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This study explores the differences in energy consumption between the highly economically developed United States and economically underdeveloped Africa. This study conducted the parameter estimation and equilibrium analysis of a Lotka–Volterra model to investigate the short-term and long-term relations of different types of energy, respectively. The parameter estimation results show that nuclear energy consumption increases the consumption of fossil fuels in the United States but decreases fossil fuel consumption in Africa. This implies that Africa can replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy in the short run. Given the current state of energy consumption, the results of the equilibrium analysis indicate that the United States’ nuclear and fossil fuel consumption will reach a stable long-term equilibrium. However, Africa will experience significant fluctuations in nuclear and fossil fuel consumption, and both nuclear and fossil fuel consumption will eventually be depleted. The highly economically developed United States arranges energy consumption in an environmentally friendly way and reshapes economies to achieve sustainability, so its long-term energy consumption is more stable than economically underdeveloped Africa. Accuracy analysis results show that the nuclear or renewable energy consumption predicted by the Lotka–Volterra model is more accurate than that of a Bass model since the Lotka–Volterra model considers energy interactions.

The effects of green marketing orientations for increasing the competitive advantage and improving the sustainability of the hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic are receiving more attention. As the hospitality industry attempts to assimilate green marketing and move in the path of sustainable development, administrators need to expand their efforts for improving natural environmental orientation (NEO), market orientation, resource orientation, and brand orientation by applying their green marketing orientations to hospitality’s strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only few studies have examined the improvement of green marketing orientations. The objective of the research is to address this issue, applying the methods of fuzzy mixture MCDM (multiple criteria decision-making), with fuzzy decision-making trials and an evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and fuzzy DEMATEL-based ANP (fuzzy DANP) to inspect the feedback and interdependent issues among numerous elements/dimensions of green marketing orientations. In an uncertain environment, an empirical case study of the hospitality industry is shown to demonstrate the recommended combined approaches and, finally, to state the best enhancement approaches for administrators. This result shows that the natural environmental orientation is the most important factor.

Purpose of study: This study investigates the change of stock returns during the Lehman Brother’s announcement of bankruptcy in 2008 for the Taiwanese listed video game companies. We further explore the change of stock returns for the Taiwanese listed video game companies after Taiwan’s economy recovers from Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy. Methodology: This study utilizes the event study method to statistically test abnormal returns so as to understand whether the Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy-related event affects stock prices and whether securities prices reflect Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy-related information. Main Findings: The results show a significant negative abnormal rate during Lehman Brother’s declaration of bankruptcy on Sep. 15, 2008. Investors were affected by the financial crisis caused by Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy and fully reflected on the stock prices of that day. In addition, our results show that video game companies have significantly positive returns when most Taiwanese electronics firms stop no-pay leave on March 31, 2009. It represents investors were encouraged by this information and fully reflected on the stock prices. Implications: The results support the efficient market hypothesis. The pattern of CARs experiences a constant increase and displays the apparent price rise during the announcement of no-pay leave stop. The positive abnormal returns are accompanied by the economic recovery. Originality/Novelty: This investigation for the first time chooses the stop of no-pay leave as the indicator of economic recovery from financial crisis. Our analysis novel explores the impact of the financial crisis and the economic recovery on the game industry simultaneously and the results show significantly different market reactions between the occurrence of the financial crisis and economic recovery.

This study focuses on the reactions of abnormal returns on the Taiwanese solar stocks from eight anti-dumping events to examine the effect of anti-dumping tax on the Taiwanese solar companies. We collects the Taiwanese market reactions to U.S. announced anti-dumping tax on Taiwan, and the Chinese market reactions to U.S. announced anti-dumping tax on China. The purposes of this study are to explore whether abnormal returns are negative during the announcement of anti-dumping tax investigation. Furthermore, we test how abnormal returns change when the verdict of anti-dumping tax is favorable or unfavorable. Finally, we test whether Taiwanese solar stocks abnormal returns are positive during American announcement of anti-dumping tax on China. We find that the abnormal returns are negative during the announcement of anti-dumping tax investigation. The abnormal returns are positive if the verdict of anti-dumping tax is favorable. On the other hand, the abnormal returns are negative if the verdict of anti-dumping tax is unfavorable. Because China and Taiwan ranks top one and two in solar investment respectively, we find positive abnormal returns of Taiwanese companies during American?s announcement of anti-dumping tax on China.

