Journal articles on the topic 'Rural property investment performance index'

Many researchers are right considering economic effect of investments as the key indicator, however, ranking other social, ecological and technical indicators of efficiency separately and leaving them outside of investment ranking criteria system. The authors suggest using together all known efficiency criteria plus some specific of rural property: Payback period, Net present value, Internal rate of return, Profitability index, Business perspective, Rural property purchase price, Rural property reconstruction price, Number of workspace, Taxes, Social level of villagers, Fascination of village. Ranking rural property investment project does not mean deciding which criterion is preferred to another one. Therefore in this situation we use ELECTRE IV approach, because it's objective is to rank the options, but without any weighting criteria. The authors have made some alternatives of rural property revival: Heating and airing systems factory, Fish products manufacture, Woodworker manufacture. On the basis of calculation results the following partial ranking of the alternative projects is suggested: Fish products manufacture; Heating and airing systems factory; 3. Rural property; 4. Woodworker manufacture; 5. Sport and leisure centre.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of 19 Malaysian Real Estate Investment Trusts (M-REITs) over the period 1999 to 2014, following the implementation of dividend tax reforms announced in the 2007, 2009 and 2012 budgets. Design/methodology/approach Sharpe index, Treynor index and Jensen α are utilized to compare the performance of M-REITs against a newly developed tax-adjusted value-weighted M-REITs index, equity market, property sector and three month Malaysia Treasury Bills (T-Bills). The calculation of M-REITs returns has been adjusted to take into account the dividend tax reforms which have never been considered in previous studies. Findings Most M-REITs outperform the tax-adjusted value-weighted REITs index, equity market, property sector and three month T-Bills. Property sector performs worst during those periods. Some of the M-REITs have a higher standard deviation than the equity market and the tax-adjusted value-weighted M-REITs index. Most M-REITs have a lower total risk than the property sector. Further analysis shows that before (after) the tax reforms, most M-REITs underperform (outperform) the other sectors. The introduction of the tax reforms benefits both REITs and investors. A significant positive Jensen α for some M-REITs indicates that fund managers are able to time the market or to select undervalued assets. Practical implications Findings of the study would enable investors to evaluate the performance of all REITs in comparison to other financial assets during the period of study for better investment decision making. A more accurate assessment on REITs performance that take into account the tax reforms, is available for investors and fund managers to decide on the investment mix to be included in their portfolio. Moreover, fund managers’ performance can be assessed whether they perform better or worse than the equity market, property sector and three month T-Bills. Originality/value This study contributes to the scant literature on dividend tax reforms and their implication toward REITs performance. It is the first study to thoroughly assess the returns of REITs by taking into account the changes on dividend tax rates announced in the 2007, 2009 and 2012 budgets.

Purpose Because Malaysia decided to liberalize its property sector, investors have shown a considerable interest in the country’s property investment. Divided into five sub-sectors, Malaysia’s real estate is sought actively by foreign investors. However, to date, the sub-sectors performance analysis has never been researched for the purpose of investment diversification within the property sector. This paper aims to examine the performance of sub-sectors in the property market, namely, residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and development land. This paper also assesses the portfolio diversification benefits within the sectors. Design/methodology/approach Quarterly data from 2002 or 2014 are used to analyze the performance of the Malaysia property market. The analysis is conducted in three phases, pre-liberalization, post-liberalization and overall period, because it considers the liberalization policy introduced in 2009. Statistically, the risk-adjusted return featuring Sharpe’s index is used to observe how these sub-sectors perform relative to each other. Correlation analysis is used to observe the existence of diversification benefits in terms of a Malaysia property context. Findings It is found that Malaysia’s real estate sub-sectors have different rankings during the pre- and post-liberalization periods. The difference is due to changes in their average return and the risk. During the post-liberalization period, risk for all sub-sectors has increased but has been well compensated by the return. The residential property sector maintains its ranking position as the best sub-sector for every risk investor’s encounter. Research limitations/implications Due to wide range of differences and non-uniformity of costs associated with housings, for example tax rates, rental stream, LTV and others, this research focuses on values and data supplied by NAPIC only. Originality/value Although performance and portfolio diversification benefits have been tested in many Asian countries, none has tried to assess the Malaysia property. This research enables the policy maker to be informed on whether the sub-sectors are performing in accordance to country’s requirement and which sub-sectors need to be improved further.

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; line-height: 12pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;" class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">Using multi-factor models in OLS and GARCH-M methodology, this paper provides a cross-sectional and time-series investigation of conditional and unconditional expected returns of real REITs index momentum portfolios against real estate property, large-cap stock small-cap stock, and bond index in USA. The expected returns and dynamic conditional correlations between REITs and those of other financial and tangible assets vary in period 1989-2010. REITs returns exhibit a higher correlation with up move of financial market, but a lower correlation in market downturns. REITs may possibly provide diversification benefits to multi-asset investment portfolio. We find that the performances of momentum returns are different from the NAREIT index, and display asymmetric volatility as well. Additionally, we find evidence that REITs momentum returns are varying between winner and loser by Wald test. The results of regressions also indicate that REITs return exhibits the greater sensitivity to large- and small-cap stock index, and less closely with those of bond and real estate index. The results also suggest that REITs not be viewed as a complete substitute for investment in tangible property of real estate. </span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

<p>This study aimed to analyze the investment portfolio in the property sector stocks listed in JII using the Sharpe Index, Treynor Index and Jensen Index. Research carried out by using a different test is based on data about the performance of the portfolio during the period of 2010-2014. Based on the data processing obtained F value Calculate for the return of the portfolio in a row that the BSDE amounted to 23 904, CTRA amounted to 21,250, LPKR amounted to 44 981, and SMRA amounted to 38 729, then to see the F Calculate there, the conclusion that F count&gt; F table is on BSDE 23 904&gt; 3.885294, at CTRA 21,250&gt; 3.885294, on LPKR amounted to 44 981&gt; 3.885294, and the SMRA 38 729&gt; 3.885294, and a significance level of &lt;0.05 then the conclusion is not the differences significant return between BSDE, CTRA, LPKR, and SMRA approach Sharpe Index, Treynor Index and Jensen Index. While in terms of performance, there are differences in the performance of the portfolio using Sharpe Index, Treynor Index and Jensen Index.</p>

This study compares different index construction methods of timberland investment returns and evaluates the resulting indices by various asset pricing models. In addition to various NCRIEF indices, I include a de-smoothed index that attempts to restore property market values, a transaction-based index that tracks ex post transaction prices, and a pure-play index that is based on unleveraged returns of public timber firms and only has exposures to the timber segment. The findings are that the appraisal-based timberland index has higher mean and lower volatility compared with the transaction-based timberland index, separate accounts outperform comingled funds in the private timberland market, the pure-play timberland index exhibits higher return and lower risk than the corresponding portfolio of public timber firms, and abnormal performance of timberland asset becomes less significant after controlling for the appraisal smoothing or by using real transaction data. These results can help timberland investors better benchmark their financial performance.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to fill an existing gap in the field. A transaction-based hotel price index for Europe is constructed to provide a true measure for hotel real estate performance. The index will enable investors enhance investment decisions in many ways: to assess individual property performance; to make an objective decision about where to invest and in which property type; to assess the relative performance of hotel assets to all other sectors and consequently reach optimal funds allocation decisions. This will allow investors to time their acquisitions/disposals according to the hotel property cycle. Design/methodology/approach – Data include 495 hotel property transactions in Europe during the period between 2004 and 2013. Transaction prices and property characteristics were collected from a variety sources published by hotel agents and consultants, property magazines, newspapers, tourist board, individual property and hotel association registers and web sites. Data include property name, sale price, size, time of sale, location, buyers and sellers. A hedonic pricing model is developed where the transaction price is regressed on the different characteristics. The index is calculated by taking the anti-logs of regression coefficients of the year index. Findings – This paper claims that the hotel property price index (HPPI) portrays a more realistic picture of what happened to hotel property prices in 2008 showing a single digit negative growth vs the hotel valuation index which reports a double digit negative growth rate in European hotel prices during the same year. The real impact of recession showed on hotel property prices in 2009. HPPI shows a crash in hotel property prices by -23.7 per cent in 2009. The year 2011 was marked by more sales transacted through administrators and a looming double-dip recession. Unlike appraisal-based indices, HPPI does not suffer from sticky valuation issues and is not desensitise from distressed properties. Therefore, it was more volatile to distressed situations throughout the period between 2011 and 2013. Research limitations/implications – Results of this study should be considered with caution. There are limitations associated with transaction data including incompleteness or inaccuracies regarding price data, financing information for each deal, property tenure, and property characteristics. Practical implications – This work has successfully developed an HPPI for hotel property in Europe. This paper paves the way for transaction-based indices that are more volatile than existing appraisal-based indices. This represents a significant development in tracking price movements of hotel properties in Europe. The index has potential to support research and forecasting of the hotel property cycles. Originality/value – This paper fulfils an identified need to track hotel property prices and timing the hotel property cycle.

Tremendous agricultural potential in Colombia has gone untapped for decades due to: i) civil strife and the criminal drug trade; ii) uncertain property rights; iii) inadequate infrastructure; iv) lack of innovation and technological development; v) lack of funding, vi) lack of investment; and vii) misallocation of resources within the sector. Proof of this is the relatively lower growth of the value of Colombia’s agriculture versus other countries in the region during the agricultural prices booms (FAO, 2015). This paper analyzes whether Colombia’s weak agricultural performance was due to low productivity growth rather than input accumulation. Using econometric specifications, this paper finds that Colombia’s agricultural productivity grew on average between 0.8% and 1.3% annually from 1975 and 2013. This growth was mainly driven by livestock and poultry productivity, which grew between 1.6% and 2.2%, while crop productivity grew between 0% and 0.8%. Likewise, this paper finds biased technical and scale effects whenever the models are able to test their presence. In addition, it finds evidence that Colombia’s agricultural productivity growth was affected by changing economic circumstances. These results are significant for post-conflict rural investment because they provide information about the returns on future government investment options in the rural sector of Colombia.

Purpose The South African listed property market has changed its legal basis from property loan stock companies and property unit trusts to adopt the more familiar international structure, real estate investment trusts. The main distinction is how shareholding is structured and investment returns are paid out to shareholders, which results in a different tax treatment. It is hoped that this change would attract more foreign investment, but it is questionable if this is sufficient to convince global investors who, amidst a seeming worsening of the stability in the political and economic environment, would probably need more insight into aspects such as investment decision making within these South African organisations. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Using a balanced scorecard (BSC) framework, this study investigates the relevance of investment decision-making frameworks in South Africa. A survey using a sample of institutional investors that are included in the South African Property Market Index was conducted. Findings The study found similarities in decision-making priorities of South African institutional investors to those of previous studies. With the focus on retail property, tenant mix and secondary to that, quality of the centre management team is found to be important for forecasting expected returns in a retail investment decision environment. Diversification strategies were found to have similar results to previous studies, leaning more towards geographic location than economic location. Further, the study suggested the use of a BSC framework, linking the financial information and different financial ratios to nonfinancial aspects that need specific consideration in a retail investment environment. Research limitations/implications Retail property is considered to be of particular concern due to the business enterprise value that could be created if superior management techniques are applied. The investment decision stage concerned with forecasting expected returns relies on financial and quantitative models such as those derived from Modern Portfolio Theory. In a shopping mall environment, however, future performance is driven by nonfinancial factors, for example, tenant mix and superior customer experience. Therefore, forecasting expected returns in a retail environment requires a nuanced approach relative to other commercial property sectors. Originality/value The paper is considered to be original in its analysis of the retail real estate market in South Africa. This offers new insight into retail properties specifically, but also how investors in South Africa react to decision-making practices. This adds value in the internationalisation of the property market and the consistency and transparent practices applied globally.

