow solver speeds for large problems are limited by what appears to be a time of the order of O(0.1) sec/timestep regardless of the number of cores used, the purpose of this paper is to identify why this phenomenon occurs.

Design/methodology/approach
– A series of timing studies, as well as in-depth analysis of memory and inter-processors transfer requirements were carried out for a typical field solver. The results were analyzed and compared to the expected performance.

Findings
– The analysis shows that at present flow speeds per core are already limited by the achievable transfer rate to RAM. For smaller domains/larger number of processors, the limiting speed of CFD solvers is given by the MPI communication network.

Research limitations/implications
– This implies that at present, there is a “limiting useful size” for domains, and that there is a lower limit for the time it takes to update a flowfield.

Practical implications
– For practical calculations this implies that the time required for running large-scale problems will not decrease markedly once these applications migrate to machines with hundreds of thousands of cores.

Originality/value
– This is the first time such a finding has been reported in this context.
Accurate analytical/numerical solution of the heat conduction equation
Authors: Campo Antonio , J. Salazar Abraham , J. Celentano Diego , Raydan Marcos 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to address a novel method for solving parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs) in general, wherein the heat conduction equation constitutes an important particular case. The new method, appropriately named the Improved Transversal Method of Lines (ITMOL), is inspired in the Transversal Method of Lines (TMOL), with strong insight from the method of separation of variables.

Design/methodology/approach
– The essence of ITMOL revolves around an exponential variation of the dependent variable in the parabolic PDE for the evaluation of the time derivative. As will be demonstrated later, this key step is responsible for improving the accuracy of ITMOL over its predecessor TMOL. Throughout the paper, the theoretical properties of ITMOL, such as consistency, stability, convergence and accuracy are analyzed in depth. In addition, ITMOL has proven to be unconditionally stable in the Fourier sense.

Findings
– In a case study, the 1-D heat conduction equation for a large plate with symmetric Dirichlet boundary conditions is transformed into a nonlinear ordinary differential equation by means of ITMOL. The numerical solution of the resulting differential equation is straightforward and brings forth a nearly zero truncation error over the entire time domain, which is practically nonexistent.

Originality/value
– Accurate levels of the analytical/numerical solution of the 1-D heat conduction equation by ITMOL are easily established in the entire time domain.
Hartmann Newtonian radiating MHD flow for a rotating vertical porous channel immersed in a Darcian Porous Regime
Authors: Ahmed Sahin , J. Chamkha Ali 
Published: November 2014

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to develop and correct the problem studied by Makinde and Mhone (2005) to a rotating vertical porous channel immersed in a Darcian porous regime in presence of a strong transverse magnetic filled and with the application of thermal radiation. In this investigation, the fluid is considered to be of viscous, electrically conducting, Newtonian and radiating and is optically thin with a relatively low density. Excellent agreement is obtained for exact solutions with those of previously published works.Design/methodology/approach– In this investigation, a closed form analytical method based on the complex notations for the velocity, temperature and the pressure is developed to solve the governing coupled, non-linear partial differential equations. The accuracy and effectiveness of the method are demonstrated.Findings– Interestingly observed that, the Lorentizian body force is not act as a drag force as in conventional MHD flows, but as an aiding body force and this will serve to accelerate the flow and boost the primary velocities. Due to the large rotation of the channel, the primary velocities are become flattered and shift towards the walls of the channel. With a rise in Darcian drag force, flow velocity and shear stress are found to reduce. Moreover, increasing thermal radiation and rotation of the channel strongly depress the shear stress, and maximum flow reversal, i.e. back flow is observed due to large Darcian resistance, thermal radiation and rotation.Research limitations/implications– The analysis is valid for unsteady, two-dimensional laminar flow of an optically thick no-gray gas, electrically conducting, and Newtonian fluid past an isothermal vertical surface adjacent to the Darcian regime with variable surface temperature. An extension to three-dimensional flow case is left for future work.Practical implications– Practical interest of such study includes applications in magnetic control of molten iron flow in the steel industry, liquid metal cooling in nuclear reactors, magnetic suppression of molten semi-conducting materials and meteorology and in many branches of engineering and science. It is well known that the effect of thermal radiation is important in space technology and high-temperature processes. Thermal radiation also plays an important role in controlling heat transfer process in polymer processing industry.Originality/value– The paper presents useful conclusions with the help of graphical results obtained from studying exact solutions based on complex notations for Darcian drag force, rotation of the channel and conduction-radiation heat transfer interaction by unsteady rotational flow in a vertical porous channel embedded in a Darcian porous regime under the application hydromagnetic force. The results of this study may be of interest to engineers for heat transfer augmentation and drag reduction in heat exchangers as well as MHD boundary layer control of re-entry vehicles, etc.
Numerical analysis on propagation characteristics of methane/air explosion in elbow pipe and pipe network
Authors: Ma Qiuju , Zhang Qi , Chen Jiachen 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to study propagation characteristics of methane explosion in the pipe network and analyze the propagation laws of methane explosion wave along the elbow pipe and pipe network.