This paper is the first to employ multiple outputs, patents and net sales, in our data envelopment analysis (DEA) to examine whether operational efficiency improves after enterprise resource planning (ERP) installations. The ANOVA analysis results show that granted patent number significantly increases after ERP installations. ERP implementation indeed stimulates integrated circuit firms to concentrate on innovation activities. Also, the DEA results show that firm efficiency significantly increases after the third year subsequent to ERP implementations. The Tobit regression results further prove that the curtailing of receivable turnover days and inventory turnover days are attributed to efficiency elevation through ERP installations.

To our knowledge, this study explores the correlation between the CO2 emissions of regions with close industrial interdependence by using Lyapunov functions for the first time. Analytical results indicate that China’s increasing imports of semifinished products from Taiwan have led to a decline in China’s fossil fuel consumption, subsequently lowering its CO2 emission growth rate. The industrial dependence between Taiwan and China markedly affected CO2 emissions of the latter. The analysis results of Lyapunov function reveal that the future trajectory of CO2 emissions from China and Taiwan will fail to reach stable equilibrium points. Their increased CO2 emissions cannot be absorbed entirely by plants through photosynthesis, implying that the excessive CO2 emissions from Taiwan and China will create ecological imbalances and worsen continuously. Any change in such CO2 emissions from Taiwan and China depends on how their industries are related. In terms of forecasting accuracy, the proposed Lotka-Volterra model can accurately predict future CO2 emissions from China and Taiwan since this model considers both the previous CO2 emissions in one region, and the economic competition and cooperation between these two regions. Results of this study significantly contribute to the efforts of governmental authorities in promulgating environmental policies.

Liquid crystal display televisions (LCD TVs) embody properties of durable and high-technological products. In this work, we relax the restrictive assumptions of constant internal influence in the conventional growth model for worldwide diffusion of LCD TV innovation. Based upon the price impact on the imitating behaviors, we incorporate price factor into the Bass model to study evolutions of LCD TV market. Effects of innovation, imitation, price elasticity and potential market factors are systematically considered. Two different models, the conventional Bass model and the modified one are thus numerically solved and optimized to estimate the market dynamics of LCD TVs, where the results among the models as well as the collected data in the past decade are compared and validated for the best accuracy. The results of this study exhibit that LCD TV diffusion is mainly driven by consumers' word of mouth and 32-inch LCD TV remains to occupy the largest potential market among various size levels of LCD TVs. Previous LCD TV adopters persuade the potential ones to imitate the former in the TV transaction decisions. In particular, this model illustrates that LCD TV price reduction stimulates such imitating behaviors of successive LCD TV consumers. Due to the significance of the modeled price effect in LCD TV adoptions, the model with considering the effect of price performs better in fitness, prediction capability and parameter stability than the conventional one.

Previous studies mostly focus on bank performance, but few studies have effectively investigated how efficiency is reduced as banks expand credit card or cash card issuances. This study seeks to investigate how bank's relaxations of card issuance and credit revolvers reduce bank efficiency during card insolvency crisis in the Taiwanese banking industry. The results show that the credit card insolvency crisis reduces bank efficiency. Particularly, banks with low card issuance levels perform better than those with high card issuance levels. This suggests that if banks approve card applications while neglecting an applicant's capability to repay the card debt, they will suffer losses. Furthermore, the regression used in this study indicates that bank efficiency is negatively related to the issuances of credit cards, issuances of cash cards, and the revolving amount of credit cards. These findings imply that the relaxations relating to the card issuance or loosened approvals of credit revolvers reduced bank profits resulting from unpaid debts.

This study investigates the usefulness of auditors' opinions, market factors, macroeconomic factors, and industry factors in predicting financial distress of Taiwanese firms. Specifically, two non-traditional auditors' opinions are evaluated: "long-term investment audited by other auditors" ("other auditor"), and "realized investment income based on non-audited financial statements" ("no auditor").The results of the 22 discrete-time hazard models show that "other auditor" opinions have incremental contribution in predicting financial distress, in addition to "going concern" opinions. This suggests that "other auditor" opinions possess higher risk of overstating earnings and firms with such income items are more likely to fail. Besides, we find that the macroeconomic factors studied significantly explain financial distress. Particularly, the survivals of electronic firms are more sensitive to earnings due to higher earnings fluctuations in such firms. Finally, models with auditors' opinions, market factors, macroeconomic factors, and industry factors perform better than the financial ratio-only model in financial distress prediction.

