•The relation between efficiency and sustainability is an open dilemma.•The eco-efficiency is an agricultural sustainability index for policy makers.•The methodology proposes an indicator for each ...environmental resource.•The northern regions best performing via minimizing the use of environmental resources.•The critical point emerging from the analysis is the missing reduction of waste in agriculture.
Agriculture is a key activity in guarantying food security, one of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN Agenda 2030 for sustainable development. However, agriculture can be an environmental impacting activity when it is managed without attention towards its environmental efficiency. Thus, the assessment of eco-efficiency in agriculture is a crucial tool to evaluate this economic activity in terms of both natural resources exploitation and revenue generation. To address the complex issues associated with this problematic trade-off, the application of a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been to assess the environmental and economic performance of agriculture in terms of eco-efficiency. DEA has been applied the Italian case study at regional level, to provide policy-makers with a synthetic indicator of agricultural sustainability, when implementing funding policies. In particular, the analysis of the case study has taken into account the implementation of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as implemented through the Rural Development Plans. Our approach is a first step in the direction of assessing the long-lasting issue of developing benchmarking policies between the different Italian regions. This works paves the way to future and more in-depth studies needed to determine the eco-efficiency at local scale and, thus, the possibility to identify specific forms of agriculture as nature-based solutions.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
2.
GREEN FINANCE: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE STUDIES PALMACCIO, MATTEO; GALEONE, GRAZIANA; SHINI, MATILDA ...
Journal of Financial Management Markets and Institutions,
12/2023, Volume:
11, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The research consists of a systematic literature review (SLR) emphasizing scholars’ views on the topic of green finance. Seeking to provide a deep understanding of the state of the art, the paper ...aims to draft implications and insights to address future research. Studies on green finance are investigated using the Scopus database as a source to get access to the dataset. The methodological approach is inspired by Kraus et al. (2020) in order “to identify, choose and critically appraise relevant pieces of research, and to generate collective insights of knowledge from past research” (Loureiro et al. 2019).
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Contrast-Enhanced Spectral Mammography (CESM) is a recently introduced mammographic method with characteristics particularly suitable for breast cancer radiomic analysis. This work aims to evaluate ...radiomic features for predicting histological outcome and two cancer molecular subtypes, namely Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2 (HER2)-positive and triple-negative. From 52 patients, 68 lesions were identified and confirmed on histological examination. Radiomic analysis was performed on regions of interest (ROIs) selected from both low-energy (LE) and ReCombined (RC) CESM images. Fourteen statistical features were extracted from each ROI. Expression of estrogen receptor (ER) was significantly correlated with variation coefficient and variation range calculated on both LE and RC images; progesterone receptor (PR) with skewness index calculated on LE images; and Ki67 with variation coefficient, variation range, entropy and relative smoothness indices calculated on RC images. HER2 was significantly associated with relative smoothness calculated on LE images, and grading tumor with variation coefficient, entropy and relative smoothness calculated on RC images. Encouraging results for differentiation between ER+/ER-, PR+/PR-, HER2+/HER2-, Ki67+/Ki67-, High-Grade/Low-Grade and TN/NTN were obtained. Specifically, the highest performances were obtained for discriminating HER2+/HER2- (90.87%), ER+/ER- (83.79%) and Ki67+/Ki67- (84.80%). Our results suggest an interesting role for radiomics in CESM to predict histological outcomes and particular tumors' molecular subtype.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a relevant topic for researchers and practitioners, widely explored with reference to companies. However, there are still few studies that address how higher ...education institutions integrate CSR practices into their strategy. This represents an important limitation since the university, through academic training and research activity, is the main promoter of CSR practices among different categories of stakeholders. Given the many benefits associated with the adoption of CSR, this study aims to explore the topic of CSR in universities, as they are institutions that act in the public interest and represent the ideal context for spreading the culture of preserving environmental and social, as well as economic, sustainability. The main purpose of this study is to explore, through the methodology of case studies, the type and effectiveness of the tools used by universities, specifically the University of Bari, to disseminate and integrate CSR into corporate strategy. Furthermore, this study aims to investigate how the university ensures the involvement of stakeholders, represented in particular by professors, administrators and students (stakeholder approach), in CSR initiatives. The analysis revealed the centrality of the investigated university in promoting CSR issues and sustainable territorial development. Finally, the study provides empirical evidence of the actions and methods of integrating CSR practices into corporate strategy and the ways in which stakeholders are involved.
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CEKLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
A timely diagnosis is essential for improving breast cancer patients' survival and designing targeted therapeutic plans. For this purpose, the screening timing, as well as the related waiting lists, ...are decisive. Nonetheless, even in economically advanced countries, breast cancer radiology centres fail in providing effective screening programs. Actually, a careful hospital governance should encourage waiting lists reduction programs, not only for improving patients care, but also for minimizing costs associated with the treatment of advanced cancers. Thus, in this work, we proposed a model to evaluate several scenarios for an optimal distribution of the resources invested in a Department of Breast Radiodiagnosis.
Particularly, we performed a cost-benefit analysis as a technology assessment method to estimate both costs and health effects of the screening program, to maximise both benefits related to the quality of care and resources employed by the Department of Breast Radiodiagnosis of Istituto Tumori "Giovanni Paolo II" of Bari in 2019. Specifically, we determined the Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) for estimating health outcomes, in terms of usefulness of two hypothetical screening strategies with respect to the current one. While the first hypothetical strategy adds one team made up of a doctor, a technician and a nurse, along with an ultrasound and a mammograph, the second one adds two afternoon teams.