Design/methodology/approach
– Numerical simulation using software package AutoReaGas, a finite-volume computational code for fluid dynamics suitable for gas explosion and blast problems, is adopted to simulate the propagation characteristics of methane explosion and the property of flow field in complex structures.

Findings
– Due to reflection effects of corners of elbow pipe, the peak overpressures at corner locations in the elbow pipe go about two times higher than that in the straight pipe. In the parallel pipe network, the peak overpressure increases significantly at the intersection point, while the flame speed decreases at the junction. All these indicate that pipe corners and bifurcations could substantially enhance explosion partly which can bring more severe damage at the corner area. The explosion violence is strengthened after flames and blast waves are superimposed, such that equipments and people in these areas need special strengthening protection.

Originality/value
– The numerical results presented in this paper may provide some useful guidance for the design of the underground laneway structures and to take protective measures at corners and bifurcations in coal mines.
Non-similar solutions for mixed convection along a wedge embedded in a porous medium saturated by a non-Newtonian nanofluid
Authors: J. Chamkha Ali , Rashad M. , Subba Reddy Gorla Rama 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to present a boundary layer analysis for the mixed convection past a vertical wedge in a porous medium saturated with a power law type non-Newtonian nanofluid. Numerical results for friction factor, surface heat transfer rate and mass transfer rate have been presented for parametric variations of the buoyancy ratio parameter Nr, Brownian motion parameter Nb, thermophoresis parameter Nt, Lewis number Le and the power law exponent n. The dependency of the friction factor, surface heat transfer rate (Nusselt number) and mass transfer rate on these parameters has been discussed.

Design/methodology/approach
– This general non-linear problem cannot be solved in closed form and, therefore, a numerical solution is necessary to describe the physics of the problem. An implicit, tri-diagonal finite-difference method has proven to be adequate and sufficiently accurate for the solution of this kind of problems. Therefore, it is adopted in the present study. Variable step sizes were used. The convergence criterion employed in this study is based on the difference between the current and the previous iterations. When this difference reached 10−5 for all the points in the η directions, the solution was assumed to be converged, and the iteration process was terminated.

Findings
– The results indicate that as the buoyancy ratio parameter (Nr) and thermophoresis parameter (Nt) increase, the friction factor increases whereas the heat transfer rate (Nusselt number) and mass transfer rate (Sherwood number) decrease. As the Brownian motion parameter (Nb) increases, the friction factor and surface mass transfer rates increase whereas the surface heat transfer rate decreases. As Le increases, mass transfer rates increase. As the power law exponent n increases, the heat and mass transfer rates increase.

Research limitations/implications
– The analysis is valid for natural convection dominated regime. The combined forced and natural convection dominated regimes will be reported in a future work.

Practical implications
– The approach used is useful in optimizing the porous media heat transfer problems in geothermal energy recovery, crude oil extraction, ground water pollution, thermal energy storage and flow through filtering media.

