Small-scale Investments Research Articles

Housing preferences for owner-occupied versus investment properties in Sydney, Australia

Exploring the housing preferences between owner-occupied and investment properties sheds light on housing market dynamics and consumer behaviors. Through discrete choice experiments we identify three segments: CBD, suburban, and exurban dwellers, and segment their preferences according to when purchasing a property to live in versus purchasing one as a small-scale investment. Our findings indicate that suburban dwellers are willing to pay $2.924 million and $2.246 million more, respectively, to live in a house rather than in an apartment or a townhouse. However, they would pay around $682,000 more to invest in a house compared to a townhouse. CBD dwellers are willing to pay $643 per month extra for a newer property and suburban investors would pay around $540,000 extra for a property near the coast. CBD investors prioritize capital growth, while suburban and exurban investors are more concerned with rental return. All segments prefer Anglo-Australian neighborhoods, with suburban dwellers willing to pay $1,430 more per month for them.

Financial risk control model based on multi-swarm multi-objective root system growth algorithms

With the globalization of the economy, the challenges of financial risk management continue to grow, and the current traditional algorithms are often limited by the lack of search capability and diversity maintenance, which makes it difficult to predict as well as manage financial risks. Therefore, a multi-population multi-objective root system growth algorithm is proposed. The algorithm uses the plant root tip position and growth state as heuristic information to guide the search process. It also introduces adaptive search space to adjust the parameters, a multi-swarm strategies to enhance the exploration ability, and multi-objective optimization to adjust the weight balance among the objectives. The experimental results showed that in the single objective optimization function, the mean value of RSGA model was 5.80E-20, the standard deviation was 1.29E-19, the best position was 2.90E-26, and the worst position was 2.89E-19. In the biobjective optimization function, the average IGD of RSGA model was 2.28E-3. In the three-objective optimization function, the average IGD and HV of RSGA model were 1.05E-1 and 6.53E-1 respectively. In financial risk prediction, the best risk of RSGA model in small-scale investment was 0.1961, the worst risk was 0.2483, and the average risk was 0.2236. The best risk of medium-scale investment was 0.3057, the worst risk was 0.3387, and the average risk was 0.3194. In large-scale investment, the best risk was 0.191, the worst risk was 1.8795, and the standard deviation was 0.3769. Under MV portfolio, the maximum HV value of RSGA model was 1.13E-1, the minimum HV value was 4.20E-1, the average value was 8.74E-1, and the standard deviation was 5.46E-1. Under the RRC portfolio, the maximum HV of RSGA model was 1.49E-0, the minimum was 3.63E-1, the average was 8.17E-1, and the standard deviation was 3.95E-1.

Understanding the Screening Criteria for Shariah-Compliant Stocks

Islamic finance operates as an alternative system meeting the investment requirements of individuals adhering to Islamic beliefs. While conventional finance prioritizes stock exchanges facilitating small-scale investments, challenges arise for Muslims investing their savings in stocks due to potential conflicts between companies' activities and revenues and religious principles. This situation prompts Islamic scholars to deliberate on the permissibility of purchasing specific company stocks. Various scholars and Shariah boards have established precise criteria for determining the permissibility of buying a company's stocks, leading to the development of indexes aimed at identifying compliant companies. Shariah-compliant stocks or companies adhere to the principles of Shariah law, governing various life aspects, including financial and economic activities. This study investigates Shariah screening methods, exploring their rationale, foundations, and potential religious influences, particularly focusing on six prominent Islamic indices. The study investigates Shariah's justifications and motives behind these methods, discussing their evaluation through different standards. Despite scholars' varying opinions and evolving methodologies, the primary objective remains consistent: to facilitate halal income for Muslim investors while maintaining Islamic ethical principles in financial practices.