Several factors influencing rural-poverty in sub-Saharan-Africa, for all the factors, agricultural-land access/management and “culture of poverty” are quite dominant in literature. This study examines socio-cultural/economic factors influencing poverty and establishes linkages of heterogeneity of land-use systems. Farm-level cost–route surveys of cross-sectional national-data of 800 respondents were used for analysis. Data were analyzed by descriptive-statistics, trans-logarithmic model, and poverty-measures. Descriptive statistics depict land-ownership structure, farmer’s socio-cultural practices, and exploits of government intervention programs influenced agricultural-poverty. Trans-logarithmic coefficients results of short-run sustainability-index (SRSI), land-policy intervention variables and household-sizes are dominance factors. Also, SRSI indicated 0.69, suggesting that 69% of the farmers made unsustainable use of agricultural-land. Moreover, 92% of extremely poor respondents with large household-sizes (61.2%) seek their agricultural-land ownership by rentage, while those with land-titled documents constitute 78.6% of the non-poor. Public-policy interventions must take into account formalization of land-property rights in order to facilitate its transferability and boosting investment.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how real estate returns behaved over the last two decades in relation to the other two asset types. This allows a direct evaluation of how investors make allocation choices and perceive risks and rewards offered by properties in the context of changing market conditions. Design/methodology/approach A de-smoothed MSCI index is used to reflect direct property returns and control for both income and capital returns within it. Indirect property returns are approximated by the RX Real Estate index. By supplementing this data with an analysis of trends in both space and capital markets it is possible to relate investor behavior to events affecting other assets. Findings It is possible to identify three distinctive periods characterized by different correlation of returns and behavior of investors: before the crisis of 2008, the crisis period between 2008 and 2012 and recovery afterwards. These appear to have corresponded to different stages of the economic cycle. Interestingly, performance of asset classes has also differed over that period suggesting that at different points in the cycle asset allocation decisions may have been made differently. Practical implications It appears that as investments over the last 15 years real assets in Germany behaved similarly to bonds. It is possible that this phenomenon was driven by an aversion to the stock market and its associated risk which became a concern after the financial crisis of 2008. Over the downturn that followed the market shock investors appear to have turned to assets with simpler risk profiles like direct real estate and government debt. On the other hand, the correlation between direct property investment index and stock returns has been found to be small but negative. This shows not only that the two asset classes were often driven by different factors but also suggests that diversification was, at least theoretically, possible. Originality/value Direct real estate investment returns have repeatedly been found to exhibit characteristics similar to those found in bond as well as equity markets (Eichholtz and Hartzell, 1996; Clayton and MacKinnon, 2003) but little research examines the correlation between returns offered by those asset classes in a mature financial and property market. In addition, the recent financial crisis provided a dynamically changing investment which is ideal for investigating structural relationships between assets.

The evolution of property right institutions and their consequence on investment decisions are central issues in the political economy of development. Effective and well‐defined property rights are deemed essential in providing the preconditions for economic growth. The importance of property right arrangements stems from the fact that they impact and alter the distribution of income. Economists are, therefore, in agreement that market transactions are more efficient when property rights are enforced. According to North and Thomas (1973), observed variations in economic performance across countries were related to the presence (or absence, for that matter) of property right institutions. Recently, Beseley (1995), and Feder and Feeny (1991), have argued that economic development and well‐established property right institutions are positively correlated. Meanwhile, there are two arguments in the literature in favour of establishing property rights institutions. First, assigning ownership of valuable assets and designating the parties bearing the rewards and costs is expected to strengthen market forces. In particular, the private control over assets and the ability to reap the rewards from exploiting these assets create incentives for investment and production. Second, enforcing contractual agreements is expected to provide economic agents with the incentives to use resources effectively and efficiently. When property rights are poorly defined, contracts become hard to enforce and fraud and corruption go unpunished. Bureaucrats responsible for formulating government policies will use their positions to influence the allocation of resources whereby, business managers find themselves forced to buy favours. The need to pay substantial bribes will, therefore, reduce the entrepreneur's incentives to invest and impose a significant burden on economic growth. Empirical evidence based on cross‐country comparisons does indeed suggest that corruption has large, adverse effects on private investment and economic growth. Mauro (1996) showed that when a country improves its standing on the corruption index, say, from 6 to 8 (0 being the most corrupt, 10 the least) it will experience a 4 percentage point increase in its investment rate and a 0.5 percentage point increase in its annual per capita GDP growth rate. These large effects suggest that policies that establish institutions to curb corruption could have significant payoffs. Political corruption will also undercut the government's ability to raise revenues from issuing licenses and permits, and lead to ever‐higher tax rates being levied on fewer and fewer taxpayers. This, in turn, reduces the government's ability to provide essential public goods, including the rule of law. When institutions are weak, bribes can alter outcomes of the legal and regulatory process by inducing the government either to fail to stop illegal activities (such as drug dealing or pollution) or unduly favour one party over another in court cases or other legal proceedings. Furthermore, theoretical and empirical studies have shown that corruption and political control usually raise transaction costs, uncertainty, and are associated with free‐rider problems. These costs will, therefore, constitute a dead‐weight loss to the society. Unless political and economic reforms are made, these inefficiencies will certainly hamper growth and development.

The provision of basic public services in rural areas is a necessary condition for promoting farmers, agriculture, and rural development, and has important economic effects. The supply of basic public services in rural areas has an impact on agricultural growth, rural poverty reduction, and farmers’ production and investment, and ultimately directly or indirectly affect farmers’ income and consumption. In order to effectively improve the effectiveness of providing basic public services in rural areas, this study takes rural basic public services as the research object, and analyzes the economic and geographic perspectives, models, and algorithms of supply effectiveness through a literature review. It was found that the research area level needs to be deepened, and the shortcomings of traditional models and algorithms were also found. This article will make full use of the TOPSIS model’s methodological advantages in comprehensive ranking, combine the entropy method with the TOPSIS model, and sort the evaluation objects by approaching the optimal solution, so as to more objectively evaluate the rural basic public service supply in the sample counties. Based on the data aggregation algorithm, with the help of spatial analysis methods, Gini coefficient, and Theil index to further study the spatial distribution characteristics of supply. The research shows that the method has good performance and can be used as a reference for the subsequent related research rural basic services theory.

Brazilian fish farms presented an accelerated development during the early 90's, mainly because of the increase in fee-fishing operations. To meet the demand of this market, fish production and supply became excessive and, as a consequence, the number of fee-fishing operations, farmers and the final selling price, decreased. This study analyzes the technical aspects, production cost, profitability and economic viability of the production of piauçu (L. macrocephalus) in ponds, based on information from a rural property. Feeding and fingerling costs amount to approximately 47.1% of the total production cost, representing together with the final selling price the most important factor affecting profitability. The payback period was 8.3 years, the liquid present value US$ 291.07, the internal return margin 9%, and the income-outcome ratio was 1.01, which represents an unattractive investment as a projection based on current conditions. The improvement in productive efficiency enhances the economic valuation index, and that the relative magnitude of cost and income are the most important points for the economic viability of the studied farm.

Corporate social responsibility, disclosed in sustainability reporting, influences the financial performance of companies. As a result, traditional stock market indices (TI) are expanded with the social responsible stock market indices (SRI). The aim of this study was to establish whether there are any differences in the behavior of the TI and SRI. To do this, the authors analyzed their efficiency. They used R/S analysis to calculate the Hurst exponent as a measure of persistence (long-term memory property). The presence of persistence was evidence in favor of less efficiency. According to empirical results, SRI has lower efficiency, in particular the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Lower efficiency was also observed in the emerging markets with a responsible investment segment, compared to the traditional stock market indices. Further standardization and a common methodological approach to corporate sustainability reporting disclosure are proposed.

In the early industrial age which with high intensity of machine and labor, using financial measurement index was good enough to tie in company’s mechanization and philosophy of management and been in efficiency. But being comply with “New Economic age,” a new economic environment is full of knowledge and information, the enterprise competition had changed from tangible assets, plants to intangible innovation ability of knowledge. As recognizing the new tendency by enterprise, they value gradually the growth and influence from learning. Practice of organization learning not only needs firm structure and be in coordination with both hardware and software, but also needs an affect measurement model to offer enterprise to estimate learning performance. It’s a good instrument of financial performance measure mold in the past years, But it’s for measuring the past, couldn’t formulate enterprise trend to future, hard to estimate investment for future, such as development of products, organization learning, knowledge management etc, as which intangible assets and knowledge ability just the key factors of being win around competition environment in the future. In 1992, Kaplan and Norton brought up Balance Scorecard (BSC) on Harvard Business Review, as an instrument helping enterprise to measure performance, which is being considered to be a most influence management instrument. It added non‐financial index such as customer, internal process and learning growth besides traditional financial index, as offering enterprise an index to measure and manage intangible assets and intellectual property. As being aware of organization learning is hard to be ignored in the new economic age, this research is based on learning and growth of BSC, and citing one national material company try to let the most difficult measurement performance of organization learning, to be estimate through BSC, analyze of factor and individual case, to discuss the company how to make the related strategy and vision of organization learning to develop learning and growth of the structure of BSC, subject the matter of out put factors to be discussed, and measure the outcomes as a result of research. The research affect offers (1) the base implement procedure of carrying out BSC; (2) the reference of formulating measurement index while enterprise using BSC to estimate performance of organization learning; (3) the possibility bottleneck maybe forcing while carrying out BSC, to be an improvement or preventive for enterprise.

The development of agriculture largely depends on the creation of favorable state economic conditions, including in the form of state support for rural producers. The paper analyzes the results of state support of farmers of the Orenburg region over the past three years. In the Orenburg region, there is a decrease in state support. The downward trend has caused negative performance of agricultural enterprises. State support for the livestock industry has decreased.The experience of previous years has shown the need for public investment in animal husbandry. Crop production in the region absorbs half of public funds. In our opinion, crop production of the Orenburg region copes for a long period without the participation of the state. Due to underfunding of livestock in the region, the third part of agricultural organizations in the region is unprofitable. In 2018, the index of agricultural production decreased by ten percentage points compared to 2017. Research in the work, the structure of public investment, is of scientific interest, and the conclusions drawn are of practical importance for the regulation and management of state support. This is important not only for agriculture in the Orenburg region, but also for agricultural production in other regions of the Russian Federation.The increase in state investments in crop production in the regions of the Russian Federation speaks about the imperfection of land relations. Most of the rural producers work on leased land. Public finances settle with landowners, most often at the helm of state power or criminals.

Purpose The authors in this paper aim to investigate the performance of different portfolios of REITs which specialise by property type compared to the performance of a diversified free-float market capitalisation-weighted benchmark index to determine whether superior risk-adjusted returns can be achieved. Design/methodology/approach First, the authors examine the performance of portfolios constructed using the criteria of equal weight, minimum variance, maximum Sharpe and risk parity rather than free-float market capitalisation. Second, the authors apply an automated trading strategy of trend following to see if this filter will improve risk-adjusted returns. Findings The two-step process of forming combinations of REIT sectors with the subsequent addition of a trend following overlay can offer clear benefits relative to a passive benchmark investment. Research limitations/implications Although three of the four strategies were shown to outperform the benchmark index on a risk-adjusted basis, one issue was that the efficient portfolios tended to have large weightings to relatively few sectors. The authors also found that maximum drawdowns (losses) of the strategies tended to be rather high, as was the benchmark. Practical implications The methods outlined in this paper can be applied to construct superior risk-adjusted REIT portfolios globally. Originality/value Although studies have been undertaken separately on REIT specialisation and trend following in equity and commodity markets, this paper is the first to combine the two topics, and therefore has particular value for real estate fund managers globally.

