Performance In Europe Research Articles

Corporate responsibility practices and financial performance in Europe: a multilevel-pressures theory perspective

Corporate responsibility practices and financial performance in Europe: a multilevel-pressures theory perspective

Bank performance in Europe and the US: A divergence in market-to-book ratios

In the 2007–2017 period, the market-to-book ratios of European and US banks diverged markedly. We use panel regressions to investigate the determinants of M/B ratios for 112 European and US banks. We show that higher US valuations were driven by profitability and cost efficiency. The underperformance in Europe was associated with declines in the net interest margin and low policy rates, as well as with inadequate resolution of non-performing loans and an increasing share of deposits. Our results stress the importance of provisioning and NPL resolution in Europe. Moreover, low-for-long policy rates may be detrimental for bank franchise values.

Профессиональное исполнительство на гитаре как компонент академического искусства

Relying on the systemic approach, the paper justifies academic status of the classical guitar. Special attention is paid to such issues as the instrument construction, repertoire, national traditions, performance and training. One of the key components of this system - professional performance - is examined with a view to prove that the accepted perception of the classical guitar as a folk instrument is false. Peculiarities of amateur and professional music playing are clarified, a historical survey of professional classical guitar performance in Europe and Russia is provided, its current stage is considered. The research findings are as follows: the author defines academic guitar performance, identifies its structural components, which constitutes scientific originality of the study.

Evaluation of Northern Hemisphere surface wind speed and wind power density in multiple reanalysis datasets

Reanalysis products have become more and more popular for wind energy scientific community to analyze the wind speed variability and get long-term wind power estimations. The present study evaluates the biases of near-surface wind speed and wind power density in four of the most reputable reanalysis datasets, which include ERA-Interim, JRA-55, CFS and MERRA-2. The results indicate that the abilities of reanalysis products to reproduce the variabilities of wind speeds are different in different regions. JRA-55 and CFS offer the best estimates of annual and seasonal variabilities of surface wind speeds over the Northern Hemisphere. In detail, JRA-55 is the best to reproduce surface wind speeds in Asia, CFS has the best performance in Europe, and MERRA-2 just can reproduce the central part of North America. All the four datasets show decreasing tendencies in surface winds over the Northern Hemisphere during 1980–2016, although the trends are largely diverse among them. The most significant disagreements of wind speed trends are encountered between JRA-55 and MERRA-2, which are likely related to the different methodologies from the lowest model level that reanalyses use. The main drivers of wind speed trends are the changes of large-scale circulation, urbanization, and aerosol emissions.

Why Has Europe Grown More Slowly than the U.S.? The Impact of the Twin Financial Crises

We focus on the first 20 years of the Euro, from 1999 to 2019, and we split this period into two approximate decades to examine the performance of three benchmarks: the real GDP quarterly growth, the annualized real per capita GDP changes and unemployment. These illustrate that the under performance of Europe is more evident during the second decade. Searching for causes we find that the Global Financial Crisis was an exogenous shock to the EU but its impact was large in both the U.S. and the EU. One major reason is that the U.S. responded quickly and aggressively both fiscally and via an unconventional monetary policy. The Euro area was constrained by a European Central Bank that focused on price stability and fiscal policy was not much of an option. The second shock of the Sovereign Debt Crisis was endogenous to the Euro area and it, more than the Global Financial Crisis revealed the original weaknesses and fragility of the European monetary union. This financial fragility quickly translated into declines in aggregate demand and economic under performance.

Amateur Choruses

Over the last twenty years, there has been a proliferation of performances in Europe, mixing professional and non-professional actors or not professionally trained ‘amateurs’. Very often these actors do not appear as single protagonists, but collectively as a group. This article examines different strategies of contemporary theatre productions in Germany and France that employ non-professional actors as a chorus. Focusing on the politics of authenticity, participation and the untrained body on stage, this article gives an account of some of the different ways in which theatre and performance use amateur choruses for particular effects. We argue that amateur choruses create a particular aesthetic experience that is brought about by a destabilization of dichotomous concepts such as the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’. We assume that a key element of this collapse – which is productive as well as challenging – is the untrained body on stage. In performances that include amateur choruses a tension arises between (1) the untrained phenomenological bodies of the non-professional actors and (2) the semiotic body of the chorus in different theatrical settings that question the possibility of political representation. Addressing these questions in dialogue with German and French post-dramatic theatres, we would like to discuss this in a more conversational style by alternately taking the German and then the French perspective. In each case, the point of departure is two examples that are analysed with regard to the particular function that the amateur choruses should serve. The examples will show that, in Germany as in France, there are both similarities and differences. They can be differentiated by the extent to which amateurs portray themselves or how they are integrated into an already existing system of theatrical representation.