Previous studies on financial distress prediction choose the conventional failing and non-failing dichotomy; however, the distressed extent differs substantially among different financial distress events. To solve the problem, “non-distressed”, “slightlydistressed” and “reorganization and bankruptcy” are used in our article to approximate the continuum of corporate financial health. This paper explains different financial distress events using the two-stage method. First, this investigation adopts firm-specific financial ratios, corporate governance and market factors to measure the probability of various financial distress events based on multinomial logit models. Specifically, the bootstrapping simulation is performed to examine the difference of estimated misclassifying cost (EMC). Second, this work further applies macroeconomic factors to establish the credit cycle index and determines the distressed cut-off indicator of the two-stage models using such index. Two different models, one-stage and two-stage prediction models are developed to forecast financial distress, and the results acquired from different models are compared with each other, and with the collected data. The findings show that the one-stage model has the lower misclassification error rate than the two-stage model. The one-stage model is more accurate than the two-stage model., {"references":["F. J. L. Iturriaga and I. P. Sanz. \"Bankruptcy Visualization and Prediction\nUsing Neural Networks: A Study of U.S. Commercial Banks.\" Expert\nSystems with Applications, vol. 42, no. 6, 2015, pp. 2857-2869.","D. J. Philippe. \"Bankruptcy Prediction Using Terminal Failure\nProcesses.\" European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 242, no. 1,\n2015, pp. 286-303","A. Vineet and T. Richard. \"Comparing the Performance of Market-based\nand Accounting-based Bankruptcy Prediction Models.\" Journal of\nBanking & Finance, vol. 32, no. 8, 2007, pp. 1541-1551.","S. G. Hanson, M. H. 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Forest. \"The Effect of Systematic Credit Risk on Loan\nPortfolio: Value at Risk and on Loan Pricing.\" Wagner Math Finance\nReport, 2007. [14] J. Kim, \"A Way to Condition the Transition Matrix on Wind.\"\nunpublished paper, RiskMetrics Group, New York, NY, 1999.\n[15] B. Belkin, S. J. Suchower, and L.R. Forest. \"A One-Parameter\nRepresentation of Credit Risk and Transition Matrices.\" CreditMetrics\nMonitor. 1998, pp. 46-56.\n[16] B. Belkin, S. J. Suchower, and L. R. Forest. \"The Effect of Systematic\nCredit Risk on Loan Portfolio Value at Risk and on Loan Pricing.\"\nCreditMetrics Monitor. 1998, pp. 17-28.\n[17] T. C. Wilson, \"Portfolio Credit Risk, I .Risk Magazine.\" 1997, pp.\n111-117.\n[18] T. C. Wilson, \"Portfolio credit risk, II .Risk Magazine.\" 1997, pp.56-61.\n[19] W. Hopwood, J. C. McKeown, and J. F. Mutchler. 1994. A\nre-examination of auditor versus model accuracy within the context of the\ngoing-concern opinion decision. Contemporary Accounting Research,\nvol. 10, no.2, pp. 409-431\n[20] W. H. Beaver, \"Financial Ratio as Predictors of Failure. Empirical\nResearch in Accounting: Selected Studies.\" Journal of Accounting\nResearch, vol. 4, no. Supplement, 1966, pp. 71-111.\n[21] W. H. Beaver, \"Market Prices, Financial Ratios, and the Prediction of\nFailure.\" Journal of Accounting Research. vol. autumn, 1968, pp.\n179-192.\n[22] T. Lancaster, The Econometric Analysis of Transition Data. New York:\nCambridge University Press, 1990.\n[23] T. Shumway, \"Forecasting Bankruptcy More Accurately: A Simple\nHazard Model.\" The Journal of Business, vol. 74, no. 1, 2001, pp.\n101-124.\n[24] J. Begley, J. Ming, and S. Watts. \"Bankruptcy Classification Errors in the\n1980s: An Empirical Analysis of Altman's and Ohlson's Models.\"\nReview of Accounting Studies, vol. 1, no. 4, 1996: 267-284."]}