The family milpa system (FMS) is of great importance to food security and the livelihoods of rural families in Mexico. However, the performance of the system can be compromised due to inappropriate agricultural practices. Therefore, a suitable evaluation strategy is required to identify the best management of resources. Nonetheless, at present, there is no holistic understanding around the nature–society interface that allows us to predict the global behavior of the FMS. Thus, this study assesses the global performance of a Poblano FMS through emergy-based indices. The emergy evaluation was carried out by accounting for the available energy of different qualities used in the system, which were subsequently converted to one kind of energy (solar emjoules). The percentage of renewable emergy (%Ren) used in the system was 72.16%. The emergy self-support ratio (ESR) showed that 74% of the emergy used came from free local resources. The emergy investment ratio (EIR) of 0.36 indicated that the emergy use was efficient. The emergy yield ratio (EYR) was 3.78, which in terms of net emergy (NE), was equivalent to a gain of 1.35 × 1016 sej ha−1 y−1. The environmental loading ratio (ELR) was 0.39, which indicated a low potential environmental impact. The emergy sustainability index (ESI) was high (9.80) compared to other agricultural systems. The performance of the FMS is superior compared to other agricultural systems, including ecologic and recycling systems. However, the use of resources is not optimum and needs to be improved to reach maximum empower.

Connectivity is a key component of rural development in developing countries. Traditionally, many road organizations budget and program for road works on a historical basis. An objective, needs-based approach is necessary with knowledge of the content, structure, and condition of the roads being managed. The Highway Development and Management Tool (HDM-4) provides a suitable framework for such an approach. From the available traffic and condition surveys, nine representative low-volume road sections with varying geometry and pavement condition are analyzed. The types of vehicles using the roads are two- and three-wheelers; standard medium buses; standard minibuses; light commercial vehicles; two-axle trucks, cars, and tractors among the motorized traffic; and bullock cart and bicycle among the nonmotorized traffic, which are the conventional modes of transport for low-volume roads in developing countries. The purpose of the study is to forecast budget requirements and predict performance trends by applying the strategy analysis of HDM-4 to low-volume roads. The analysis was carried out for two objective functions: to maximize the net present value and to minimize the total costs for a target international roughness index. The design period was 20 years; economic indicators were determined at a discount rate of 12%. Two investment alternatives, namely, a desired maintenance and an ideal maintenance, are compared with the do-minimum alternative. The study reveals that the strategy application of HDM-4 can be used for managing low-volume roads effectively. The tool will help in forecasting budget requirements and assessing the impact of various investment alternatives.

The method of the analysis of efficiency of use of investments for increase of continuity of electricity supply for customers is offered. The use of coefficients which are identical to product of average specific financing of investment programs with taking into account of standard units of electric equipment and a target System Average Interruption Duration Index in a method of the comparative analysis of efficiency of use of investments is offered. The calculation of factors of an inefficiency of use of investments for increase of continuity of electricity supply of customers which are in rural and city areas is offered. It is offered optimization model of efficiency of use of investments for increase of continuity of electricity supply of customers. The example of practical application of the offered method for definition of companies with inefficient use of investments for increase of continuity of electricity supply of customers in rural and city areas is given. The rank of companies which are chosen for research, by efficiency of use of investments for increase of continuity of electricity supply for customers is determined. Application of this method for the analysis of efficiency of use of investments in the sub-units of the companies and for the use of the calculated coefficients as Key Performance Indicators and corresponding stimulation of sub-units of the regulated companies to more effective use of investments is offered. Conclusion that in sub-units of the regulated companies which are certain as such where inefficiently use investments, on the basis of the analysis of the organization of technical operation and quality of performance of works, uses of modern technologies of repair and maintenance service of an electric equipment, improvement of professional skill of the personnel, and, using corresponding provision of economic incentives, probably to reach increase of continuity of electricity supply of customers is given.

Relevance of research topic. The number of Ukrainian holding-type organizations and their land bankcontinues to grow, "displacing" small and medium-sized producers from the agricultural economy.Since 2019, state policy has been refocusing on forced support for small and small-scale farms, and after the Ukrainian decentralization reform the leadership of the united territorial communities of the new tools they received depends on the development of small and medium-sized businesses. Formulation of the problem. Today, the actualization of local economic development requires significant financial resources from the united territorial communities. And the formation of their budget depends on the effectiveagricultural sector operation. After the Ukrainian reform of local self-government and decentralization, the economic development of the territories and of Ukraine as a whole, depends on the using of new tools and resources by the community leadership. The solution of theagrarian sphere problems of the united territorial communities is in the plane ofsmall agrarian entrepreneurship state support, strengthening of the state control over the activity of large agro-traders, as well as their social and financial responsibility to the united territorial communities. Analysis of recent research and publications. Theoretical questions on the study of small agrarian entrepreneurship in the development of united territorial communities were engaged in such scientists of the Institute of Economics of NASU, Institute of Agrarian Economics of NAAS of Ukraine, as Shemyakin D., Finagina O. V., Lysetsky A. S., Onishchenko O. M., and other national and foreign scientists. Selection of unexplored parts of the general problem. The issue of the impact of decentralization on theagricultural sector development of the united territorial communities needs to be detailed and further researched. Setting the task, the purpose of the study. The article aim is to investigate the theoretical aspect of organizational and legal foundations of the formation of united territorial communities in Ukraine, assess thesmall agricultural business current state and trace its relationship with the activities of united territorial communities for economic development. Method or methodology for conducting research. The set of general scientific methods of cognition and special methods of economic research are used in the work. Among them: analysis and synthesis, generalization and comparison, system-structural and comparative analysis, systematic method of cognition of economic processes and phenomena, index method and method of statistical groupings for analysis of united territorial communities activity development of the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine. Presentation of the main material (results of work). The article considers the theoretical aspect of organizational and legal foundations of the united territorial communities formation in Ukraine, assesses the current state of small agricultural business and reveals it’s main relationships with the united territorial communities activities for region economic development. Territorial communities are voluntary associations of residents of city, village and settlement councils, which directly receive funding from the state budget for the development of education, medicine, sports, culture, and social protection. Financial support from the state gives more opportunities to local communities to implement their own projects. The more active the territorial community, the more projects will be implemented and theterritorial communityprofitability level will be higher, which it will spend on the development of territories. This is the main incentive to attract additional investment to improve people's living standards. In 2020, theUkrainian Cabinet of Ministers adopted 24 orders on the definition of administrative centers and approval ofregional community’s territories. There are 1469 territorial communities in our country. After the launch of the decentralization process in Ukraine – the transfer of powers and resources to places from which the community itself determines the direction of funding, small communities require forresource lack for rural development. The solution has beena decision to consolidate several councils by merging, which allowed communities to use common resources for territorial development. Ukraine owns 60.3 million hectares, which is about 6% of Europe's territory.There are 32.7 millionarable land hectares of land in the structure ofUkrainian agricultural territory, of which almost 9 million are used as pastures, hayfields and other agricultural lands. The quarter of agricultural land was never distributed, remaining on the balance of the state. Thus, state and the communal property include 10.5 million hectares of agricultural land, which is 26% of the total area, of which 3.2 million hectares – in the permanent use of state enterprises, 2.5 million hectares – in stock, and the rest – for rent. Almost 40% of the total number of Ukrainian enterprises in the agricultural sector and 38% of the area of agricultural land cultivated by agricultural enterprises are absorbed by agricultural holdings and large agricultural traders. On June 1, 2019, there were more than 160 large agricultural holdings in the country, they cultivate more than 3.6 million hectares of agricultural land. Thus, today in Ukraine the number of holding-type organizations and their land bank continues to grow, "displacing" small and medium-sized producers from the agricultural economy. Thecommunity agrarian branch is a complex multi-sectoral system, the individual subsystems of which are unevenly represented in different territorial formations, but are in close interaction with each other. The role of small agrarian businesses in the development of united territorial community’sagriculture is constantly growing. In recent years, the share of farms has increased by 30%. With the development of farming in the agricultural regions of Ukraine, the opportunities to solve the problem of employment in rural areas and the revival of territories in general are increasing. Therefore, state support for agricultural producers is an important step in order to obtain funds for small business development in the agro-industrial sector. If earlier the preference of vectors of state support was in large agro-traders, then from 2019 the policy of the state was reoriented to the strengthened support of small and small-scale farms. Such support is confirmed by financial preferences for small agribusiness through regional branches of the Ukrainian State Farm Support Fund. Agricultural cooperatives will receive state support through cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture of Ukraine with the assistance of the Department. Thus, today the promissory note form of payment has been abolished, and 70% of the cost of their equipment has been reimbursed for cooperatives. As a result of the crisis of 2014-2016, many Ukrainians started doing business and many successful cases of micro and small agricultural enterprises operating in the regions appeared in the country. However, barriers to rural development are a lack of financial resources and a lack of economic knowledge. Therefore, in order to maximally support farms and agro-industrial entrepreneurship in rural areas by the state, high-quality interaction and communication on the ground is needed. Thus, in addition to financial support, the state program also includes advising agricultural producers. Experienced specialists will help to structure the business, calculate the financial and create a business plan. In 2020, the budget of financial support for the agro-industrial sector of Ukraine is set at 4 billion UAH, which is only 43% of the limit – does not meet 1% of GDP. the real need for financial state support of a key sector of Ukraine's economy. The implementation of the program of financing micro and small agribusiness has great potential not only in the country, but also within each united territorial community. Each of them, which participates in the program of state support of small agrarian business, annually receives about 75 thousand UAH of taxes to its budget. On a national scale, this is an additional UAH 75 million ($ 3.06 million) in taxes to local budgets over 5 years. The possibility of organizational and legal forms of micro and small agribusiness, according to the current legislation of Ukraine, to hire labor – partially solves the problem of unemployment in rural areas. A significant contribution is also made by micro and small agribusiness in increasing the volume of gross domestic product in Ukraine. Small and medium business in Ukraine brings 55% of gross domestic product to the country's economy, and micro and small business 16%, while in Europe the figure is twice as high, and their efficiency is 10 times higher than in our country. It is the subjects of small and medium-sized businesses in the field of agriculture that are powerful catalysts and stimulators of business activity, determine the unification of all participants in economic relations in the country. Therefore, state support and effective development of united territorial community’sagribusiness create the basis for the emergence and functioning of the institutional environment. Thus, giving 12% of Ukraine's GDP and providing jobs for members of the local community, small agribusiness entities need the development of agricultural equipment suppliers, agricultural processors, research institutions that conduct breeding work and develop modern technologies, logistics infrastructure, market structures, as well as institutions of agricultural education. The agro-industrial sphere of the community is the main means of ensuring the socio-economic development of territorial united territorial communitiesand the effective functioning of rural areas. However, the distribution of agricultural land and land ownership remains an urgent problem for united territorial communities, as in addition to the territorial base, the land is a means of agricultural production. The population of the united territorial community is the main consumer of agricultural products produced by small agricultural enterprises. So, it provides a reproduction of labor for the industry. The vector of development of united territorial community’sagricultural production depends on the availability of natural, productive and labor resources of the community. The most energy-intensive are the production of vegetable crops, sugar beets, potatoes, industrial crops, as well as certain livestock industries, which are more often engaged in by farms and small agricultural enterprises. The study found that in Ukraine, government measures are the main obstacle to the development of agro-industrial entrepreneurship in united territorial communities, because it creates an extremely unfavorable climate for the development of small and medium enterprises or prohibits it altogether. For many years in a row, the sources of budget formation, which are generally local taxes, remain a significant problem in the development of agriculturally oriented united territorial communities. The limitation of incomes of agricultural enterprises and the population is the low efficiency of agricultural enterprises, the main reason for which is the low wages of peasants. The reason for this problem in the agricultural sector is low productivity, which forms the added value of agricultural products. Examining the structure of Ukrainian small agrarian business, its players in general education were classified into two large groups: 1. Farmers and agricultural producers living and working in rural areas. They live in a society within the lands of which they rent shares, pay all the necessary taxes, provide residents of general education with jobs, finished agricultural products at affordable prices. 2. Farmers who are registered in Ukrainian cities, however, use the land of the community, paying only the rent of agricultural land, depleting them due to non-compliance with crop rotations. Such agro-traders enjoy state support, soft loans and other preferences, receive super-profits and in no way contribute to the development of agricultural areas and society. These are the activities of large agro-industrial holdings, the form of interaction with rural general education and the mechanisms of social responsibility which need to be worked out with the help of the following measures by the government and agricultural producers: 1) development and restoration of the infrastructure of the united territorial communities and its elements used by agricultural holdings; 2) use of modern ecologically safe agrotechnologies. 3) training of qualified specialists in the field of agro-industrial complex, their employment in modern agro-industrial companies; 4) state support, restoration and preservation of recreational and health facilities of the united territorial communities, including agricultural lands, which are leased by large agricultural holdings; 5) involvement in the economic activity of the agricultural holding of farms on a partnership basis. Thus, partnerships and cooperation between large agricultural holdings and small agricultural producers of united territorial communities can contribute not only to the development of small agricultural businesses in Ukraine, but also to the socio-economic development of society and rural areas in general. The field of application of results. Thescientific research results on the problems of small agricultural entrepreneurship in the development of united territorial communities can be used in the field of state regulation of agribusiness and united territorial communities to support local agricultural producers. Conclusions according to the article. The agro-industrial sphere of the communities is the main means of ensuring the socio-economic development of territorial communities and the effective functioning of rural areas, because the development of farming opportunities increases the problem of rural employment and the revival of territories in general. That is why state support for agricultural producers is an important step to obtain funds for small business development in the agro-industrial sector.

