Several organizations have developed online crowdsourcing platforms that tap into the “wisdom” (creative ideas for new products and services) of a large “crowd’ of non-experts (consumers). The crowdsourcing model seems very attractive because consumers are intrinsically motivated to freely contribute their creative ideas, but little is known about the effectiveness of these approaches. Two year...

The procurement system is a key means through which the client creates preconditions for successful achievement of project specific objectives. Various factors affect the use and development of procurement systems in any construction industry. Thus, it is interesting to discover different systems being used in different instances. This paper present the results of a Panel Data Analysis carried ...

Software Product Line was proposed in 2000 as a systematic approach toward reuse. Although benefits of this strategy is totally well known but there are still uncertainties between organizations about how they can apply SPL to their software product. This review tries to study articles in which adoption models and their properties were discussed in order to get a clear perspective about SPLs im...

The revolutionary trends in computer software and hardware, especially after the surge in Internet utilization in the mid-1990s, has dramatically altered the way organizations and individuals operate. The importance of internet and its interactions with the economy today have established the need for economists to address this matter. In this study, Internet users as a percentage of population ...

A common and longstanding assumption in the economic growth literature has been that total factor productivity growth is lower in the agriculture sector than in the rest of the economy. Using a stochastic production frontier finite mixture model, labor productivity change is decomposed into catch-up, technological change and factor accumulation effects and stochastic shocks. This decomposition ...

a new intelligent photovoltaic (PV) panel structure to extract the maximum power in mismatch irradiance is proposed. In conventional structures, difference of irradiance between series panels can cause the deviation of maximum power point. In this condition tracking MPP becomes difficult and reduces efficiency. Improvements in power electronics and its effects in PV industrial technology, devel...

In this paper, we address the question of whether official development assistance promotes gender equality in the Middle East and North Africa region by examining the effects of aid to Women’s Equality Organizations and Institutions on women’s political empowerment, measured by the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments. We use panel data (covering the period 2002-10) from 13...

This paper analyzes whether nation-state governments can increase their credibility by becoming members of international organizations. Credibility is an important asset because it determines the real interest rate and is expected to have an important impact on investment and growth. It is hypothesized that the degree of delegation to international organizations can improve the credibility of n...