Yeats's Queer Dramaturgies: Oscar Wilde, Narcissus, and Melancholy Masculinities in Calvary

This article opens up Yeats’s Calvary (1920) for new contemporary queer theatrical interpretations by addressing the tension between dramaturgies of exclusion and inclusion as well as between the authority of masculinity and the transgressive counter-authority of effeminacy and melancholy masculinities. Due to Yeats’s anti-democratic and elitist remarks and his problematic responses to authoritarian political performance in Europe and Ireland, his theatre is often seen as a space which fosters exclusion, conventional notions of heroism, and sexual polarization. Even though the authoritarian and elitist aspects of Yeats’s life and work cannot be denied, his rich queer and feminist networks, and most importantly his sympathy for Oscar Wilde and Roger Casement changed and shaped the representations of gender in his plays in considerable ways. Thanks to these influences, Yeats’s drama took significant steps towards creating space for a queer dramaturgical epistemology which refuses totalizing and homogenizing (hetero)normative frames, mostly those of hyper-masculinity, Carlylian views of heroism and sexual/gender polarization. Through the lens of performance and queer theory, this article highlights the anti-normative and anti-authoritarian potential of Yeats’s theatre in the context of Wilde’s influence. Yeats does not mention Wilde in his notes to Calvary, but his essays about Wilde prove that he identified the hardships of Wilde’s life with those of Christ and also Lazarus even more than two decades after Wilde’s death. This study also illustrates how the use of the unhappy Lazarus motif and the implicit references to the myth of Narcissus in Calvary can serve to express sympathy for Wilde and precarious, stigmatized lives in general and can thus convey vital messages about queerness today.

Recycling of end-of-life vehicles: Assessing trends and performances in Europe

End of Life Vehicles (ELVs) represent one of the most important waste streams in terms of volumes and material contents. During the last decades, they received attention from both researchers and industrial actors. However, there are still many knowledge gaps in terms of variables to predict future ELV volumes and trends. To this aim, the paper focuses on evaluating the potential correlation among European ELV flows (in terms of generated and recycled volumes) and two key variables (Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and population) through a linear regression model. Results show that an increase of 1000 GDP means +350 g of recycled ELVs and +10.7 kg of recycled ELVs per capita. Future values of both generated and recycled ELVs have been estimated in 2030, equal to 9.3 and 8.3 million tons, respectively. Here, a Likert scale provided by managers shows a priority of the economic side and the relation between the technological progress of the recycling plants and the adoption Circular Economy models. In addition, a comparison of European ELV flows clustered Member States’ performances into three groups, with Bulgaria, Ireland and United Kingdom excelling among all European countries. Finally, some policy implications are presented at the end of the paper in terms of both the economic importance of the Likert scale and the relevance of a synergy between Circular Economy (CE) and technology.

Measuring sport performances under pressure by classification trees with application to basketball shooting

Measuring players' performance in team sports is fundamental since managers need to evaluate players with respect to the ability to score during crucial moments of the game. Using Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and play-by-play basketball data, we estimate the probabilities to score the shot with respect to a selection of game covariates related to game pressure. We use scoring probabilities to develop a player-specific shooting performance index that takes into account for the difficulty associated to score different types of shots. By applying this procedure to a large sample of 2016–2017 Basketball Champions League (BCL) and 2017–2018 National Basketball Association (NBA) games, we compare the factors affecting shooting performance in Europe and in the United States and we evaluate a selection of players in terms of the proposed shooting performance index with the final aim of providing useful guidelines for the team strategy.

Evaluating the Drought-Monitoring Utility of Four Satellite-Based Quantitative Precipitation Estimation Products at Global Scale