Actual importance of research theme: Combating hunger and providing the Earth’s population with sufficient amount of products is considered one of the strategic priorities of human civilization sustainable development by the UN up to 2030. The rapid growth of this planet’s human population in the 21st century, estimated at 7.6. billion people, leads to the global demand for production and foodstuff. Simultaneously, traditional strategies of extensive development conventional in the 20th century and “target” intensification of agriculture do not take expected positive effect nowadays. World economy requires for new strategies of agricultural production, as well as promoting ‘green revolution’ based on the ground of IT technology advances and “Industry 4.0.”. The generalization of world experience concerning development and implementing agricultural production strategies in the 21st century is of greater theoretical and practical importance for all countries which export agricultural production in mass scales, including Ukraine which focuses on the leadership in the world agricultural business. Thus, the urgency of the issue confirms the actual importance of this article. The problem statement. Foodstuff output in world economy is growing slowly and does not meet the increasing demand for food and agricultural products in industry in global scales. Under these conditions the manufacturers of agricultural products like farmers, agro-businesses and agro-holdings, as well as transnational corporation alter and modify agricultural strategies that were conventional in the 20th century. Among the new strategies transition to precision farming and innovational agriculture based on implementing IT technologies takes the leading role. The core and socio-economic consequences of such strategy implementation require further study. Analysis of latest studies and publication. The important contribution to the study of the core and dimensions of agricultural production strategies linked to innovation and investment development as well as to improvement property relations is made by such Ukrainian scholars as P. Makarenko, V. Pilyavskiy [1] and O. Shul’ga [2]. Foreign scientists like Smaller, C., andW. Speller, withH. Mirza, N. Bernasconi-Osterwalder, andG. Dixie [3] paid the specific attention to the study of strategic priorities concerning risks minimization and profit maximization by agro-businesses and TNC within the realization of agricultural contracts at world markets. Overseas researchers KeatingB., HerreroM., CarberryP. [4] emphasized on actual importance of compliance with strategy of foodstuff security in global environment in their studies. However, the issue of developing the strategy of precise agricultural production based on widespread use of innovation and IT technologies, research into socio-economic consequences accompanying their implementation in the 21st century remains poorly studied. Research challenge of general issue. The issue of studies the core and elements of agricultural production development process in world economy is highlighted in world economic literature pretty well. Nevertheless, the study of TNCs and agricultural businesses strategies and strategies concerning transition of TNCs to the development of precise agriculture is really meaningful. Besides, at present time the trends of direct foreign investments as for agricultural lands purchase and priorities analysis of their use by TNCs in developed and developing world countries are uncertain. Socio economic consequences of mass precise agriculture introduction for national economy in countries with agrarian specialization also require detailed researching. Problem statement, objective of research. The objective of research is to highlight the core and define the regularity of formation, as well as emphasize the basic expected socio-economic consequences of precise agriculture development strategy implementing on the grounds of generalization the world experience of agricultural TNC sactivity. To achieve the objective set the article aimed at solution the following tasks: to note the main ‘players’ at the world agricultural market and study the priorities of their economic activity; to study the core and the elements of ‘green revolution’ strategy, as well as strategy of transition to precise agricultural production based on implementing innovations and IT technologies; to define strategic goals of TNCs as for the use of acquiring land ( at the cost of direct foreign investments) on the grounds of generalization developed and developing countries experience; to point out the expected socio-economic consequences of mass implementation of precise agricultural production strategies by TNCs and national agro-businesses for the economy of the countries specialized in agriculture. Method and methodology of the study. While studying the world experience of implementation the precise agricultural production development strategies theoretical and empirical methods of scientific research were employed. Historical and logical methods, abstract and specific methods, methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as causal (cause-and-effect) method were applied in the article to define strategic priorities of agricultural business and agricultural TNC specialization, to point out expected socio-economic consequences of mass transition to precise agricultural production in the countries with agrarian specialization. Synergetic approach, method of expert estimates and casual methods were applied to ground “green revolution” strategy, as well as strategy of TNCs as for transition to precise agriculture based on innovations and IT technologies. The results of study. Agricultural production is presented by farmers, households, state agricultural sector, national agro-businesses and agro-holdings, international TNCs. As a rule, farms are focused on domestic market; they specialize in production of minor parties of manual crop production and horticulture, grow vegetables, fruit and berries, as well as they are engaged in poultry farming, beekeeping, dairy production, stockbreeding in rather small scales. The farmers in developed world countries, particularly EU countries, concentrate on organic production which is of high demand among middle-class representatives. In EU countries farming is traditionally supported by the state, as it bears both economic and social valuable functions, i.e. assists in rural development and creates workplaces in countryside. The main stakeholders at the mass agricultural market in the world are considered large national and international agro-holdings an TNCs specialized in agricultural production and its industrial processing. TNCs shaped the closed loop – from selection to agricultural production, from its processing to its manufacturing. At the cost of large production scales, as well as capital concentration and centralization it is the agricultural TNCs which leads in production and export of foodstuffs at world markets. TNCs ‘ leadership at world agriculture markets is grounded on ‘green revolution’ strategy implementing, which consists of such elements as innovations, bio-selection to produce performance breed, intensive growth in crop productivity, including the one using GMO which makes cropping insensitive to water shortage, high temperatures and droughts. Agrarian TNCs in the 21st century actively implement the strategies of transition to precise agriculture based on the use of innovations and IT technologies. As the world experience confirms, strategies of transition to precise agriculture combine the following innovations: astronaut and aviation technologies, unmanned technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles; mass transition to the use of apparatus to analyze the ground online; spreading of “agro-scouting” innovation technologies as for field information gathering concerning the condition and development of agriculture; implementation intellectual system of managerial decision-making support; introduction of monitoring and control auto-system and implementation of IT-system as for account of agriculture process elements. The development of precise agriculture for national world economies which are agriculture-based offers a lot of benefits, such as: increase in labor productivity in agriculture; the decrease in employment that saves working capital of agro-businesses; industrialization and technical renovation of agrarian sector which promotes the market for IT products, precise machine building; increase in commerce and export potential of the country, mainly, in the sphere of monostructural crop production (grain, corn, soya, raps, oilseeds etc.). Such strategies also provide revitalization of direct foreign investment processes by TNCsconcerning purchasing farmland in the developing countries with their further listing as raw materials supplier for TNCs. The latter shape and control international links of production value added to all kinds of agricultural products. Among the risks which implementation of precise agriculture strategies bear for national developing country’s economy which are agriculture-based the following should be mentioned: risks concerning decrease in farms and decline in production of labor-intensive small-scale agriculture products (vegetables, fruit, honey etc.); risks of jobs recession and, respectively, the number of rural population and others. There are also other risks linked to these processes like risks of growing volumes of ready foodstuffs import, chronic scarcity of state budget and increase in internal debt, enhancing migration processes etc. In case of falling world prices for foodstuffs and worsening global conditions for agriculture products, including agrarian raw materials, in particular, due to another world economic crisis, the abandonment of occasional farmland purchased by TNCs in developing agrarian countries, their further freezing and ceasing the processing for better times should not be excluded. Under such circumstances the risks of famine for countries which could lose the managerial control over own land resources are also a threatening exercise as for implementing such TNC strategy. The field of results application. International economic relations and world economy, development of agriculture competitive strategies in world countries and agrarian TNCs in world economy. Conclusions. Farms, agro-businesses, agro-holdings and agrarian TNCs are the economic centres of mass agriculture production in all world countries. Farms are mainly specialized in labour-intensive small-scale agriculture production like horticulture, gardening, bee-keeping etc. Large agro-businesses and agrarian TNCs choose the strategy of specializing in mass monostructural agriculture production such as crop production (grain, corn, soya beans and industrial crops). In developed world countries TNCs apply the strategy of farmlands multi-purpose use, including the goals aimed at development and processing livestock and crop production; at development of renewable energy and bio-energy. In developed world countries TNCs focus on processing all kinds of agriculture products and foodstuffs production with high value added. Purchasing of farmlands by TNCs in developing countries, in particular, at the cost of direct foreign investment, provides for implementation the strategy of purchased lands engagement, mainly, to develop crop production as a raw basis for their further processing in the native countries for TNCs. The general world trend of agrarian TNCs development is use of innovation technologies, transition to precise agriculture based on IT technologies, aviation and astronautic technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles and other innovations which positively impact labor productivity and mass industrial production profitability, as well as choose transition to monostructural agrarian specialization as a priority, but bear a set of social risks for developing countries’ economies. Transition of Ukrainian agro-businesses and agro-holdings to the strategy of precise agriculture development based on innovations and IT technologies provides Ukraine’s competitiveness at the world agrarian markets. This process should go hand-in-hand with land reform taking into account Ukrainian farming interests. Establishing industrial processing of agriculture raw products and production of ready foodstuffs with high value added should be strategic for Ukraine.

