This paper explores the leverage determinants across firms’ sizesbased on the two main theories behind the capital structure, the trade-offand the pecking order theories. A panel data is sued to find therelationship between capital structure and the variables that proxy forbenefits and costs of debt during 1990 to 2006. Our findings show thatboth principles help to explain the capital structure...

Simulation study is very important in model validation. It is invaluable and versatile tool especially in statistical problems and modeling where analytical technique is inadequate. In fitting to a model, problems will raise when there exists one or more high-leverage points in the data set. Due to the fact that the presence high-leverage points are commonly occurred in models fitting, we propo...

Adoption of evidence-based practice (EBP) is an increasingly advocated yet formidable challenge. Much work on EBP has implied simplistic solutions: if researchers would produce practice-relevant evidence-based approaches, practitioners would find, adopt, and use them. Blaming researchers for problems in supply, and practitioners for resistance in adoption, will only thwart progress at improving...

It is recognized that international water sector development work has issues with a lack of sustained positive outcomes. A large driver of this outcome is how NGOs work with communities to implement and then manage water services. Many NGOs tend to focus their efforts on improving their reach and organisational growth by continually engaging in new projects. This behaviour is largely driven by ...

The least squares linear regression estimator is well-known to be highly sensitive to unusual observations in the data, and as a result many more robust estimators have been proposed as alternatives. One of the earliest proposals was least-sum of absolute deviations (LAD) regression, where the regression coefficients are estimated through minimization of the sum of the absolute values of the re...

The introduction of good faith bargaining in Western Australia: Policy origins and implications for collective bargaining Michael Gillan and Donella Caspersz University of Western Australia The Australian Industrial Relations Commission ruled in 2003 that there was no legal duty on parties to bargain in ‘good faith’. In Western Australia, the Gallop Labor Government has introduced good faith ba...

We have conducted a multiscale analysis of system behavior for improvement of infection control in and among hospitals, other care facilities and their relationships to community settings. Our analysis identifies key leverage points for intervention to improve the quality of healthcare systems. In particular, it reveals intervention points that are not currently being addressed. While today the...

The paper develops a system dynamics simulation model to understand the dynamics of immunisation with the aim of aiding decision making process by proposing policies that would enhance immunisation utilization. The model is designed with the intent to show how particular variables influence immunisation demand and coverage rather than predict immunisation coverage rates. The paper applies syste...

The two general data analytic questions of subgroup mining (B2.2) deal with deviations and associations (C5.2.3, C5.2.4). A deviation pattern describes a deviating behavior (distribution) of a target variable in a subgroup. Target variable and behavior type are selected by the analyst for an individual mining task, the deviating subgroups are determined by the mining method. Deviation patterns ...