Originality/value
– The results of the study may be of some interest to the researchers of the field of porous media heat transfer. Porous foam and microchannel heat sinks used for electronic cooling are optimized utilizing the porous medium. The utilization of nanofluids for cooling of microchannel heat sinks requires understanding of fundamentals of nanofluid convection in porous media.
Fishing for the impacts of climate change in the marine sector: a case study
Authors: van Putten Ingrid , Metcalf Sarah , Frusher Stewart , Marshall Nadine , Tull Malcolm 
Published: November 2014

Purpose– This paper aims, using a case study-based research approach, to investigate the role of climate and non-climate drivers in shaping three commercial marine sectors: fishing, aquaculture and marine tourism. Essential elements of climate change research include taking a whole of systems approach, which entails a socio-ecological perspective, and considering climate challenges alongside other challenges faced by resource users.Design/methodology/approach– The analysis is based on information gained using in-depth semi-structured interviews in a coastal community in southeast Australia. Even though climate drivers differ, the economic sectors of this community are representative of many similar coastal communities around Australia.Findings– Results show that at a community level, people involved in, or associated with, marine sectors are aware of climate change impacts on the marine environment. Even though many may not see it as a pressing issue, the potential effect of climate change on business profitability was recognised. Both the profitability of commercial fishing and aquaculture (oysters) was affected through mostly a downward pressure on product price, while marine tourism profitability was mainly affected through changes in the number of visitors.Research limitations/implications– A case study approach is inherently case study-specific – although generalities from complex system representation, built on local survey respondent observation and knowledge of the combined and linked physical–biological-, social-, economic- and governance drivers. This study shows the importance of a holistic approach; yet, researchers must also consider all community sectors and cross-regional investigations to avoid future resource conflicts.Practical implications– A number of positive impacts from climate-driven change, mainly from windfall economic benefits of geographically relocated species, were reported for commercial- and charter fishing. However, no positive impacts were reported for the aquaculture- and dive sector. In the aquaculture sector, climate drivers were of great significance in industry participation, while participation in commercial fishing was mainly driven by socio-economic factors.Social implications– To ensure the combined marine sectors retain a viable component of coastal communities’ economic focus, there is a need to understand what drives participation in the marine sector, and what the role of climate change is in this. To fully understand the ramifications of climate change in the marine environment, it is essential to understand its impacts across all marine sectors.Originality/value– Combining the different domains with climate drivers allows for identification and assessment of targeted adaptation needs and opportunities and sets up a comprehensive approach to determine future adaptation pathways.
Climate change as a challenge to China’s insurance industry
Authors: Xu Xian 
Published: November 2014

Purpose
– This paper aims to examine the risks caused by recent climate change in China and their effects on the insurance industry. China has experienced more extreme events (floods, droughts and storms) in recent years than ever before, causing the insurance industry to pay increasing attention to the negative consequences of climate change.

Design/methodology/approach
– This paper reports on the frequency and severity of extreme risks caused by climate change. It examines what Chinese insurers are doing to address climate change risks and discusses opportunities for expanding their role in providing relief against natural disasters.

Findings
– Being professional risk managers, Chinese insurance companies need to identify and assess the impacts of climate change to play a more prominent role in a market offering great future opportunity.

Originality/value
– The Chinese insurance industry has not been actively involved in the management of increasing risks due to climate change. This paper will discuss the reason for this limited involvement and the ways for the insurance industry to overcome obstacles, enabling it to capitalize on future opportunities.
Climate change vulnerability, impact and adaptation assessment
Authors: Metternicht Graciela , Sabelli Andrea , Spensley Jason 
Published: November 2014

Purpose– This paper aims to present a new framework for climate change vulnerability, impact and adaptation (VIA) assessment. Greater attention has been given in recent years to the importance of conducting climate change VIA assessment prior to, or as part of, climate change adaptation strategies and projects. A VIA assessment provides decision-makers and project developers with information on the location and causes of vulnerability based on local knowledge and scientific data, so that effective adaptation responses that are targeted and site-specific can be designed. A challenge facing practitioners in this field is the lack of clear methodologies or agreed frameworks on how to conduct a VIA assessment.Design/methodology/approach– This paper presents a VIA methodological framework that has been developed through three sub-regional pilot assessments on vulnerability and impacts of climate change, as part of the Regional Gateway for Technology Transfer and Action on Climate Change in Latin America and The Caribbean.Findings– While it is recognized that methodologies and tools may differ depending on the unique local context of the study area and sector under analysis, there are key components that every assessment needs to consider.Originality/value– The framework proposed can assist practitioners to deliver outputs from VIAs that are holistic, and provide the most appropriate type of information required for effective, context-specific adaptation responses.