International Journal of Innovation - IJI completes 7 yearsInternational Journal of Innovation - IJI has now 7 years old! In this editorial comment, we not only want to talk about our evolution but get even closer to the IJI community. It is our first editorial comment, a new IJI's communication channel. Some of the changes are already described on our website.IJI is an innovation-focused journal that was created to support scientific research and thereby contribute to practice. Also, IJI was born internationally, receiving and supporting research from around the world. We welcome articles in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.We have published eight volumes in IJI since 2013, totaling 131 articles. Our journal is indexed in: Dialnet and Red Iberoamericana de Innovación y Conocimiento Científico; Ebsco Host; Erih Plus; Gale - Cengage Learning; Latindex; Proquest; Redalyc; Web of Science Core Collection (Emerging Sources Citation Index), among others. We provide free access “open access” to all its content. Articles can be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed and / or searched.We want to emphasize that none of this would be possible without the authors that recognized in IJI a relevant journal to publicize their work. Nor can we fail to mention the tireless and voluntary action of the reviewers, always contributing to the articles' improvement and skilling up our journal, more and more.All editors who passed through IJI have a fundamental role in this trajectory. And, none of this would be possible without the editorial team of Uninove. Everyone who passed and the current team. We want to express that our work as current editors of IJI would not be possible without you. Changes in the Intenational Journal of Innovation – IJIAs we mentioned earlier, IJI was born in 2013. And, over time, we are improving its structure always to improve it. In this section, we want to show some changes we made. We intend that editorial comments become a communication channel and that they can help our readers, authors, and reviewers to keep up with these changes.Although IJI is a comprehensive Innovation journal, one of the changes we want to inform you is that now, at the time of submission, the author will choose one of the available topics that best suit your article. The themes are: Innovative Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Learning; Innovation and Sustainability; Internationalization of Innovation; Innovation Systems; Emerging Innovation Themes and; Digital Transformation. Below, we present each theme so that everyone can get to know them:Innovative Entrepreneurship: emerging markets provided dynamic advantages for small businesses and their entrepreneurs to exploit the supply flows of resources, capacities, and knowledge-based on strategies oriented to the management of innovation. Topics covered in this theme include, for example: resources and capabilities that support innovative entrepreneurship; innovation habitats (Universities, Science and Technology Parks, Incubators and Accelerators) and their influences on the development of knowledge-intensive spin-offs and start-ups; open innovation, triple/quadruple helix, knowledge transfer, effectuation, bricolage and co-creation of value in knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship ecosystems; and adequate public policies to support innovative entrepreneurship.Innovation and Learning: discussions on this topic focus on the relationship between learning and innovation as topics with the potential to improve teaching and learning. They also focus on ways in which we acquire knowledge through innovation and how knowledge encourages new forms of innovation. Topics covered in this theme include, for example: innovative projects for learning; innovation-oriented learning; absorptive capacity; innovation in organizational learning and knowledge creation; unlearning and learning for technological innovation; new learning models; dynamics of innovation and learning; skills and innovation.Innovation and Sustainability: discussions on this topic seek to promote the development of innovation with a focus on sustainability, encouraging new ways of thinking about sustainable development issues. Topics covered in this theme include, for example: development of new sustainable products; circular economy; reverse logistic; smart cities; technological changes for sustainable development; innovation and health in the scope of sustainability; sustainable innovation and policies; innovation and education in sustainability and social innovation.Internationalization of Innovation: the rise of developing countries as an innovation center and their new nomenclature for emerging markets have occupied an important place in the international research agenda on global innovation and Research and Development (RD) strategies. Topics covered in this theme include, for example: resources and capabilities that support the internationalization of innovation and RD; global and local innovation and RD strategies; reverse innovation; internationalization of start-ups and digital companies; development of low-cost products, processes and services with a high-value offer internationalized to foreign markets; innovations at the base of the pyramid, disruptive and/or frugal developed and adopted in emerging markets and replicated in international markets; institutional factors that affect firms' innovation efforts in emerging markets.Innovation Systems: regulation and public policies define the institutional environment to drive innovation. Topics include industrial policy, technological trends and macroeconomic performance; investment ecosystem for the development and commercialization of new products, based on government and private investments; investment strategies related to new companies based on science or technology; Technology transfer to, from and between developing countries; technological innovation in all forms of business, political and economic systems. Topics such as triple helix, incubators, and other structures for cooperation, fostering and mobilizing innovation are expected in this section.Emerging Themes: from the applied themes, many emerging problems have a significant impact on management, such as industry 4.0, the internet of things, artificial intelligence or social innovations, or non-economic benefits. Intellectual property is treated as a cognitive database and can be understood as a technological library with the registration of the product of human creativity and invention. Social network analysis reveals the relationships between transforming agents and other elements; therefore, encouraged to be used in research and submitted in this section. The theoretical field not fully developed is not a barrier to explore any theme or question in this section.Digital Transformation: this interdisciplinary theme covers all the antecedents, intervening, and consequent effects of digital transformation in the field of technology-based companies and technology-based business ventures. The technological innovator (human side of innovation) as an entrepreneur, team member, manager, or employee is considered an object of study either as an agent of innovation or an element of the innovation process. Digital change or transformation is considered as a process that moves from the initial status to the new digital status, anchored in the theories of innovation, such as adoption, diffusion, push / pull of technology, innovation management, service innovation, disruptive innovation, innovation frugal innovation economy, organizational behavior, context of innovation, capabilities and transaction costs. Authors who submit to IJI will realize that they now need to make a structured summary at the time of submission. The summary must include the following information:(maximum of 250 words + title + keywords = Portuguese, English and Spanish).Title.Objective of the study (mandatory): Indicate the objective of the work, that is, what you want to demonstrate or describe.Methodology / approach (mandatory): Indicate the scientific method used in carrying out the study. In the case of theoretical essays, it is recommended that the authors indicate the theoretical approach adopted.Originality / Relevance (mandatory): Indicate the theoretical gap in which the study is inserted, also presenting the academic relevance of the discipline.Main results (mandatory): briefly indicate the main results achieved.Theoretical-methodological contributions (mandatory): Indicate the main theoretical and / or methodological implications that have been achieved with the results of the study.Social / managerial contributions (mandatory): Indicate the main managerial and / or social implications obtained through the results of the study.Keywords: between three and five keywords that characterize the work. Another change regarding the organization of the IJI concerns the types of work. In addition to the Editorial Comment and Articles, the journal will include Technological Articles, Perspectives, and Reviews. Thus, when submitting a study, authors will be able to choose from the available options for types of work. Throughout the next issues of the IJI, in the editorial comments, we will pass on pertinent information about every kind of work, to assist the authors in their submissions.Currently, the IJI is available to readers with new works three times a year (January-April; May-August; September-December) with publications in English, Portuguese and Spanish. From what comes next, we will have some changes in the periodicity. Next stepsAs editors, we want the IJI to continue with a national and international impact and increase its relevance in the indexing bases. For this, we will work together with the entire editorial team, reviewers, and authors to improve the work. We will do our best to give full support to the evaluators who are so dedicated to making constructive evaluations to the authors. We will also support authors with all the necessary information.With editorial comments, we intend to pass on knowledge to readers, authors, and reviewers to improve the articles gradually. We also aim to support classroom activities and content.Even with the changes reported here, we continue to accept all types of work, as long as they have an appropriate methodology. We also maintain our scope and continue to publish all topics involving innovation. We want to support academic events on fast tracks increasingly. About the articles in this edition of IJIThis issue is the first we consider the new organization of the International Journal of Innovation - IJI. We started with this editorial comment talking about the changes and improvements that we are making at IJI—as an example, showing the reader, reviewer, and author that the scope remains the same. However, at the time of submission, the author has to choose one of the proposed themes and have a mandatory abstract structured in three languages (English, Portuguese, and Spanish).In this issue, we have a section of perspectives that addresses the “Fake Agile” phenomenon. This phenomenon is related to the difficulties that companies face throughout the agile transformation, causing companies not to reach full agility and not return to their previous management model.Next, we publish the traditional section with scientific articles. The article “Critical success factors of the incubation network of enterprises of the IFES” brings critical success factors as the determining variables to keep business incubators competitive, improving their organizational processes, and ensuring their survival. Another published article, “The sharing economy dilemma: the response of incumbent firms to the rise of the sharing economy”, addresses the sharing economy in terms of innovation. The results of the study suggest that the current response to the sharing economy so far is moderate and limited. The article “Analysis of the provision for implementation of reverse logistics in the supermarket retail” made it possible to observe that through the variables that define retail characteristics, it is not possible to say whether a supermarket will implement the reverse logistics process. And the article “Capability building in fuzzy front end management in a high technology services company”, whose main objective was to assess the adherence among Fuzzy Front End (FFE) facilitators, was reported in the literature its application in the innovation process of a company, an innovative multinational high-tech services company.We also published the article “The evolution of triple helix movement: an analysis of scientific communications through bibliometric technique”. The study is a bibliometric review that brings essential contributions to the area. This issue also includes a literature review entitled “Service innovation tools: a literature review” that aimed to systematically review the frameworks proposed and applied by the literature on service innovation.The technological article “A model to adopt Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence (BI) among Saudi SMEs”, in a new IJI publication section, addresses the main issues related to the intention to use ERPBI in the Saudi private sector.As we mentioned earlier in this editorial, IJI has a slightly different organization. With the new format, we intend to contribute to the promotion of knowledge in innovation. Also, we aim to increasingly present researchers and students with possibilities of themes and gaps for their research and bring insights to professionals in the field.Again, we thank the reviewers who dedicate their time and knowledge in the evaluations, always helping the authors. We wish you, readers, to enjoy the articles in this issue and feel encouraged to send your studies in innovation to the International Journal of Innovation - IJI.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test the extent to which company-specific attributes including market capitalisation, capital structure and investment focus impact upon the performance of European listed real estate companies. Enhanced understanding of firm-level performance drivers is important for investors in order to diversify their investment portfolios and to mitigate company-specific risks at different points in the real estate cycle.Design/methodology/approachThe study centres on six key listed European real estate markets selected on the basis of market capitalisation, diversity, transparency and maturity. A series of statistical tests are undertaken using EPRA and Bloomberg data for the period of 2007–2017 using 113 listed property companies, all of whom were contemporaneous constituents of EPRA indices in this period. A series of customised performance indices were constructed to evaluate firm-level performance attributes.FindingsFirm-level attributes collectively account for more variation of risk-adjusted return than sector-level attributes over the investigation period. The impact of firm-specific attributes on performance varies significantly from country to country attributable to the contrasting cyclical property market trends in the pre– and post–Global Financial Crisis period. REITs outperformed non-REITs on a risk-adjusted basis attributed to the strong performance of “niche” market entrants allied with stronger regulatory structure. Finally, the findings showcase that sector specialist firms outperform diversified companies inferring that investors should seek to attain diversification through portfolio-based approaches rather than firm-level strategies.Practical implicationsThe results have implications for real estate companies aiming to raise capital internally for growth as higher return on equity in general signals reduced cost of capital. Secondly, the findings should be of practical use to multinationals specialising in international real estate trading in designing their business plans in general and formulating cross-country investment strategies in particular. Last but not least, a more refined conceptualisation of corporate-level performance drivers should complement existing professional practices in relation to business/company appraisal.Originality/valueThe research integrates EPRA and Bloomberg data sets to create a series of bespoke index constructs to measure the impact of firm-specific attributes on European listed real estate companies. Additionally, the authors construct a Herfindahl Index (H.I.) to further the debate on the impacts of diversification within the listed real estate sector. This serves to further heighten investor understanding of investment allocation and portfolio optimisation strategies for the listed real estate sector given the increasingly diverse range of investment opportunities within emerging sub-markets.