Contribution of Micro-Enterprises in Nepalese Economy

Micro-enterprises in Nepal are vital, fueling employment, GDP growth, exports, and more. In this context, this paper aims to deal with investment, income and employment (IIE) analysis of Micro-enterprises in Nepal. Using descriptive statistics and multiple regression model, the study has employed cross-sectional data set collected from enterprises survey in the Ward No.14 of Kathmandu Metropolitan City. In the survey, the sample size was 30 small enterprises including tea stall, sweets, haircutting, meat shops, and vegetables. In the enterprises, high investment that is 80 percent have generated high income level that is multiple times of investment in retail enterprises, except hair cutting, meat shops, boutique, sweets and vegetables. In employment generation, all enterprises have positive implications. Besides, the model shows positive relationship between income, investment and employment. However, it is statistically insignificant because p value is greater than 0.05. However, in real life, this is significant because the main attractive investment fields are hair-cutting and meat shops. It is clear that investment output depends on the presence of such business units in their vicinity. The relationship between income and investment is statistically insignificant (p-value 0.416 > 0.05), and the same is true for income and employment (p-value 0.445 > 0.05). The number of employees and the type of business are closely related (p-value 0.000 to 0.01). Therefore, the micro-enterprises are a prominent economic activity to generate self-employment, income generation and promoting small scale investment. This study result significantly contributes on generic perception of the policy makers on enterprises development statistically to continue enterprises development programs and policy of the government of Nepal and Kathmandu Metropolitan city to boost up local economy as well as national economy. Furthermore, the study result provides a valuable lesson learnt to create doing business environment of micro-enterprises within Kathmandu for building a strong local supply and value chain system rather than prohibition policy.

The impact of small-scale green infrastructure on the affective wellbeing associated with urban sites

The largest public space in any city is its streets. Investments which incorporate small-scale green infrastructure into streetscapes can bring more nature into the lives of urban residents worldwide, including those living in even the most economically and spatially constraint places. However, little is known about the impact of such small-scale investments on urban residents’ affective perceptions of their local environments and how to design these investments to maximise their positive impacts. In the current study, we use photo simulation techniques and an adapted form of the Positive and Negative Affective Schedule to examine the impact of small-scale green infrastructure interventions on the affective perceptions of low, middle and high-income sites in Santiago Chile. Our results, based on 62,478 reports of affective perceptions from 3,472 people, indicate that green infrastructure investments can both promote positive affect and, to a lesser, but still substantial extent reduce negative affect. The magnitudes of these relationships vary across discrete affective measures and for many of these measures, both positive and negative, a minimum of 16% increase in green coverage is required to see an impact. Finally, we find people associated lower affect with low, compared to middle and high, income sites but that these affective inequalities can be addressed, at least in part, through green infrastructure interventions.

A State-of-the-Art Review of Probabilistic Portfolio Management for Future Stock Markets

Portfolio management has long been one of the most significant challenges in large- and small-scale investments alike. The primary objective of portfolio management is to make investments with the most favorable rate of return and the lowest amount of risk. On the other hand, time series prediction has garnered significant attention in recent years for predicting the trend of stock prices in the future. The combination of these two approaches, i.e., predicting the future stock price and adopting portfolio management methods in the forecasted time series, has turned out to be a novel research line in the past few years. That is, to have a better understanding of the future, various researchers have attempted to predict the future behavior of stocks and subsequently implement portfolio management techniques on them. However, due to the uncertainty in predicting the future, the reliability of these methodologies is in question, and it is unclear to what extent their results can be relied upon. Therefore, probabilistic approaches have also entered the research arena, and attempts have been made to incorporate uncertainty into future forecasting and portfolio management. This issue has led to the development of probabilistic portfolio management for future data. This review paper begins with a discussion of various time-series prediction methods for stock market data. Next, a classification and evaluation of portfolio management approaches are provided. Afterwards, the Monte Carlo sampling method is discussed as the most prevalent technique for probabilistic analysis of stock market data. The probabilistic portfolio management method is applied to future Shanghai Stock Exchange data in the form of a case study to measure the applicability of this method to real-world projects. The results of this research can serve as a benchmark example for the analysis of other stock market data.

Condensate polishing plant debottlenecking within a combined cycle power plant considering the limitation of water resources