A critical issue in the prediction of corporate failures is, whether to categorize sample firms in a binary fashion into failed firms and non-failed firms or to classify failed firms according to multiple financial difficulties. As most previous studies only employ the binary approach in their forecast, this work compares both the binary logit model and the multinomial logit model to determine whether or not the accuracy of forecasting corporate failures can be improved by further classifying financially-failed firms. The binary logit model recognizes slightly-distressed events and bankruptcy-and-reorganizations events both as corporate failure, while the multinomial logit model distinguishes between levels of corporate failure events as slightly-distressed firms and bankruptcy-and-reorganization firms. The empirical results show that the misclassification errors and error costs of the binary logit model are smaller than those of the multinomial logit model, suggesting that the binary logit model performs superior to the multinomial logit model in predicting corporate failure. The comparison results imply that the slightly-distressed firms and bankruptcy-and-reorganization firms are similar in characteristics. The occurrence of slightly-distressed events is already on the verge of bankruptcy, signifying major financial failure in the company operations. In such case, investors and debtors should be especially alert to withdraw their investments or terminate their loans to prevent loss.

Prior research has not effectively investigated how the profitability of Chinese branches affect FDIs in China [1, 2], so this study for the first time incorporates realistic earnings information to systematically investigate effects of innovation, imitation, and profit factors of FDI diffusions from Taiwan to China. Our nonlinear least square (NLS) model, which incorporates earnings factors, forms a nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) in numerical simulation programs. The model parameters are obtained through a genetic algorithms (GA) technique and then optimized with the collected data for the best accuracy. Particularly, Taiwanese regulatory FDI restrictions are also considered in our modified model to meet the realistic conditions. To validate the model-s effectiveness, this investigation compares the prediction accuracy of modified model with the conventional diffusion model, which does not take account of the profitability factors. The results clearly demonstrate the internal influence to be positive, as early FDI adopters- consistent praises of FDI attract potential firms to make the same move. The former erects a behavior model for the latter to imitate their foreign investment decision. Particularly, the results of modified diffusion models show that the earnings from Chinese branches are positively related to the internal influence. In general, the imitating tendency of potential consumers is substantially hindered by the losses in the Chinese branches, and these firms would invest less into China. The FDI inflow extension depends on earnings of Chinese branches, and companies will adjust their FDI strategies based on the returns. Since this research has proved that earning is an influential factor on FDI dynamics, our revised model explicitly performs superior in prediction ability than conventional diffusion model., {"references":["Tsai, B.-H., 2009. Analysis of dynamic growth model in foreign direct\ninvestment of Taiwan IC industry into China, International Journal of\nAccounting Studies, 49, 73-94. 2","Tsai, B.-H. 2010. Application of dynamic diffusion theory in foreign\ndirect investment of Taiwan IC industry into China. International Journal\nof Computational Science and Engineering, 5(1), 2-8. 3","Smith, D. M. 1981. Industrial location: An economic geographical\nanalysis. 2nd edition. New York: John Wiley. 4","Bass, F. M. 1969. A modified product growth model for consumer\ndurable. Management Science, 15, 215-227. 5","Mahajan, V., E. Muller, and F. M. Bass. 1990. New product diffusion\nmodels in marketing: A review and directions for future research. Journal\nof Marketing, 54, 1-26. 6","Rogers, E. M. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edition. New York:\nFree Press. 7","Bass, F. M. 2004. Comments on a new product growth for model\nconsumer durables. Management Science, 50 (12), 1833-1840. 8","Meade, N., and T. Islam. 2006. Modelling and forecasting the diffusion\nof innovation: A 25-year review. International Journal of Forecasting, 22,\n519-545. 9","Ruiz, E., and Leeflang, P. S. H. 2006. Diffusion of franchising as an\ninnovation of managerial organization. Marketing JRM, 65-75. 10\n[10] Mesak, H., and Berg, W. 1995. Incorporating price and replacement\npurchases in modified products diffusion models for consumer durables.\nDecision Science, 26, 425-449. 11\n[11] Mesak, H. (1996). Incorporating price, advertising and distribution in\ndiffusion models of innovation: some theoretical and empirical results\nexpectations in diffusion models. Computers and Operations Research,\n23, 1007-1023. 12\n[12] Parker, P. (1992). Price elasticity dynamics over the adoption life cycle.\nJournal of Marketing Research, 9, 358-367. 13\n[13] Tsai, B.-H., Li, Y. and Lee, G.-H., 2010, Forecasting global adoption\nof crystal display televisions with modified product diffusion model,\nComputers and Industrial Engineering 58 (4), 553-562. 14\n[14] Berkoune, D., Mesghouni, K and Rabenasolo, B. 2006. Lower bounds\nfor the scheduling problem with uncertain demands. International Journal\nof Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, 16 (2), 263-269. 15\n[15] Czekalski, P. 2006. Evolution-fuzzy rule based system with parameterized\nconsequences. International Journal of Applied Mathematics and\nComputer Science, 16 (3), 373-385. 16\n[16] McCall, J. 2005. Genetic algorithms for modelling and optimization, J.\nComput. Appl. Math. 184, 205-222. 17\n[17] Venkatesan, R., T. V. Krishnan and V. Kumar 2004, Evolutionary\nEstimation of Macro-Level Diffusion Models Using Genetic Algorithms:\nAn Alternative to Nonlinear Least Squares, Marketing Science 23, 451-\n464. 18\n[18] Goldberg, D.E. 1989. Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and\nMachine Learning, Addison-Wesley. 19\n[19] Kalish, S., and S. K. Sen. 1986. Diffusion models and the marketing\nmix for single products. In Innovation Diffusion Models of New Product\nAcceptance, edited by V. Mahajan, and Y. Wind, 87-115. Cambridge,\nMA: Ballinger."]}