This study aimed to identify the Net Cash Flows, from operational, investment and financing activities, impact on financial performance in terms of profitability through return on assets and return on property rights in the Saudi telecommunications sector. The study sample included (3) companies within Saudi telecommunications companies, and covered a 10-year period of time, from 2009 to 2018. The financial and statistical analysis is used to examine the study's hypotheses and questions, through the reports of the companies listed in the Capital Market and published on the Tadawul site as well as private companies' websites. To test the validity of the hypotheses and to get to the relevant statistical significances, the multiple regression coefficients and the SPSS program were used. The study found a statistically significant impact of Net Cash Flows of the Net Cash Flows of operational activities, Net Cash Flows of investment activities, and Net Cash Flows of finance activities, at the level of (= 0.05), on financial performance (return on asset index - return on property rights index). The researcher suggested a set of recommendations, the most important of which is the need to pay attention to the cash flows list since its provide financial information free of misinformation as it is real data and depend on the monetary base, and carrying out the study of cash flows in its three divisions (operational, financing and investment) on other economic sectors to illustrate the relationship between cash flows and the financial performance of companies.

New Institutional Economics has revived the important role of institutions on economic growth. North (1990) was a pioneering work. Institutions are defined as ‘the humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction. They are made up of formal constraints (for example, rules, laws, constitutions), informal constraints (for example, norms of behaviour, conventions, self-imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics’ (North 1994, p. 360). Formal institutions are constraints sanctioned by state power if individuals violate them, while informal institutions are self-imposing constraints. According to North, of primary importance to economic performance is the economic institutions that determine transaction costs and influence the incentive structure in society such as the structure of property rights and the presence and perfection of markets. There are now various empirical studies on the effect of institutions on economic growth. Most studies used crosscountry regressions to determine the effect of institutional quality on economic growth. Knack and Keefer (1995) was a pioneering work. Four important institutional variables were proposed by Knack and Keefer (1995): protection of property rights, rule of law, corruption and bureaucratic quality. Such data were compiled from International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) data, published by the U.S.-based Political Risk Services Group, and from Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI), based in Switzerland. The ICRG index includes protection of property rights (expropriation risk and repudiation of contracts by government), rule of law, corruption, and bureaucratic quality. The BERI index includes contract enforceability, nationalisation potential, bureaucratic delays and infrastructure quality. Knack and Keefer run a regression vfor 97 countries in the period 1974-89. The explanatory variables include institutional quality (ICRG or BERI), initial per capita GDP, initial human capital, average annual government consumption share/GDP, distortion index (absolute value of deviation of investment price level), the number of revolutions and coups per year and the number of political assassinations per year per million population in the period 1974-89. To avoid possible simultaneity between growth and institutional quality, the authors chose the initial value of the institutional indices rather than the average for the whole period. The earliest release of BERI was 1974 and that of ICRG 1982. The scale for BERI was from 0 to 4 and for ICRG from 0 to 10 (the higher the better). The findings indicated that the ICRG index was positive and highly significant across the specifications. The BERI index was positive and significant for most specifications. Mauro (1995) used a different dataset of institutions from Business International (later incorporated into the Economist Intelligence Unit). His institutional variables included corruption and bureaucratic efficiency (including corruption, efficiency of the judiciary system, and bureaucratic red tape). The data were collected for the period 1980-83. The dependent variable was average per capita GDP growth during 1960-85. The explanatory variables included initial per capita income in 1960, population growth, primary education in 1960, government expenditure share, revolutions and coups, assassinations, political instability, two distortion indices (absolute value of deviation of investment price level and its standard deviation), dummies for regions, and Mauro’s corruption index or bureaucratic efficiency index. The finding was that both low bureaucratic efficiency and high corruption exerted strong and negative effects on growth. Their effects were statistically significant. Other significant studies include Sachs and Warner (1997a, 1997b), Barro (1998), Brunetti et al. (1997), Kaufman et al. (1999b), Aron (2000). Their findings in general indicate positive effects of institutional quality on economic growth. This paper is aimed to explore a different but relevant relationship, i.e., the question is how institutions affect on efficiency of investment. The efficiency of investment is defined as the incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR). The ICOR measures the additional amount of capital required to produce an additional unit of output. The reciprocal of ICOR measures the productivity of additional capital (Gillis et al. 1992). The efficiency of investment is vital to growth because the level of investment alone cannot fully explain growth performance across countries. It is noteworthy that some countries can achieve a fairly high investment rate, but only slow growth. For example, during the period 1961-85, Argentina, Jamaica and Zambia achieved an investment/GDP rate as high as that of Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand, but could only achieve a growth rate less than a third of the latter group. The main hypothesis of this paper is that quality of institutions has positive effect on investment efficiency.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the performance of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in emerging property markets. The paper used the Nigerian REIT (N-REIT) as a case study of an African REIT market, to provide information for investment decisions.Design/methodology/approachSeven years quarterly returns data (from 2013 to 2019) were obtained and used to analyse the holding period returns, return–risk ratio, coefficient of variation and Sharpe ratios of N-REIT, All Share Index of stocks (ASI) and the Federal Government Bonds (FGB) in Nigeria.FindingsThe study reveals that N-REIT outperformed stocks but underperformed bonds. Concerning risk, stocks provided the highest level of risk (7.69), followed by bonds (2.78), while N-REIT provided the lowest risk (2.7). The Sharpe ratios showed that N-REIT is the second-best performing asset, while bond is the first and stocks the last on the risk-adjusted basis.Practical implicationsN-REIT is the second-largest REIT market in Africa with a market capitalisation of about US$136m. The N-REIT market has provided investment benefits to institutional and individual investors such as liquidity, transparency and ease of transaction. This study shows the peculiarity of N-REITs; this can guide investors in making informed investment decisions.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to empirically analyse in a comparative context, the risk-adjusted performance of N-REITs, ASI and FGB. The study will add to the limited research in this field and equip investors with valuable information for informed investment decisions.

This paper introduces a new method for multicriteria performance-based transportation budget allocation. First, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) that has long been used in economics for measuring the level of monopolization in a marketplace is employed to derive the relative weights of multiple non-commensurable transportation performance criteria. Next, a compromise programming (CP) model is formulated to help transform the multicriteria optimization formulation for transportation budget allocation to a single-objective optimization model solvable by minimizing the Chebyshev distance to the ideal levels of performance targets associated with individual performance criteria. Finally, the ε-constraint trade-off analysis method is incorporated into the combined use of HHI and CP framework to iteratively derive the optimal decision outcome. Six-year data on candidate investment projects proposed for a U.S. state-maintained rural Interstate highway system along with data details of the available budget is used in a computational study for method application. Comparative analysis of decision outcomes is conducted with the STEP method for cross validation. It has revealed that the proposed HHI-CP ε-constraint method outperforms the existing method and can be adopted by state and local transportation agencies to carry out effective budget allocation.

PurposeInfrastructure investment is one of the few high-calibre real alternative assets with a strong prominence in the portfolios of institutional investors, especially those with a liability-driven investment strategy. This has seen increased institutional investor interest in infrastructure for reasons such as diversification benefits and inflation hedging abilities, resulting in the substantial growth in non-listed and listed investment products offering access to the infrastructure asset class, and complementing the existing route via direct investment. This paper aims to assess the investment attributes of non-listed infrastructure over Q3:2008–Q2:2019, compared with other global listed assets of infrastructure, property, stocks and bonds.Design/methodology/approachQuarterly total returns were derived from the valuation-based MSCI global non-listed quarterly infrastructure asset index over Q2:2008–Q:2019, which were then filtered to decrease the valuation smoothing effects. A similar set of returns data was also collected for the other global asset classes. The average annual return, annual risk, risk-adjusted performance and portfolio diversification benefits for non-listed infrastructure and other asset investment classes were then computed and compared. Lastly, a constrained optimal asset allocation analysis was performed to validate the performance enhancement role of global non-listed infrastructure in a mixed-asset investment framework.FindingsGlobal non-listed infrastructure delivered the strongest average annual total return performance, outperforming the other asset classes and provided investors with total returns that linked strongly with inflation. Global non-listed infrastructure also provided investors with one of the least volatile investment returns because of its ability to ensure predictable total returns delivery. This means that on the Sharpe ratio risk-adjusted return basis, non-listed infrastructure was also the strongest performing asset. This performance was also delivered with significant portfolio diversification benefits with all assets, resulting in non-listed infrastructure contributing to the mixed-asset portfolios across the entire portfolio risk spectrum.Practical implicationsAside from better risk-return trade-offs, institutional investors are getting more secular with their portfolios for alternative assets that are able to provide other investment benefits such as predictable long-term performance and inflation-linked returns. A further improvement in performance and diversification benefits could be achieved by enriching existing investment portfolios with real alternative assets, one of which is the infrastructure asset class. For institutional investors, having exposure to and being part of the development, delivery and management of infrastructure assets are important, as they are one of the few real assets having considerable significance in the context of society, economy and investment needs.Originality/valueThis is the first research paper that empirically investigates the investment attributes of the non-listed infrastructure at a global level. This research enables empirically validated, more informed and practical decision-making by institutional investors in the infrastructure asset class, especially via the non-listed pathway. The ultimate aim of this paper is to empirically validate the strategic role of non-listed infrastructure as an important alternative asset in the institutional real asset investment space, as well as in the overall portfolio context.