The most challenging problem with using Heller towers is the lack of proper water cooling in the hot air temperature. This matter creates a problem of increasing the condensate polishing plant’s (CPP) inlet water temperature, which deactivates the power plant cycle. CPP inactivation reduces the cycle water quality and damages the power plant's equipment. In this study, the thermodynamic conditions of a cycle were obtained in different weather conditions by modeling and encoding a combined cycle power plant in Yazd, located in Iran, using Thermoflex and MATLAB software. Then two solution scenarios of the air-cooled cooler and wetted-medium evaporative cooling were considered for debottlenecking of the CPP. The investment cost of the ACC was US $ 82,488, and this scenario could solve the CPP problem totally without using water with a payback period of 0.13 years. Using the water injection method, the annual water consumption was 835027 m3. The reverse osmose desalination and wetted-medium cooling investment costs were also US $ 8757300. This scenario could be used for CPP’s debottlenecking as well as increasing the steam cycle's power generation. This scenario is facing a significant challenge due to the high-water consumption. The Air-cooled cooler was chosen as a better solution by TOPSIS decision-making method. If a small-scale investment is intended to solve the CPP problem, the first scenario is preferable. If large-scale investment with profit from excess electricity generation, solving the CPP problem, and without water-shortage consideration are considered simultaneously, then the second scenario is highly recommended.

Economic and environmental analysis of coupled PV-energy storage-charging station considering location and scale

The coupled photovoltaic-energy storage-charging station (PV-ES-CS) is an important approach of promoting the transition from fossil energy consumption to low-carbon energy use. However, the integrated charging station is underdeveloped. One of the key reasons for this is that there lacks the evaluation of its economic and environmental benefits. Based on the electricity load of different types of buildings and the data of electric vehicle charging stations in Beijing, this paper analyzes the economic and environmental benefits of integrated charging station developed over different scales by the capacity optimization model. Said benefits are shown to differ considerably with different locations (building types): the construction of the integrated charging station in places where the electricity load is high at night, and where the curve of daytime electricity consumption is consistent with the PV generation curve (e.g., hospitals), shows maximal economic benefits and carbon dioxide emissions reduction. In other (e.g., residential) areas, where power consumption is lower across both day and nighttime hours, the economic benefits and carbon dioxide emissions reduction are lowest. The economic and environmental benefits of the integrated charging station also markedly differ on different scales: with scale expansion, the rate of return on investment and the carbon dioxide emissions reduction first increase and then decrease. A decline in energy storage costs increases the economic benefits of all integrated charging station scales, an increase in EVs increases the economic benefits of small-scale investments, and expansion of the peak-to-valley price difference increases the economic benefits of large-scale investments.

Blue green algal farming revolution: An eco-friendly top-up step for Agribusiness advancements

Global population growth rate accelerating earth ecosystem disturbance and increasing resource scarcity, malnutrition and poverty. These events challenge socio-economic development of each country and obligate scientific communities to develop such novel approaches to overcome this burden, which not only provide a healthy diet but also engage people in setting up their own business. Therefore, microalgae Spirulina is the one of the emerging food source with rich protein content and other nutritional components in adequate amount with diverse health benefits. The small scale investments in microalgae biomass production, familiarizing nutraceutical values and convert in consumable forms is the interesting agribusiness with diversified profits and popularization. Spirulina production strategies can be conventional and low-cost effective technologies. These techniques also help in designing new innovative possibilities in modifications and enhancements in the existing agriculture products processing strategies for their better use in different industries. Although most of communities are aware about agribusiness strategies of Spirulina but still it is in one the demanding and upcoming bright sector. This article reveals the methods of mass production of Spirulina and their significant role in agriculture as well as industrial.

한국기업의 인도네시아 투자실태와 투자협력 제고 방안에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate about the investment environment in Indonesia and analyze a actual investment condition of Korean enterprises in Indonesia and seek a economic cooperation for Investment between Korea and Indonesia. First, Indonesia's investment environment is divided into positive and negative aspects. Next, the result of analyzing the actual investment situation shows several characteristics. In other words, there are preponderance to manufacturing industry, small-scale investment by small and medium-sized enterprises, preference for joint ventures rather than wholly-owned subsidiary and newly-established corporation rather than M&A of local companies. restricted purpose of investment. Therefore, switchover of industry to service fields, large-scale investment to target the Indonesian domestic market, the promotion of wholly-owned subsidiary investment, and utilization of core competencies of existing companies through M&A can be suggested as alternatives. The economic cooperation measures between Korea and Indonesia for investment shall be manufacturing investment cooperation, use of the public-private partnership(PPP) system, infrastructure development demand and government-private partnership projects, establishment of institutional foundations and conditions, investment-related procedures and information sharing, official development assistance(ODA) support and other economic cooperation for investments.