This study showed that the most cost-effective incremental ratio could be achieved by reducing current waiting lists from 32 to 16 months. Finally, our analysis revealed that this strategy would also allow to include more people in the screening programs (60,000 patients in 3 years).
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CEKLJ, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The presence of clusters of microcalcifications is a primary sign of breast cancer. Their identification is still difficult today for radiologists, and the wrong evaluations involve unnecessary ...biopsies. In this paper, an automatic tool for characterizing and discriminating clusters of microcalcifications into benign/malignant in digital mammograms is proposed. A set of 104 digital mammograms including microcalcification clusters was randomly extracted from a public available database and manually labeled by our radiologists, obtaining 96 abnormal ROIs. For each so-identified ROI, a multi-scale image decomposition based on the Haar wavelet transform was performed. On the decomposition, a textural features extraction step was carried out both on each sub-image and on the corresponding gray-level co-occurrence matrix. Then, a random forest classifier was employed for classifying microcalcification clusters into benign and malignant. The study found that the most discriminant features extracted from the ROIs decomposition by Haar transform were variance and relative smoothness, whereas as regards the textural features calculated on the GLCMs corresponding to the Haar-decomposed ROI, it emerged that the relationship between the pixels of the sub-image in the diagonal direction had high discriminating power for the classification of microcalcification clusters into benign and malignant. The proposed method was evaluated in cross-validation and performed highly in the prediction of the benign/malignant ROIs, with a mean AUC value of 97.39 ± 0.01 % .
Abstract
The financial networking of companies operating in the globalized market raises the imperative of assessing the risk of insolvency. Business survival is an extremely trending topic in the ...literature and the managerial context. Risk management requires new perspectives on sustainability. The aim of this work is to verify that Altman's score still maintains its supremacy as the best tool used to investigate the financial insolvency of enterprises. The novelty of the work is the implementation of a bibliometric analysis conducted on Scopus and Web of Science, using analytical software (Bibliometrix R, VOSviewer), identifying future paths of analysis and evaluations of the impact of Altman's methods. Results reveal an exceptional growth in the number of publications on this topic over the last two decades, testifying to its topicality in the academic debate. In light of rising climate change and environmental risks, findings suggested how the Altman score may preserve its function in getting deeper to prevent business bankruptcy. By providing practical evidence, Altman's models encompass a variety of fields, including finance, accounting, economics, management, and all of them addresses the area of sustainability.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Since soccer is the most prominent sport in Europe—not to mention the world—it is no wonder that deep strategizing has become the norm in its management models. In this study we extract from real ...data the hidden and nontrivial relationships that have developed within the game in order to further the current understanding of how a team's performance is premised on its tactical and financial choices. We adopt, for the first time—in combination with an ordered logit model—inequality indexes at the team level. Our analysis uses a large and unique dataset that includes all of the teams from the top five European national championship leagues, including detailed player and team statistics. The results differ between the top-tier and medium-to-bottom tier teams and highlight an overall strategic evolution over the last decade.
•This research has contributed to filling the gap that exists in the current literature on the key success factors of soccer teams•Our results highlight a change that has occurred in Europe over the last decade•In recent years, winning teams have adopted a community-based game system that features leaders who trigger this mechanism•The implication of our research is that leadership is just one element required to achieve success.•Our paper highlights the necessary levers for the creation of sporting and financial value for sporting enterprises.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The aim of this paper is to understand whether national culture is linked with operative performance of organic agriculture. The ultimate goal is, indeed, to measure the impact of social change on ...technical innovation and sustainability issues. We built an econometric model where the impact of some of the six dimensions of national culture by Geert Hofstede is tested on inputs and outputs of organic production, on a country‐based scale. We collected data about the evolution of organic agriculture through the last two decades, extracting data about 27 countries of the European Union from 2000 to 2017. We tested the dataset into two passages: we first employed a DEA model to assess efficiency of organic farming, and then we correlated results to Hofstede 6‐D model of national culture. We observed the existence of a relationship between culture and innovation, explaining the importance of determined values in people's management within the firm. The operative performance of organic agriculture is linked to determined culturally influenced business values. We used efficiency results as variables for measuring innovation approach based on cultural models. It has been enhanced the relevance to the nexus innovation‐culture approaching to one of the most innovation‐resistant industrial sectors.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
PurposeThe present study focuses on the role of PDO certification in fostering the quality perception of certified-food consumers – highlighting the difference between quality brands and ...environmental labels. The case study of Mozzarella di Gioia del Colle DOP was taken into consideration to evaluate the opportunity of supporting a food product suitable for all families and promoting it worldwide through a quality certification.Design/methodology/approachThe authors made a qualitative analysis on local Apulian consumers and, for testing our hypotheses, structural equation models were applied to evaluate the effect of familiarity on the relationships between perceived risk, trust, satisfaction, loyalty, resolution to pay a higher price and intent to purchase a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) certified food product.FindingsThe authors observed managerial implications which seek to improve the collaborative network between the subjects employed in the phases of the production process, the stakeholders and the consortia, in order to plan a holistic development territorial strategy. It is useful to start a process of knowledge and evaluation of the benefits of the quality mark in the territory of origin of the PDO food product.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors provided theoretical and managerial implications which aim at improving the collaborative network between the subjects employed in the phases of the production process, stakeholders and consortia, in the outlook of territorial development strategies.Originality/valueAccording to the analysis of the theoretical background, the opportunity to recognise the origin of a certain product allows the consumer to easily appreciate its intrinsic quality, relating a combination of factors to the territorial matching. It also focuses on the analysis of a different feedback at a local level from consumers, showing a lower intention to pay by consumers living in the same area where the PDO product comes from rather than other food goods.
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