This study simultaneously analyzed and evaluated the meteorological drought-monitoring utility of the following four satellite-based, quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) products: the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis 3B43V7 (TRMM-3B43), the Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS), the Climate Prediction Center Morphing Technique gauge-satellite blended product (CMORPH-BLD), and the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks-Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR). Data from 2000 to 2016 was used at global scale. The global Climate Research Unit (CRU) Version 4.02 was used as reference data to assess QPE products. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) drought index was chosen as an example to evaluate the drought utility of four QPE products. The results indicate that CHIRPS has the best performance in Europe, Oceania, and Africa; the PERSIANN-CDR has the best performance in North America, South America, and Asia; the CMORPH-BLD has the worst statistical indices in all continents. Although four QPE products showed satisfactory performance for most of the world according to SPEI statistics, poor drought monitoring ability occurred in Southeast Asia, Central Africa, the Tibetan plateau, the Himalayas, and Amazonia. The PERSIANN-CDR achieves the best performance of the four QPE products in most regions except for Africa; CHIRPS and TRMM-3B43 have comparable performances. According to the spatial probability of detection (POD) and false alarm ratio (FAR) of the SPEI, more than 50% of all drought events cannot be accurately identified by QPE products in regions with sparse gauge distribution. In other regions, such as the southeastern USA, southeastern China, and South Africa, QPE products capture more than 75% of drought events. Temporally, all datasets (except for CMORPH-BLD) can detect all typical drought events, namely, in the southeastern US in 2007, western Europe in 2003, Kenya in 2006, and Central Asia in 2008. The study concludes that CHIRPS and TRMM-3B43 can be used as near-real-time drought monitoring techniques whereas PERSIANN-CDR might be more suitable for long-term historical drought analysis.

The effect of domestic to foreign ownership change on firm performance in Europe

This paper examines the relationship between ownership change from domestic to foreign and firm performance. Using European private company data for the period of 2008–2014 and the propensity score matching method, we pair 850 companies that experience ownership change with similar companies that do not. Consistent with the managerial discipline hypothesis, the results show that foreign investors acquire larger and less profitable firms and come from bigger, wealthier, and better-governed countries. After matching firms on propensity scores for country, industry, size, return on assets and leverage, we find that, in the short term, ownership change is associated with higher sales growth but lower return on assets (ROA) and profit margin. In the long term, however, ownership change is positively related to operational efficiency (sales per employee and asset turnover). Our results also show that the origin of the acquirer matters for firm performance; the targets acquired by foreign owners from better-governed countries experience better performance improvement compared to targets acquired by foreign owners from countries with weaker governance.

Bank Performance in Europe and the US: A Divergence in Market-to-Book Ratios

Post 2008, the market-to-book ratios of European and US banks have diverged markedly. We use panel regressions to investigate the determinants of the M/B ratios of 112 European and US banks. We show that the underperformance of European banks is mainly driven by non-performing loans and by the negative impact of policy rates on bank interest margins. The higher US bank valuations are mainly driven by higher profitability and better cost efficiency. Our results for European banks stress the importance of timely NPL resolution and imply that low-for-long monetary policy may harm bank health.

Measuring regional social inclusion performances in the EU: Looking for unity in diversity

This study measures and benchmarks regional social inclusion performances in Europe using a composite index constructed on the basis of the commonly agreed sub-indicators of the Europe 2020 headline indicators. The multidimensional nature of these issues and the disparate social policy priorities of nations/regions in addressing them call for a reconciliatory performance evaluation framework, for which this article advocates the use of benefit-of-the-doubt (BoD) weighting. Based on the composite scores, leading and lagging regions in social inclusion are identified and the impact of regional contextual characteristics is examined. Overall results show that regions of Denmark and Sweden are consistently strong performers, while the Continental regions of Italy and Spain typically perform poorly. As to the poverty and social exclusion determinants, results show that low educational attainment and a high percentage of single-parent households relate negatively to regional social inclusion.

Cash holdings and SME performance in Europe: the role of firm-specific and macroeconomic moderators

For the first time, this paper examines the way in which cash holdings affect firm operating performance in a wide sample of European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our results suggest that cash holdings have a positive effect on operating performance, supporting the relevance of precautionary savings motive for SMEs. Maintaining a buffer of money on hand, ready for use in any contingency, has a relevant positive effect that overcomes potential opportunistic problems. Moreover, we find that firm-specific characteristics, such as debt, size, age, growth opportunities, and ownership concentration, moderate our baseline relationship. In addition, the study also demonstrates that cash holdings have a stronger positive effect on operating performance in poorer institutional contexts. Notably, we also find that the stock of cash had a relevant role in supporting firm performance during the recent global financial crisis. Finally, we report additional analyses to corroborate our baseline results.

Scientific collaboration of Cuban researchers working in Europe: understanding relations between origin and destination countries

The global network of scientific collaboration created by researchers opens new opportunities for developing countries to engage in the process of knowledge creation historically lead by institutions in the developed world. The results discussed here explore how Cubans working in European science and technology might contribute to extending the scientific collaboration of the country through their ties with Cuban institutions mainly in the academic sector. A bibliometric method was used to explore the pattern of collaboration of Cuban researchers in Europe using the institutional affiliation of authors and collaborators. The records of scientific publications of the defined sample were obtained from Scopus database for the period between 1995 and 2014. The network of collaboration was generated using the affiliations of Cuban authors in Europe and co-authors with worldwide affiliations shown in the records of publications of each Cuban researcher of the study. The analysis of aggregate values of the output of Cuban researchers in Europe (1995–2014) reveals that their collaboration with Cuba correlates moderately with their performance in Europe. However, when taking into account their time publishing in Europe, the collaboration with Cuba decreases the longer they remain away from home. The network of collaborating Cuban researchers in Europe comprises 991 different affiliations from 58 countries: 698 from Europe, 118 from North America, 96 from Latin America and 79 from the rest of the world. K-core analysis of centrality shows two Cuban universities sharing the central position with another 24 institutions worldwide of which 18 belong to higher education.