Do institutional investors monitor their large-scale vs. small-scale investments differently? Evidence from the say-on-pay vote

We examine the relation between an institution's stock ownership and its tendency to support corporate management through the “Say-on-Pay” (SOP) executive compensation vote. Institutional advisors are more likely to oppose management on the SOP vote for their small-scale investments, i.e., investments that comprise a small fraction of an institution's aggregate stockholdings across its funds, or, alternatively, investments that comprise a small fraction of the total equity market capitalization of a corporation. We find evidence indicating that this voting pattern reflects an institutions’ overall sentiment for the stock, and is particularly prevalent when institutions have limited attention to monitor their investments.

“This Mine is for the Entire Casamance Coastline”: The Politics of Scale and the Future of the Extractive Frontier in Casamance, Senegal

AbstractAs evidenced by the widespread controversy surrounding an otherwise small-scale mining investment pending in Casamance, Senegal, uncertainty shapes the extension of the extractive frontier. Fent argues that amid this uncertainty, different actors are able to politicize or depoliticize extractive investments through the work of scaling. Opponents cast the project as part of larger-scale, longer-term extraction, linking it with regional narratives. By contrast, state and corporate actors depoliticized the mine by emphasizing its limited extent and downscaling conflict to the local level. This demonstrates the conflictual processes through which extractive frontiers are realized—and resisted—through both space and time.

Multi-period efficiency analysis of major European and Asian airports under fixed proportion technologies

The airport production system includes non-substitutable inputs and non-transformable outputs in most cases, hence subjected to fixed proportion technologies. In this study, we proposed a combined CRITIC-FPR approach to analyze the efficiencies of major European and Asian airports. Fixed Proportion Ratio (FPR) is an efficiency analysis technique for cases where the inputs are not substitutable and the outputs are not transformable. Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) was used here to define the priority weights of each criterion in the FPR calculation and examine the heterogeneity of the airport production system. Using the proposed approach, both the individual performances of the airports and the performance differences between Europe and Asia were measured. Impacts of capacity expansion decisions on airport efficiency were also examined. Findings indicate that cargo is the most distinctive output parameter in the airport industry, while the segregation between passenger volumes of airports has been increasing since 2000. The average efficiency of Asian airports is increasing faster than their European counterparts. Finally, the large-scale investments caused dramatic decreases in airport efficiency while small-scale investments have a positive impact.

對개발도상국 특혜무역협정 확대 및 활용 방안: 아프리카와 대양주 지역을 중심으로(Korea's Strategy on Trade Agreements with Developing Countries in Africa and the Pacific Regions)

對개발도상국 특혜무역협정 확대 및 활용 방안: 아프리카와 대양주 지역을 중심으로(Korea's Strategy on Trade Agreements with Developing Countries in Africa and the Pacific Regions)

Macro-financial analysis of value-at-risk from banking stocks in an Indian scenario

Value-at-risk (VaR) of banking stocks can be affected both by the financial ratio and macroeconomic variables. A balanced panel data of 28 Indian banks from 2005-2018 was used for the analysis. The findings of the study reveal that return on assets, consumer price index, gross domestic product, unemployment, and total investment significantly affect VaR. These findings bear policy implications for the banking sector and other stakeholders. Inflation mitigation should continue as the cornerstone of Indian monetary policy. The positive relation of VaR with unemployment demands that targeted employment approaches at urban and rural levels should be undertaken on a war footing along with labour-intensive infrastructure development providing a long-term perspective to the issue. This would help generate higher credit off-take for small scale investments at economy-wide levels, consumer demand increases with banking liquidity being put to productive use, leading to less non-performing assets and dynamic banking behaviour.

Dynamic Programming Method to Optimally Select Power Distribution System Reliability Upgrades

This paper presents a novel dynamic programming (DP) technique for the determination of optimal investment decisions to improve power distribution system reliability metrics. This model is designed to select the optimal small-scale investments to protect an electrical distribution system from disruptions. The objective is to minimize distribution system reliability metrics: System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI). The primary input to this optimization model is years of recent utility historical outage data. The DP optimization technique is compared and validated against an equivalent mixed integer linear program (MILP). Through testing on synthetic and real datasets, both approaches are verified to yield equally optimal solutions. Efficiency profiles of each approach indicate that the DP algorithm is more efficient when considering wide budget ranges or a larger outage history, while the MILP model more efficiently handles larger distribution systems. The model is tested with utility data from a distribution system operator in the U.S. Results demonstrate a significant improvement in SAIDI and SAIFI metrics with the optimal small-scale investments.

