As foreign direct investment (FDI) grows rapidly in this highly integrated world, numerous new challenges confront the existing global trading system. Both developed countries and their developing counterparts have been trying to reach harmonious bilateral or multilateral agreements. However,...

The hospitality industry in the United States is transforming. There is an emerging class of American consumers eager to express themselves in their use of lodging products and services. The new generation of American consumers desire renaissance of self expression when choosing a place to stay....

Efficiency gains from recent U.S. bank consolidations are evaluated in this study. Our analysis is based on the well-developed duality theory, according to which we can use a profit function to explore some characteristics of the production process. This profit function correlates bank profits...

Purpose - To explore and identify the strategic approaches firms may follow in their pursuit of value transparency (VT) in inter-organisational relations in supply networks. Design/methodology/approach - Through the use of game theory an understanding of the difficulties of co-operation and...

Trumpism not only retains the tradition of the Republican Party, but also has the factors of the times. It is character- ized by populism, emphasis on political identity, anti-globalization and neglect of alliances. The Sino-US trade war in 2018 and 2019 seriously affected the economic and trade...

Generalized likelihood ratio statistics have been proposed in Fan, Zhang and Zhang [Ann. Statist. 29 (2001) 153-193] as a generally applicable method for testing norparametic hypotheses about nonparametric functions. The likelihood ratio statistics are constructed based on the assumption that...

Likelihood ratio theory has had tremendous success in parametric inference, due to the fundamental theory of Wilks. Yet, there is no general applicable approach for nonparametric inferences based on function estimation. Maximum likelihood ratio test statistics in general may not exist in...

The empirical likelihood cannot be used directly sometimes when an infinite dimensional parameter of interest is involved. To overcome this difficulty, the sieve empirical likelihoods are introduced in this paper. Based on the sieve empirical likelihoods, a unified procedure is developed for...

While earlier empirical studies found a negative saving effect of old-age dependency rates without considering longevity, recent studies have found that longevity has a positive effect on growth without considering old-age dependency rates. In this paper, we first justify the related yet...