Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been used as a tool for evaluating past accomplishments in the banking industry. However, due to a time lag, the results usually arrive too late for the evaluated banking institutions to react timely. This paper makes advanced predictions of the performances of 24 commercial banks in Taiwan based on their financial forecasts. The forecasts based on uncertain ...

Significant economic disparities among China’s Eastern, Central, and Western regions pose unequivocal challenges to social equality and political stability in the country. A major impediment to economic development, especially in the poor, remote Western region, is the shortage of transportation infrastructure. The Chinese government has committed to substantial investment for improving the acc...

This paper presents a new approach for estimating the amount of carbon embodied in a product consumed in a given economy, taking account of where the inputs to that product were extracted and processed all along the supply chain. The method is generalized to apply to all factor inputs, including materials and energy, as well as pollutant emissions and can track not only the flows of factors and...

The Leontief model is generally considered as belonging to the category of the production-prices models , aside of the Ricardian, Marxian and Sra aian models. This paper clearly demonstrates that this is a super cial point of view. As the Leontief model handles price indexes, it is biperiodic: the Leontief price indexes solve the model for the base time period. The production-prices model that ...

The title compound, [Ni(SO4)(C10H8N2)(C2H6O2)(H2O)] n , contains two crystallographically unique Ni(II) atoms, each lying on a twofold rotation axis and having a slightly distorted octa-hedral environment. It is isotypic with the previously reported Cu(II) analog [Zhong et al. (2011 ▶). Acta Cryst. C67, m62-m64]. One Ni(II) atom is coordinated by two N atoms from two bridging 4,4'-bipyridine (4...

In this paper, we investigate the structure and evolution of customer-supplier networks in Japan using a unique dataset that contains information on customer and supplier linkages for more than 500,000 incorporated non-financial firms for the five years from 2008 to 2012. We find, first, that the number of customer links is unequal across firms; the customer link distribution has a power-law ta...

The Bacillus subtilis DnaI, DnaB and DnaD proteins load the replicative ring helicase DnaC onto DNA during priming of DNA replication. Here we show that DnaI consists of a C-terminal domain (Cd) with ATPase and DNA-binding activities and an N-terminal domain (Nd) that interacts with the replicative ring helicase. A Zn2+-binding module mediates the interaction with the helicase and C67, C70 and ...

The U6 RNA intramolecular stem-loop (ISL) structure is an essential component of the spliceosome and binds a metal ion required for pre-messenger RNA splicing. The metal binding internal loop region of the stem contains a partially protonated C67-(+)A79 base pair (pK(a) = 6.5) and an unpaired U80 nucleotide that is stacked within the helix at pH 7.0. Here, we determine that protonation occurs w...

Although there have been many elaborations of the basic input-output approach, including multi-regional models, dynamic models, models with variable coefficients, supply-side models, etc., these approaches all have the same limitation. The fixed-coefficients production function assumptions ignore substitutions in response to price changes that can be expected to accompany most shocks– skipping ...