Responsible Parasites: The Ethics of Small-scale Property Investment in the UK

ABSTRACT In UK public discourse, landlords count among the most unpopular figures. Their assumed immorality is often summarized in the image of the “parasite”. This paper draws on original ethnographic data from online communities for small-scale property investors who are also landlords, in order to explore what ethical ideas landlords themselves embrace. I argue that in the context of UK “asset-based welfare”, particularly the connection between pension provision and the property market, landlords can be seen to engage in ethical practices of “working on themselves” in order to become successful investor subjects. Next to techniques of affect management and the accumulation of “information capital”, this centrally involves eradicating in oneself ethical dispositions belonging to the waning paradigm of collectivized welfare and labour relations.

Does small-scale port investment affect local economic activity? Evidence from small-port development in Indonesia

This study aims to find empirical evidence whether local feeder ports as small-scale investments in public infrastructure affect the economic activity at the sub-district level. The motivation for the study originated from the fact that the public invests heavily in small-scale projects when market failures occur. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on the impact of these investments because of data unavailability and their small marginal contribution at a more aggregated level. Using Difference-in-Differences that exploit staggered implementation of small-port operations, we found that the opening of small ports increased the night light intensity, a measure that captures local economic activity, by 1.8 per cent. Although the benefits reach beyond the sub-district where the port is situated, it takes more than two years to deliver its relatively small impact, and it might be not cost-effective.

Communities of practice in Alberta Health Services: advancing a learning organisation

BackgroundIn 2009, Alberta Health Services (AHS) became Canada’s first and largest fully integrated healthcare system, involving the amalgamation of nine regional health authorities and three provincial services. Within AHS, communities of practice (CoPs) meet regularly to learn from one another and to find ways to improve service quality. This qualitative study examined CoPs as an applied practice of a learning organisation along with their potential influence in a healthcare system by exploring the perspectives of CoP participants.MethodsA collective case study method was used to enable the examination of a cross-section of cases in the study organisation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 participants representing 28 distinct CoPs. Using Senge’s framework of a learning organisation, CoP influences associated with team learning and organisational change were explored.ResultsCoPs in AHS were described as diverse in practice domains, focus, membership boundaries, attendance and sphere of influence. Using small-scale resource investments, CoPs provided members with opportunities for meaningful interactions, the capacity to build information pathways, and enhanced abilities to address needs at the point of care and service delivery. Overall, CoPs delivered a sophisticated array of engagement and knowledge-sharing activities perceived as supportive of organisational change, systems thinking, and the team learning practice critical to a learning organisation.ConclusionCoPs enable the diverse wealth of knowledge embedded in people, local conditions and special circumstances to flow from practice domain groups to programme and service areas, and into the larger system where it can effect organisational change. This research highlights the potential of CoPs to influence practice and broad-scale change more directly than previously understood or reported in the literature. As such, this study suggests that CoPs have the potential to influence and advance widespread systems change in Canadian healthcare.

Blowing in the Wind: The Infiltration of Sicilian Mafia in the Wind Power Business

Public policies in the last 20 years have promoted in Italy the investment in renewable energy sources within the framework of climate change policies. Investment in renewables received generous incentives, leading also in Sicily to a rapid expansion in the capacity installed. We analyse whether rents from wind investment may have attracted Sicilian mafia. We argue that the wind business is particularly attractive when a criminal organization invests in the regular economy. We find that the probability of observing a wind farm in a municipality is higher, once controlled for geographical and political factors, if there is a mafia family embedded, identifying a causal link from mafia presence to wind investment. Moreover, the involvement of mafia groups adapted to the changing regime in incentives around 2012, moving from large investments, direct involvement or the provision of intermediation services to small scale investments in the municipalities where the families are rooted. These results are consistent with the episodes unveiled in judicial inquiries in Sicily. We compare these results with the case of Apulia, where large wind investments have been supported by an environmentally committed regional government and where the judges did not find evidence of a massive penetration of the local organized crime in the wind business. We show that the location of wind farms in this region depends on favourable geographical conditions but is not correlated with the presence of organized crime, consistently with the negative evidence from judicial inquiries.