Restructuring and Performance in Europe:The effect of Institutional Environment and Business Cycle

This study analyses the effect of the institutional environment and the business cycle on the relationship between Business Portfolio Restructuring (BPR) strategy and corporate performance. A sampl...

Political support among winners and losers: Within‐ and between‐country effects of structure, process and performance in Europe

AbstractWhy is the winner‐loser gap in political support wider in some countries and narrower in others? Previous studies have focused on how the input side of political systems (i.e., the institutional structure) affects the winner‐loser gap. This study suggests that one should also consider the output side (i.e., the quality of political process and economic performance) and posits that two mechanisms – rational and psychological – can explain how output factors affect the gap. Going beyond previous research, this article also considers whether contextual characteristics explain the variation in the gap not only between countries, but also within them. Applying mixed models to survey data from 30 European countries between 2002 and 2015, the study finds that the differences in support between winners and losers across countries are smaller in consensual systems, as in these contexts the support among losers is higher. However, changes in the institutional structure do not explain the over‐time variation in the winner‐loser gap. Moreover, increasing quality of process and economic performance do not attenuate the gap across countries and over time, as they affect positively the political support of both winners and losers. The study shows which contextual factors explain the winner‐loser gap and points to the conditions that increase losers’ consent, which is a crucial element of democratic legitimacy.

Regional inequality in Europe: evidence, theory and policy implications

Regional economic divergence has become a threat to economic progress, social cohesion and political stability in Europe. Market processes and policies that are supposed to spread prosperity and opportunity are no longer sufficiently effective. The evidence points to the existence of several different modes of regional economic performance in Europe, responding to different development challenges and opportunities. Both mainstream and heterodox theories have gaps in their ability to explain the existence of these different regional trajectories and the weakness of the convergence processes among them. Therefore, a different approach is required, one that strengthens Europe’s strongest regions but develops new approaches to promote opportunity in industrial declining and less-developed regions. There is ample new theory and evidence to support such an approach, which we have labelled ‘place-sensitive distributed development policy’.

Measuring procurement performance in Europe

PurposeThe European Commission has begun to measure procurement performance in countries belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA). Performance is understood in terms of practices designed to maximize value for money. The purpose of this paper is to report on the performance measurement system currently in use and what the European Commission’s own data tell us about contemporary procurement practices in EEA countries.Design/methodology/approachSecondary data released by the European Commission is used to examine procurement performance across 30 EEA countries.FindingsThe best performing countries are from Scandinavia and the Benelux, along with Ireland, UK and Malta. Average performing countries include France and Germany. Below average performers include Italy, Spain and the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.Originality/valueThe paper highlights significant performance gaps in public procurement between EEA countries.

Do private hospitals outperform public hospitals regarding efficiency, accessibility, and quality of care in the European Union? A literature review.

SummaryEuropean countries have enhanced the scope of private provision within their health care systems. Privatizing services have been suggested as a means to improve access, quality, and efficiency in health care. This raises questions about the relative performance of private hospitals compared with public hospitals. Most systematic reviews that scrutinize the performance of the private hospitals originate from the United States. A systematic overview for Europe is nonexisting. We fill this gap with a systematic realist review comparing the performance of public hospitals to private hospitals on efficiency, accessibility, and quality of care in the European Union. This review synthesizes evidence from Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Austria, Spain, and Portugal. Most evidence suggests that public hospitals are at least as efficient as or are more efficient than private hospitals. Accessibility to broader populations is often a matter of concern in private provision: Patients with higher social‐economic backgrounds hold better access to private hospital provision, especially in private parallel systems such as the United Kingdom and Greece. The existing evidence on quality of care is often too diverse to make a conclusive statement. In conclusion, the growth in private hospital provision seems not related to improvements in performance in Europe. Our evidence further suggests that the private (for‐profit) hospital sector seems to react more strongly to (financial) incentives than other provider types. In such cases, policymakers either should very carefully develop adequate incentive structures or be hesitant to accommodate the growth of the private hospital sector.