This paper presents an empirical investigation on the effect of product market competition on transactions with related parties and company performance. The study selects a sample of 250 randomly selected firms whose common shares were traded on Tehran Stock Exchange. The study uses Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure the market concentration and uses historical information over the period 2008-2012 to examine the hypotheses of the survey. Using simple regression analysis, the study has detected a positive relationship between HHI and related party transactions. In addition, the study has detected a negative relationship between competition and company performance measured by return on assets.

Tourism plays essential role in today’s economy and Iran has good position of tourism sources such as natural, historical, cultural, etc., although, these sources have not been utilized, properly. One of regions which have many potentiality and capabilities for developing Tourism in natural aspect is district and city of Galugah. The purpose of this study is to provide strategic assessment and optimization strategies for development of tourism industry to reach sustainable tourism development in this city. The study uses three techniques namely; Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) to determine necessary guidelines for development of tourism in the city of Galugah, Iran. The study first uses SWOT to categorize different factors and then QSPM is applied to prioritize various factors. The results of this study show that presenting methods in initial process and analyzing assessment matrix of T2 external and internal factors i.e. pollution of environment and river and extinction of plants species by result of pollution and O2 i.e. suitable climate for developing natural Tourism efforts in summer have been recognized as most priority factors among external factors. Intense cold of region in summer (W3) and existence of unique amusement places (S5) such as Amarg were recognized as effective and most priority factors among internal factors on Tourism development of Galugah city.

This paper considers the factor influencing on an airline carrier based on operations of an airport on the routes flown out of that airport. This study deals with evaluation of the Customer Performance index (CPI) of distinct domestic civil airlines in India. CPI consists of various parameters; among them many disembodied parameters, which are difficult to measure. In this context, initially we identified the prime factors that are crucial for evaluation of performances provided by various airlines in India. Thereafter, in order to determine the hierarchy among these factors; modified digital logic (MDL) approach is employed and cost is found to be the most important criteria. Furthermore, CPI is calculated using fuzzy-VIKOR approach. Such approaches can help the airlines in re-evaluating their current policies and then formulate comparatively more efficient market strategies to improve performance quality and to gain customers’ loyalty.

Enterprise architecture procedure contains some instructions for conversion of enterprise architecture from the current state to the desirable state. This procedure generally contains 3 phases each of which is the basis and prerequisite of the next phase. These phases are: Strategic information technology planning, enterprise architecture planning and enterprise architecture execution. As each phase is a prerequisite of the next one, any fault in each phase causes bigger faults in final results. Therefore, each phase should be double checked to make sure no fault has occurred. The second phase can greatly influence the final results. Therefore the preparation of an executable enterprise architecture model and checking it with functional and non-functional requirements can prevent many faults and lead to execution of a perfect model of the enterprise. The primary objective of this research is to check the accuracy of EA behavior in achieving an appropriate architecture. In this research, official models have been used to propose a solution to transform the products of C4ISR framework to executable Petri nets. Finally, a method is proposed to check the accuracy of the mentioned model. The proposed solution makes the EA semi-automatically check the correctness of the enterprise architecture behavior and increase its accuracy.

Cash plays essential role in modern business and economy and it is the life blood of all businesses. Therefore, cash management is the art of managing a company’s short-term resources for its ongoing activities, mobilizing funds and optimizing liquidity. Inefficient cash management may lead the company to bankruptcy. In this paper, we highlight different perspectives in which we can control the corporate cash including Cash Conversion Cycle, Cash Holding and Creditworthiness. The term Cash Conversion Cycle can be considered as a length of time between purchase of raw-materials and collection of cash from debtors. Cash holding is one of the most important financial decisions that the manager of the concerned organization has to make for the organizations. In this paper, we try to interlink among different items to control cash so that bankruptcy could be prevented and profitability would be improved by investigating on five companies from Consumer Durable sector.