Any study of the development of the economy must take into account the role of the electricity sector. This is the sector promoting production, improving competitiveness, and attracting investment. With the motto "electricity goes one step ahead," the power sector has contributed to the restructuring of the industry, economic recovery and growth, security and defense. Specifically, agriculture, forestry and fishery production activities of rural and mountainous areas have been oriented toward commodity and export markets. Improved services and quality of electricity have encouraged domestic and foreign businesses to be comfortable and expand their production. This study will provide some insights after combining the results of Data Envelopment Analysis and Grey System Theory – GM(1,1). Using Data Envelopment Analysis, the researcher input some performance attributes, classify them as inputs and outputs, and then use them for Data Envelopment Analysis researches. For evaluating this industry, the researcher used Malmquist Productivity Index from 2012 to 2016 and used GM (1,1) for forecasting, which provides better “Past – Present – Future” insights for decision makers.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh Financial Distress memediasi Good Corporate Governance dan Return saham. Penilaian financial distress menggunakan proksi Altman Z-Score untuk EMS (Emerging Market) yang dirasakan sesuai dengan kondisi pasar modal di Indonesia. Model analisis yang digunakan adalah regresi berganda dan hasil yang ditemukan adanya pengaruh financial distress memediasi kedua variabel penelitian GCG dan return saham. Dari keseluruhan emiten yang tercatat dalam SWA (per 1 November 2018), ditemukan sejumlah 12 emiten yang dapat dijadikan sampel dalam penelitian karena konsistensi keikutsertaan dalam penilaian GCG oleh IICG. Financial Distress ditemukan memediasi Good Corporate Governance terhadap return saham, dimana hal ini sesuai dengan penelitian terdahulu seperti penelitian Jannah & Khoiruddin (2017) yang meneliti mengenai peran financial distress memediasi kepemilikan institusional, kepemilikan manajerial terhadap return saham Keputusan investor untuk berinvestasi perlu mempertimbangkan bahwa ketika investor melakukan investasi perlu menghindari gejala financial distress dan mempertimbangkan keputusan manajerial (GCG) tersebut.Kata Kunci : Financial Distress, Corporate Governance, Altman EMS Z-Score, Return SahamDAFTAR PUSTAKA Ajiwanto, A.W. dan Herawati, J., (2014), Pengaruh Good Corporate Governance Terhadap Return Saham Perusahaan yang Terdaftar di Corporate Governane Perception Index dan Bursa Efek Indonesia Periode 2010 – 2012, Jurnal Ilmiah Mahasiswa FEB, Vol. 2 No. 2.Alexander,J. 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We take as our subject what many would deem a waste of good celluloid: the degraded cultural form of the stoner film. Stoner films plot the experiences of the wasted (those intoxicated on marijuana) as they exhibit wastefulness—excessiveness, improvidence, decay—on a number of fronts. Stoners waste time in constantly hunting for pot and in failing to pursue more productive activity whilst wasted. Stoners waste their minds, both literally, if we believe contested studies that indicate marijuana smoking kills brains cells, and figuratively, in rendering themselves cognitively impaired. Stoners waste their bodies through the dangerous practice of smoking and through the tendency toward physical inertia. Stoners waste money on marijuana firstly, but also on such sophomoric accoutrements as the stoner film itself. Stoners lay waste to convention in excessively seeking pleasure and in dressing and acting outrageously. And stoners, if the scatological humour of so many stoner films is any index, are preoccupied with bodily waste. Stoners, we argue here, waste whiteness as well. As the likes of Jesse and Chester (Dude, Where’s My Car?), Wayne and Garth (Wayne’s World), Bill and Ted (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and Jay and Silent Bob (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) make clear, whiteness looms large in stoner films. Yet the genre, we argue, disavows its own whiteness, in favour of a post-white hybridity that lavishly squanders white privilege. For all its focus on whiteness, filmic wastedness has always been an ethnically diverse and ambiguous category. The genre’s origins in the work of Cheech Marin, a Chicano, and Tommy Chong, a Chinese-European Canadian, have been buttressed in this regard by many African American contributions to the stoner oeuvre, including How High, Half Baked and Friday, as well as by Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and its Korean-American and Indian-American protagonists. Cheech and Chong initiated the genre with the release of Up in Smoke in 1978. A host of films have followed featuring protagonists who spend much of their time smoking and seeking marijuana (or—in the case of stoner films such as Dude, Where’s My Car? released during the height of the War on Drugs—acting stoned without ever being seen to get stoned). Inspired in part by the 1938 anti-marijuana film Reefer Madness, and the unintended humour such propaganda films begat amongst marijuana smokers, stoner films are comedies that satirise both marijuana culture and its prohibition. Self-consciously slapstick, the stoner genre excludes more serious films about drugs, from Easy Rider to Shaft, as well as films such as The Wizard of Oz, Yellow Submarine, the Muppet movies, and others popular amongst marijuana smokers because of surreal content. Likewise, a host of films that include secondary stoner characters, such as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Wooderson in Dazed and Confused, are commonly excluded from the genre on the grounds that the stoner film, first and foremost, celebrates stonerism, that is “serious commitment to smoking and acquiring marijuana as a lifestyle choice.” (Meltzer). Often taking the form of the “buddy film,” stoner flicks generally feature male leads and frequently exhibit a decidedly masculinist orientation, with women, for the most part reduced to little more than the object of the white male gaze.The plot, such as it is, of the typical stoner film concerns the search for marijuana (or an accessory, such as junk food) and the improbable misadventures that ensue. While frequently represented as resourceful and energetic in their quest for marijuana, filmic stoners otherwise exhibit ambivalent attitudes toward enterprise that involves significant effort. Typically represented as happy and peaceable, filmic stoners rarely engage in conflict beyond regular clashes with authority figures determined to enforce anti-drug laws, and other measures that stoners take to be infringements upon happiness. While Hollywood’s stoners thus share a sense of entitlement to pleasure, they do not otherwise exhibit a coherent ideological orthodoxy beyond a certain libertarian and relativistic open-mindedness. More likely to take inspiration from comic book heroes than Aldous Huxley or Timothy Leary, stoners are most often portrayed as ‘dazed and confused,’ and could be said to waste the intellectual tradition of mind expansion that Leary represents. That stoner films are, at times, misunderstood to be quintessentially white is hardly suprising. As a social construct that creates, maintains and legitimates white domination, whiteness manifests, as one of its most defining features, an ability to swallow up difference and to insist upon, at critical junctures, a universal subjectivity that disallows for difference (hooks 167). Such universalising not only sanctions co-optation of ethnic cultural expression, it also functions to mask whiteness’s existence, thus reinforcing its very power. Whiteness, as Richard Dyer argues, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. It obfuscates itself and its relationship to the particular traits it is said to embody—disinterest, prudence, temperance, rationality, bodily restraint, industriousness (3). Whiteness is thus constructed as neither an ethnic nor racial particularity, but rather the transcendence of such positionality (Wiegman 139). While non-whites are raced, to be white is to be “just human” and thus to possess the power to “claim to speak for the commonality of humanity” whilst denying the accrual of any particular racial privilege (Dyer 2). In refuting its own advantages—which are so wide ranging (from preferential treatment in housing loans, to the freedom to fail without fear of reflecting badly on other whites) that they are, like whiteness itself, both assumed and unproblematic—whiteness instantiates individualism, allowing whites to believe that their successes are in no way the outcome of systematic racial advantage, but rather the product of individual toil (McIntosh; Lipsitz). An examination of the 1978 stoner film Up in Smoke suggests that whatever the ethnic ambiguity of the figure of the stoner, the genre of the stoner film is all about the wasting of whiteness. Up in Smoke opens with two alternating domestic scenes. We first encounter Pedro De Pacas (Cheech Marin) in a cluttered and shadowy room as his siblings romp affectionately upon his back, waking him from his slumber on the couch. Pedro rises, stepping into a bowl of cereal on the floor. He stumbles to the bathroom, where, sleepy and disoriented, he urinates into the laundry hamper. The chaos of Pedro’s disrupted sleep is followed in the film by a more metaphoric awakening as Anthony Stoner (Tommy Chong) determines to leave home. The scene takes place in a far more orderly, light and lavish room. The space’s overpowering whiteness is breached only by the figure of Anthony and his unruly black hair, bushy black beard, and loud Hawaiian shirt, which vibrates with colour against the white walls, white furnishings and white curtains. We watch as Anthony, behind an elaborate bar, prepares a banana protein shake, impassively ignoring his parents, both clothed in all-white, as they clutch martini glasses and berate their son for his lack of ambition. Arnold Stoner [father]: Son, your mother and me would like for you to cozy up to the Finkelstein boy. He's a bright kid, and, uh... he's going to military school, and remember, he was an Eagle Scout. Tempest Stoner [mother]: Arnold…Arnold Stoner: [shouts over/to his wife] Will you shut up? We’re not going to have a family brawl!Tempest Stoner: [continues talking as her husband shouts]…. Retard.Arnold Stoner: [to Anthony] We've put up with a hell of a lot.[Anthony starts blender] Can this wait? ... Build your goddamn muscles, huh? You know, you could build your muscles picking strawberries.You know, bend and scoop... like the Mexicans. Shit, maybe I could get you a job with United Fruit. I got a buddy with United Fruit. ... Get you started. Start with strawberries, you might work your way up to these goddamn bananas! When, boy? When...are you going to get your act together?Anthony: [Burps]Tempest Stoner: Gross.Arnold Stoner: Oh, good God Almighty me. I think he's the Antichrist. Anthony, I want to talk to you. [Anthony gathers his smoothie supplements and begins to walk out of the room.] Now, listen! Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you! You get a goddamn job before sundown, or we're shipping you off to military school with that goddamn Finkelstein shit kid! Son of a bitch!The whiteness of Anthony’s parents is signified so pervasively and so strikingly in this scene—in their improbable white outfits and in the room’s insufferably white décor—that we come to understand it as causative. The rage and racism of Mr. Stoner’s tirade, the scene suggests, is a product of whiteness itself. Given that whiteness achieves and maintains its domination via both ubiquity and invisibility, what Up in Smoke accomplishes in this scene is notable. Arnold Stoner’s tortured syntax (“that goddamn Finkelstein shit kid”) works to “mak[e] whiteness strange” (Dyer 4), while the scene’s exaggerated staging delineates whiteness as “a particular – even peculiar – identity, rather than a presumed norm” (Roediger, Colored White 21). The belligerence of the senior Stoners toward not only their son and each other, but the world at large, in turn, functions to render whiteness intrinsically ruthless and destructive. Anthony’s parents, in all their whiteness, enact David Roediger’s assertion that “it is not merely that ‘Whiteness’s is oppressive and false; it is that ‘Whiteness’s is nothing but oppressive and false” (Toward the Abolition 13).Anthony speaks not a word during the scene. He communicates only by belching and giving his parents the finger as he leaves the room and the home. This departure is significant in that it marks the moment when Anthony, hereafter known only as “Man,” flees the world of whiteness. He winds up taking refuge in the multi-hued world of stonerism, as embodied in the scene that follows, which features Pedro emerging from his home to interact with his Chicano neighbours and to lovingly inspect his car. As a lowrider, a customised vehicle that “begin[s] with the abandoned materials of one tradition (that of mainstream America), … [and is] … then transformed and recycled . . . into new and fresh objects of art which are distinctly Chicano,” Pedro’s car serves as a symbol of the cultural hybridisation that Man is about to undergo (quoted in Ondine 141).As Man’s muteness in the presence of his parents suggests, his racial status seems tentative from the start. Within the world of whiteness, Man is the subaltern, silenced and denigrated, finding voice only after he befriends Pedro. Even as the film identifies Man as white through his parental lineage, it renders indeterminate its own assertion, destabilising any such fixed or naturalised schema of identity. When Man is first introduced to Pedro’s band as their newest member, James, the band’s African American bass player, looks at Man, dressed in the uniform of the band, and asks: “Hey Pedro, where’s the white dude you said was playing the drums?” Clearly, from James’s point of view, the room contains no white dudes, just stoners. Man’s presumed whiteness becomes one of the film’s countless gags, the provocative ambiguity of the casting of a Chinese-European to play a white part underscored in the film by the equally implausible matter of age. Man, according to the film’s narrative, is a high school student; Chong was forty when the film was released. Like his age, Man’s whiteness is never a good fit. That Man ultimately winds up sleeping on the very couch upon which we first encounter Pedro suggests how radical and final the break with his dubious white past is. The “Mexicans” whom his father would mock as fit only for abject labour are amongst those whom Man comes to consider his closest companions. In departing his parents’ white world, and embracing Pedro’s dilapidated, barrio-based world of wastedness, Man traces the geographies narrated by George Lipsitz