In April, Mehdi Majidi reached an agreement with Akou Investment Management for an academic cooperation which will begin with the organization of an international case competition in fall 2010. Graduate and undergraduate students around the world will be invited to develop viable business plans for ‘off grid solar energy electricity generation to serve small communities, villages of 100-1000 people, where electricity will enable new business opportunities and local sustainable development’. The winners will be rewarded and winning projects will be presented to a third party investor for financing from large financial institutions such as the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Kreditansalt fu Wiederaufbau (KfW), the African Development Bank (AFD), etc…  Nadia Popova (AUP 2003) initiated the collaboration between Professor Majidi and Akou Investment after the successful result of AUP’s first case competition in spring 2010. For the first case competition, AUP students offered marketing strategy solutions for AINA, an NGO providing photojournalism education to girls in Afghanistan. Twenty-one graduate and undergraduate students formed five teams and competed in a collaborative structured procedure. Students' proposals were evaluated by a group of judges—AUP faculty members and outside professionals. In the fall, students will implement the winning solution through the internship program at AINA.

[AUP - Posted 17 June 2010]

Mehdi Majidi was invited, and has accepted, to be Regional Editor Europe of the International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation (IJSEI). IJSEI provides valuable insights into successful business techniques and strategies in the emerging field of social entrepreneurship, including theoretical perspectives, cutting-edge research, and actionable solutions to identified problems of particular interest to policymakers in government and international agencies, academics and researchers.

[AUP - Posted 2 Apr 2010]

James Noel Ward was a member of an educational mission team for Soutien à l’Initiative Privée pour l’Aide à la Reconstruction des Pays du Sud Est Asiatique (SIPAR) in Cambodia, where he served as a site inspector, instructor, photographer, and resources coordinator and distributor. He accompanied SIPAR Secretary and co-Founder Bernadette Chaventon with the eleven-member team of other patrons as they visited SIPAR-funded libraries and schools in remote rural areas.  SIPAR is active in the reconstruction of Cambodia via education through combating illiteracy, a source of poverty. Since 1993 SIPAR has established and funded 200 primary school libraries, covering the entire country, 43 Centers for Public Reading (community libraries) in rural areas, seven traveling libraries (Bookmobiles, Bibliobus) serving villages near Phnom Penh, and has published 66 titles and 750,000 volumes of books in Khmer for young people. Professor Ward and his daughter Anita-Louise have co-authored a forthcoming children’s story in Khmer for SIPAR.

[AUP - Posted 2 Apr 2010]

Diane Hamilton’s paper “Quality in Business Education as Measured by Accreditation and Ranking Systems,” was presented at the annual Academy of Management conference, in August 2009, by former AUP colleague and co-author, Harry Costin.  This work was also published in a special issue of the International Journal of Management in Education (2009, Vol. 3., Nos. 3/4, pgs. 249-269).

[AUP - Posted 19 Sep 2009]

Michel Rakotomavo's paper entitled “Payout and Asymmetric Information” has been accepted by the refereed Applied Economics Letters. This journal is published by Taylor and Francis Group Ltd.

[AUP - Posted 2 Apr 2009]

Michel Rakotomavo's paper, "Microstructure and Institutional Holdings", has been accepted for publication by the refereed Journal of Money, Investment and Banking. The paper’s results indicate that institutions attempt to minimize the costs of stealth trading.

[AUP - Posted 2 Feb 2009]

Michel Rakotomavo's paper entitled “Do Retail Investors and Institutions Pay The Same Spread?” has been accepted by the refereed journal Investment Management and Financial Innovations. The study provides evidence suggesting that the implicit costs of institutional trading are generally low.

[AUP - Posted 3 Nov 2008]

James N. Ward’s Op-Ed “The Silence of The Agencies” appeared in the September 26, 2008 edition of The Financial Times (click here to view the archived article). In his editorial, Professor Ward criticized the actions of the credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s during the current global credit crisis by pointing out that they act as an oligopolistic dupopoly that then follows the Stackelberg leadership economic model (1934), where there is a binary outcome of either first-mover advantage, or inaction. Professor Ward called for the voluntary break-up of the two into five smaller firms to restore a sustainable competitive model for independent and accurate credit ratings.

[AUP - Posted 4 Oct 2008]