The aim of this paper is to study the dynamics of the real exchange rate deviations of G7 countries by capturing nonlinearity and long memory features. In this context, we used fractionally integrated STAR (FISTAR) models proposed by Van Dijk et al. (2002) [Van Dijk, D., Franses, P.H., Paap, R., (2002), A nonlinear long-memory model with an application to US unemployment, Journal of Econometrics, 110, 135-165.] for a case with an exponential transition function. Indeed, this study can take into account procedures characterized by several dynamic regimes and persistence phenomena. Empirically, the elements of both fractional long memory and threshold non-linearity are present for the real exchange rates of the G-7 countries against the US, notably in the EU countries.

Data mining is the technique to find hidden patterns from a very large volume of historical data. Association rule is a type of data mining that correlates one set of items or events with another set of items or events. Another data mining strategy is clustering technique. This technique is used to create partitions so that all members of each set are similar according to a specified set of metrics. Both the association rule mining and clustering helps in more effective individual and group decision making for optimal inventory control. Owing to the above facts, association rules are mined from each cluster to find frequent items and then loss profit is calculated for each frequent item. Initially, the clustering algorithm is used to partition the transactional database into different clusters. Apriori, a classic data mining algorithm is utilized for mining association rules from each cluster to find frequent items. Later the loss profit is calculated for each frequent item. The obtained loss profit is used to rank frequent items in each cluster. Thus, the ranking of frequent items in each cluster using the proposed approach greatly facilitate optimal inventory control. An example is illustrated to validate the results.

The Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile Education (FRAME) model explains mobile learning features as a process in terms of mobile technologies, human learning capacities, and social interaction. It describes various issues of information overload, knowledge navigation, and cooperation in learning. The framework gives insight for development of future mobile devices as well as learning materials, and an appropriate design of learning and teaching strategies for the purpose of mobile education. The proposed study of this paper implements the FRAME model in Iranian banking industry. The study has been implemented among a sample of 160 regular employees who worked for Bank Maskan in province of Alborz, Iran. To validate the questionnaire, we use content validity ratio (CVR) and verify the questionnaire using Cronbach alphas. Using t-student test, the study has determined that the firm was ready to adopt mobile learning in terms of device, social and learner aspects. In our survey, learner aspect was number one priority followed by device and social aspects.

Exchange rates always affect the prices of the imports and export of products and services in which countries are trading with other parts of the world. Therefore, exchange rate calculation is one of the essential issues for making appropriate policies. This research investigates the determinants of trade, i.e. import, export, industrial growth, consumption level and oil prices fluctuation, which bring changes in exchange rate and their influence eventually on balance of payments. Data of defined variables was collected on yearly basis for China and USA for thirty one years. By applying cointegration, it is estimated that there existed a long run relationship in both countries. USA and China had significant and correct signs on the short run dynamic and some of the factors did not. Exchange rate did not granger cause balance of payment and balance of payment did not granger cause exchange rate. In conclusion, we found that determinants of balance of trade could affect the exchange rates, also, these rates had considerable effect (positive or negative) on balance of payments. In this twofold study, we found relationship of exchange rate with selected determinants of trade, and also examined their bilateral effect, and then made contrast of both countries.

Population growth and rapid urbanization growth in recent decades have not only led to unbalanced physical expansion of cities, but also contributed to growth and development of cities. The city of Sari in Iran, like many other cities is not immune from these changes. The city population has increased by 16 times over the last fifty years. Therefore, the increasing population growth has created uncontrolled physical expansion in the city. In order to prevent these inefficiencies of urban problems, the present study was accomplished to determine the factors influencing the process of expanding the city of Sari and to find out some solutions to fix and prevent this process. The method used in this study, descriptive–analytical method, to data analysis and Heldern and Shannon entropy model were used. The results show that: 82% of the physical growth of the city during the period 1977-2005 was related to the population growth and the remaining 18 percent, was associated with the horizontal growth. The city sprawl, the metropolitan area of the city had denser structure and the surrounding areas had a more dispersed structure. Also the effects of synthetic and natural factors restricting the city of Sari physical development made the city exorbitance horizontal and linearly developed. According to the findings that could help prevent the horizontal development of the city, it could be said that we could make the city vertically developed rather than horizontal expansion, improvement and renovation of old texture of implementation and more use of the land, filling the empty spaces.