in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Historically, Lipsitz argues, the development of affluent white space (the suburbs) was made possible by the disintegration of African American, Chicano and other minority neighbourhoods disadvantaged by federal, state, and corporate housing, employment, health care, urban renewal, and education policies that favoured whites over non-whites. In this sense, Man’s flight from his parents’ home is a retreat from whiteness itself, and from the advantages that whiteness conveys. In choosing the ramshackle, non-white world of stonerism, Man performs an act of racial treachery. Whiteness, Lipsitz contends, has “cash value,” and “is invested in, like property, but it is also a means of accumulating property and keeping it from others,” which allows for “intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations” (vii-viii). Man’s disavowal of the privileges of whiteness is a reckless refusal to accept this racial birthright. Whiteness is thus wasted upon Man because Man wastes his whiteness. Given the centrality of prudence and restraint to hegemonic constructions of whiteness, Man’s willingness to squander the “valuable asset” that is his white inheritance is especially treasonous (Harris 1713). Man is the prodigal son of whiteness, a profligate who pours down the drain “the wages of whiteness” that his forbearers have spent generations accruing and protecting (Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness). His waste not only offends the core values which whiteness is said to comprise, it also denigrates whiteness itself by illuminating the excess of white privilege, as well as the unarticulated excess of meanings that hover around whiteness to create the illusion of transcendence and infinite variety. Man’s performance, like all bad performances of whiteness, “disrupt[s] implicit understandings of what it means to be white” (Hartigan 46). The spectre of seeing white domination go ‘up in smoke’—via wasting, as opposed to hoarding, white privilege—amounts to racial treason, and helps not only to explicate why whites in the film find stonerism so menacing, but also to explain the paradox of “pot [making] the people who don’t smoke it even more paranoid than the people who do” (Patterson). While Tommy Chong’s droll assertion that "what makes us so dangerous is that we're harmless" ridicules such paranoia, it ultimately fails to account for the politics of subversive squandering of white privilege that characterise the stoner film (“Biographies”). Stoners in Up in Smoke, as in most other stoner films, are marked as non-white, through association with ethnic Others, through their rejection of mainstream ideas about work and achievement, and/or through their lack of bodily restraint in relentlessly seeking pleasure, in dressing outrageously, and in refusing to abide conventional grooming habits. Significantly, the non-white status of the stoner is both voluntary and deliberate. While stonerism embraces its own non-whiteness, its Otherness is not signified, primarily, through racial cross-dressing of the sort Eric Lott detects in Elvis, but rather through race-mixing. Stoner collectivity practices an inclusivity that defies America’s historic practice of racial and ethnic segregation (Lott 248). Stonerism further reveals its unwillingness to abide constrictive American whiteness in a scene in which Pedro and Man, both US-born Americans, are deported. The pair are rounded up along with Pedro’s extended family in a raid initiated when Pedro’s cousin “narcs” on himself to la migra (the Immigration and Naturalization Service) in order to get free transport for his extended family to his wedding in Tijuana. Pedro and Man return to the US as unwitting tricksters, bringing back to the US more marijuana than has ever crossed the Mexican-US border at one time, fusing the relationship between transnationalism and wastedness. The disrespect that stoners exhibit for pregnable US borders contests presumed Chicano powerlessness in the face of white force and further affronts whiteness, which historically has mobilised itself most virulently at the threat of alien incursion. Transgression here is wilful and playful; stoners intend to offend normative values and taste through their actions, their dress, and non-white associations as part of the project of forging a new hybridised, transnational subjectivity that threatens to lay waste to whiteness’s purity and privilege. Stoners invite the scrutiny of white authority with their outrageous attire and ethnically diverse composition, turning the “inevitability of surveillance” (Borrie 87) into an opportunity to enact their own wastedness—their wasted privilege, their wasted youth, their wasted potential—before a gaze that is ultimately confounded and threatened by the chaotic hybridity with which it is faced (Hebdige 26). By perpetually displaying his/her wasted Otherness, the stoner makes of him/herself a “freak,” a label cops use derisively throughout Up in Smoke to denote the wasted without realising that stoners define themselves in precisely such terms, and, by doing so, obstruct whiteness’s assertion of universal subjectivity. Pedro’s cousin Strawberry (Tom Skerritt), a pot dealer, enacts freakishness by exhibiting a large facial birthmark and by suffering from Vietnam-induced Post Traumatic Stress disorder. A freak in every sense of the word, Strawberry is denied white status by virtue of physical and mental defect. But Strawberry, as a stoner, ultimately wants whiteness even less than it wants him. The defects that deny him membership in the exclusive “club” that is whiteness prove less significant than the choice he makes to defect from the ranks of whiteness and join with Man in the decision to waste his whiteness wantonly (“Editorial”). Stoner masculinity is represented as similarly freakish and defective. While white authority forcefully frustrates the attempts of Pedro and Man to “score” marijuana, the duo’s efforts to “score” sexually are thwarted by their own in/action. More often than not, wastedness produces impotence in Up in Smoke, either literally or figuratively, wherein the confusion and misadventures that attend pot-smoking interrupt foreplay. The film’s only ostensible sex scene is unconsummated, a wasted opportunity for whiteness to reproduce itself when Man sleeps through his girlfriend’s frenzied discussion of sex. During the course of Up in Smoke, Man dresses as a woman while hitchhiking, Pedro mistakes Man for a woman, Man sits on Pedro’s lap when they scramble to change seats whilst being pulled over by the police, Man suggests that Pedro has a “small dick,” Pedro reports liking “manly breasts,” and Pedro—unable to urinate in the presence of Sgt. Stedenko—tells his penis that if it does not perform, he will “put [it] back in the closet.” Such attenuations of the lead characters’ masculinity climax in the penultimate scene, in which Pedro, backed by his band, performs “Earache My Eye,” a song he has just composed backstage, whilst adorned in pink tutu, garter belt, tassle pasties, sequined opera mask and Mickey Mouse ears: My momma talkin’ to me tryin’ to tell me how to liveBut I don't listen to her cause my head is like a sieveMy daddy he disowned me cause I wear my sister's clothesHe caught me in the bathroom with a pair of pantyhoseMy basketball coach he done kicked me off the teamFor wearing high heeled sneakers and acting like a queen“Earache My Eye” corroborates the Othered natured of stonerism by marking stoners, already designated as non-white, as non-straight. In a classic iteration of a bad gender performance, the scene rejects both whiteness and its hegemonic partners-in-crime, heterosexuality and normative masculinity (Butler 26). Here stoners waste not only their whiteness, but also their white masculinity. Whiteness, and its dependence upon “intersection … [with] interlocking axes [of power such as] gender … [and] sexuality,” is “outed” in this scene (Shome 368). So, too, is it enfeebled. In rendering masculinity freakish and defective, the film threatens whiteness at its core. For if whiteness can not depend upon normative masculinity for its reproduction, then, like Man’s racial birthright, it is wasted. The stoner’s embodiment of freakishness further works to emphasise wasted whiteness by exposing just how hysterical whiteness’s defense of its own normativity can be. Up in Smoke frequently inflates not only the effects of marijuana, but also the eccentricities of those who smoke it, a strategy which means that much of the film’s humour turns on satirising hegemonic stereotypes of marijuana smokers. Equally, Cheech Marin’s exaggerated “slapstick, one-dimensional [portrayal] of [a] Chicano character” works to render ridiculous the very stereotypes his character incarnates (List 183). While the film deconstructs processes of social construction, it also makes extensive use of counter-stereotyping in its depictions of characters marked as white. The result is that whiteness’s “illusion of [its] own infinite variety” is contested and the lie of whiteness as non-raced is exposed, helping to explain the stoner’s decision to waste his/her whiteness (Dyer 12; 2). In Up in Smoke whiteness is the colour of straightness. Straights, who are willing neither to smoke pot nor to tolerate the smoking of pot by others/Others, are so comprehensively marked as white in the film that whiteness and straightness become isomorphic. As a result, the same stereotypes are mobilised in representing whiteness and straightness: incompetence, belligerence, hypocrisy, meanspiritedness, and paranoia, qualities that are all the more oppressive because virtually all whites/straights in the film occupy positions of authority. Anthony’s spectacularly white parents, as we have seen, are bigoted and dominating. Their whiteness is further impugned by alcohol, which fuels Mr. Stoner’s fury and Mrs. Stoner’s unintelligibility. That the senior Stoners are drunk before noon works, of course, to expose the hypocrisy of those who would indict marijuana use while ignoring the social damage alcohol can produce. Their inebriation (revealed as chronic in the DVD’s outtake scenes) takes on further significance when it is configured as a decidedly white attribute. Throughout the film, only characters marked as white consume alcohol—most notably, the judge who is discovered to be drinking vodka whist adjudicating drug charges against Pedro and Man—therefore dislodging whiteness’s self-construction as temperate, and suggesting just how wasted whiteness is. While stonerism is represented as pacific, drunkenness is of a piece with white/straight bellicosity. In Up in Smoke, whites/straights crave confrontation and discord, especially the angry, uptight, and vainglorious narcotics cop Sgt. Stedenko (Stacey Keech) who inhabits so many of the film’s counter-stereotypes. While a trio of white cops roughly apprehend and search a carload of innocent nuns in a manner that Man describes as “cold blooded,” Stedenko, unawares in the foreground, gives an interview about his plans for what he hopes will be the biggest border drug bust in US history: “[Reporter:] Do you expect to see any violence here today? [Sgt. Stedenko:] I certainly hope so.” Stedenko’s desire to act violently against stoners echoes mythologies of white regeneration in the Old West, wherein whiteness refurbished itself through violent attacks on Native Americans, whose wasteful cultures failed to make “civilised” use of western lands (Slotkin 565).White aggression is relentlessly depicted in the film, with one important exception: the instance of the stoned straight. Perhaps no other trope is as defining of the genre, as is the scene wherein a straight person accidentally becomes stoned. Up in Smoke offers several examples, most notably the scene in which a motorcycle cop pulls over Pedro and Man as they drive a van belonging to Pedro’s Uncle Chuey. In a plot twist requiring a degree of willing suspension of disbelief that even wasted audiences might find a stretch, the exterior shell of the van, unbeknownst to Pedro and Man, is made entirely of marijuana which has started to smoulder around the exhaust pipe. The cop, who becomes intoxicated whilst walking through the fumes, does not hassle Pedro and Man, as expected, but instead asks for a bite of their hot dog and then departs happily, instructing the duo to “have a nice day.” In declining, or perhaps simply forgetting, to exercise his authority, the cop demonstrates the regenerative potential not of violent whiteness but rather of hybrid wastedness. Marijuana here is transformative, morphing straight consciousness into stoner consciousness and, in the process, discharging all the uptight, mean-spirited, unnecessary, and hence wasteful baggage of whiteness along the way. While such a utopian potential for pot is both upheld and satirised in the film, the scene amounts to far more than an inconsequential generic gag, in that it argues for the disavowal of whiteness via the assumption of the voluntary Otherness that is stonerism. Whiteness, the scene suggests, can be cast off, discarded, wasted and thus surmounted. Whites, for want of a better phrase, simply need to ‘just say no’ to whiteness in order to excrete the brutality that is its necessary affliction and inevitable result. While Up in Smoke laudably offers a powerful refusal to horde the assets of whiteness, the film fails to acknowledge that ‘just saying no’ is, indeed, one of whiteness’s exclusive privileges, since whites and only whites possess the liberty to refuse the advantages whiteness bestows. Non-whites possess no analogical ability to jettison the social constructions to which they are subjected, to refuse the power of dominant classes to define their subjectivity. Neither does the film confront the fact that Man nor any other of Up in Smoke’s white freaks are disallowed from re-embracing their whiteness, and its attendant value, at any time. However inchoate the film’s challenge to racial privilege, Up in Smoke’s celebration of the subversive pleasures of wasting whiteness offers a tentative, if bleary, first step toward ‘the abolition of whiteness.’ Its utopian vision of a post-white hybridised subjectivity, however dazed and confused, is worthy of far more serious contemplation than the film, taken at face value, might seem to suggest. Perhaps Up in Smoke is a stoner film that should also be viewed while sober. ReferencesBill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Dir. Stephen Herek. Orion Pictures Corporation, 1989.“Biographies”. 10 June 2010 ‹http://www.cheechandchongfans.com/biography.html›. Borrie, Lee. "Wild Ones: Containment Culture and 1950s Youth Rebellion”. Diss. University of Canterbury, 2007.Butler, Judith. "Critically Queer”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1.1 (1993): 17-32.Chavoya, C. Ondine. “Customized Hybrids: The Art of Ruben Ortiz Torres and Lowriding in Southern California”. 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