181 research outputs found
Hungary's bankruptcy experience, 1992-93
No full textHungary adopted a tough new bankruptcy law in late 1991 that took effect on January 1, 1992. It required managers of firms with arrears over 90 days to any creditor to file for either reorganization or liquidation within eight days (the so-called"automatic trigger") and provided a rather sympathetic framework in which to do so. The result: since January 1992, more than 25,000 cases have been filed - far beyond lawmakers'expectations. Both positive and negative views about the law have been expressed, but details about how the process has actually worked have been scarce. The authors help fill this information gap by providing detailed data on a randomly selected stratified sample of actual cases filed in 1992-93, supplemented by information gained through interviews with judges, liquidations, and firms involved in bankruptcy. Their conclusions are as follows. First, the bankruptcy process appears to have had some degree of economic logic in 1992 and 1993. Better firms were more likely to enter and emerge"successfully"from reorganization, while worse firms were more likely either to fail in reorganization or to file directly for liquidation. Second, judicial reorganization need not be slow and costly. The first wave of reorganizations was handled surprisingly quickly, especially considering the sheer number of cases, the novelty of the process, and the shortage of trained judges. This quickness was possible largely because of the decentralized design of the process. Once the court approved a case, the court had little role. (Amendments added in 1993 may have made the process more bureaucratic and expensive). Third, in this sample, major delays occurred not in reorganization but in liquidation. Creditors will do almost anything to avoid filing for liquidation, and once firms enter liquidation they are still likely to be kept alive indefinitely. In the end, this lack of a viable creditor-led"exit"and debt collection mechanism harms firms by increasing the cost and reducing the flow of credit. Fourth, although the bankruptcy process displays some degree of economic logic, one should not assume that it operates as a similar law would in a market economy. In particular, a likely source of private gain in Hungary appears to be asset or other value diversion (or"value-stripping) before bankruptcy. Fifth, the main need is to strengthen the incentives of creditors to monitor the process closely and to improve their ability to do so.Banks&Banking Reform,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Strategic Debt Management,Small Scale Enterprise,Small and Medium Size Enterprises,Banks&Banking Reform,Strategic Debt Management,Legal Products,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research
Improving efficiency and environmental impact applying JIT logistics and transport consolidation in urban construction projects
No full textfrom the article: "Abstract
The way in which construction logistics is organised has considerable impact on production flow, transportation efficiency,
greenhouse gas emissions and congestion, particularly in urban areas such as city centres. In cities such as London and
Amsterdam municipalities have issued new legislation and stricter conditions for vehicles to be able to access cities and city
centres in particular. Considerate clients, public as well private, have started developing tender policies to encourage contractors
to reduce the environmental impact of construction projects. This paper reports on an ongoing research project applying and
assessing developments in the field of construction logistics in the Netherlands. The cases include contractors and third party
logistics providers applying consolidation centres and dedicated software solutions to increase transportation efficiency. The case
show various results of JIT logistics management applied to urban construction projects leading to higher transportation
efficiencies, and reduced environmental impact and increased production efficiency on site. The data collections included to-site
en on-site observations, measurement and interviews. The research has shown considerable reductions of vehicles to deliver
goods and to transport workers to site. In addition the research has shown increased production flow and less waste such as
inventory, waiting and unnecessary motion on site.
The pellet market in Hungary : main characteristics of the pellet production and consumption and a possible way of growth in Hungary
No full textThe major motivation for writing this work that the author himself works in the renewable energy sector in Hungary, and his first-hand experience has been that the need for information about the utilization of pellets greatly increases especially among the small and medium-size enterprises and on the other hand how little information is yet available. The core question was how the structure of the Hungarian pellet market looks like at present at all, furthermore what are the opportunities for a start up from the point of view of the technology as well as the supply of raw materials? Given that it is statistically almost invisible how pellets are used in Hungary, therefore there is minimum amount of data available I had to initiate my own data collection and to carry out questionnaire survey among the market players. In addition, we have carried out personal interviews at several professional events with prominent local and foreign representatives to draw our conclusions. Our research results show that there are still large gaps in the pellet sector regarding the regulation, education and innovation aspects, on the other hand there seem to be chances at a number of areas for the businesses operating in the Hungarian pellet sector to become international market leaders if they use an appropriate strategy. As a conclusion we can say that to make the best of all of these opportunities if the players of the pellet sector in Hungary find a common platform, and their grassroots initiatives help them start their own development
Nanoscopic Coulomb explosion in ultrafast graphite ablation
No full textThe authors report single-shot femtosecond laser ablation experiments on the highly oriented pyrolitic graphite surface. The yield of positively charged carbon clusters has been measured by time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The reconstructed velocity distribution of atomic carbon ions indicates that the observed Coulomb explosion is most pronounced for fluences slightly above the damage threshold. Atomic force microscopy studies of the damage spots indicate nanoscopic removal of intact monolayers. The results imply a significant degree of charge localization on the surface graphite layers. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics
Mapping Gendered Communications, Film, and Media Studies: Seven Author Clusters and Two Discursive Communities
No full textThis study examined and mapped the extent to which gender became incorporated into the intersecting research fields of communications, film, and media studies. A total of 8054 academic publications from these disciplines, indexed in the Web of Science between 1975 and 2022 (ndocs = 8054), were extracted to create two types of bibliometric maps: (a) an author co-citation map, and (b) a co-occurrence map of key terms (taken from keyword lists, titles, and abstracts of publications). Our results revealed a pattern of seven distinct clusters of 995 authors (nauthors = 995) in the field. Additional research is needed to analyze the internal structure of these seven clusters, and label them accordingly. The key terms in the same authors’ works, however, show a distinctively different pattern, namely a divided, dichotomous, polarized structure (nterms = 720). Judging from this, we hypothesize that gender is discussed in two main ways: either as a critical concept concerning discourses, representations, and other social and cultural constructs, or as a variable in more formal sociological and psychological research designs. The conceptual framework and results of the present study lay the foundation for further research regarding the diverse academic agendas of the seven author clusters, the split nature of their discursive communities, as well as the key difference between the two patterns
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