A model for comparing the inventory costs of purchasing under an economic order quantity (EOQ) with a price discount system and a just-in-time (JIT) order purchasing system concluded that JIT purchasing is virtually always the preferable inventory ordering system. This claim however contradicts...

The increasing impacts of natural disasters on disadvantaged rural areas, especially in developing countries, have led to concerns regarding post-disaster rural settlement reconstruction. Various approaches, including resettlement and in-situ reconstruction, have been adopted, both of which...

The briefing process is critical to the successful delivery of construction projects. Although a number of briefing guides have been developed, attempting to address the problems of briefing, they are often criticized as being too general and implicit. This paper describes a structured framework...

A remarkable disagreement/deviation between the rate of ISO 14001 registration and the rate of implementation of environmental impact assessment in the Chinese construction industry indicates that the contractors there might not have really applied environmental management (EM) in construction...

In the current economic climate, budgets for the maintenance of public buildings are unlikely to meet the ever-increasing maintenance needs. Although it is unlikely that this problem can be overcome completely without an injection of further resources, it is possible for government maintenance...

Wide acceptance of the concept of sustainable development has led to a demand for policies on sustainable housing. The issues of how sustainable housing can be measured or evaluated and how decision-making regarding sustainable housing can be facilitated are areas that require further research....

On one hand, n-butanol as a potential alternative bio-fuel is accepted more and more attention presently in the fields of both scientific research and commercial market; on the other hand, some n-butanol's (or its mixtures blended with conventional fossil fuels) combustion properties, especially...

We present a simple theoretical model of adverse selection when lenders allow reduced documentation. The model shows how reduced documentation attracts both riskier borrowers and larger size loans. We then empirically test implications of the model using stated income loans originated during the...

We analyze the prices of owner-occupied housing in 97 metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2011. Our tests indicate that price changes exhibit positive serial correlation at the one year intervals, with subsequent reversals of price changes over longer intervals. Consistent with our simple model,...

Financial regulators, analysts and journalists have expressed concern that open market share repurchases may help support share prices. We test this conjecture by examining repurchasing firms' share price patterns on entering mandatory non-trading periods imposed by the London Stock Exchange. If...