This paper seeks to ascertain how the turnover factors, vender features and industrial characteristics improve the firm efficiency under enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems. A comparison of DEA efficiency score is conducted between pre-ERP and post-ERP phases based on 59 Taiwanese firms which implement ERP from 1998 to 2003. ERP adopters are found to reduce their turnover days of account receivables or inventories, and prolong turnover days of unpaid accounts permitted by their suppliers, thus causing a substantial efficiency elevation after ERP implementation. In addition, this article captures the greater efficiency advance based upon leading vendor packages. This suggests that the rapid efficiency growth under ERP formula is closely connected with the consulting supports of leading vendors. Furthermore, the electronics industry performs better than non-electronics industry after ERP installation, which implies "electronics firms' more reliance on such ERP mechanisms" to effectively integrate resources, and as a result enhance performance.

Since Taiwan and U.S. integrated circuit (IC) industries cluster in Hsinchu Science Industrial Park (HSIP) and Silicon Valley, respectively, these IC firms can easily imitate any innovation through the interactions among intra-industry firms. The contribution of intra-industry innovation development to firms' technological advancement is defined as the "spillover effect". This paper compares how the innovation characteristics and industrial clustering influence the spillover effects. The results show the research and development (R&D) spillover effects in IC manufacturing, packaging and testing industries appear evidently greater than those in IC design industry, while the patent spillover effect exhibits greater for IC design industry than for the other IC industries. Similar production stages in IC manufacturing, packaging and testing industries enable firms to easily imitate R&D outcomes within the same industry. By contrast, the production process of IC design firms is diversified, so they hardly upgrade their technical skills through the interchange of R&D information within the same industry. Hence, the IC design firms, which focus on product innovation, rely more on patent licensing to develop core technology innovation. Finally, R&D spillover effect is evidently greater in U.S. IC design industry than in Taiwan IC design industry, while patent spillover effect appears greater in Taiwan IC design industry than in U.S. IC design industry. The IC design industry in U.S. free-rides intra-industry R&D outcomes more easily than that in Taiwan. Consequently, Taiwan IC design firms rely on patent spillovers to develop IC elements, which are compatible with the incumbent IC products.

This study applies dynamic diffusion theory to forecast Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) of Taiwan IC industry into China. We compare the FDI external and internal influence factors among IC design, packaging and testing industries. The internal impact is stronger for IC packaging and testing firms than for IC design ones, revealing the profound imitating inclination of IC packaging and testing industry. The potential FDI amount is estimated to be much greater for IC packaging and testing industry. Consistent with product life cycle theory, Taiwan transfers low-end IC packaging and testing manufactory toward China where the labour wages are much lower.