Commodity price volatility, stock market performance and economic growth: evidence from BRICS countries

Abstracts in English, Afrikaans and ZuluThe study investigated the nexus between commodity price volatility, stock market performance, and economic growth in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the BRICS) predicated on two hypotheses. First, the study hypothesised that in modern integrated financial systems, commodity price volatility predisposes stock market performance to be non-linearly related to economic growth. The second hypothesis was that financial crises are an inescapable feature of modern financial systems. The study used daily data on stock indices and selected commodity prices as well as monthly data on national output proxies and stock indices. The study analysed data for non-linearities, fractality, and entropy behaviour using the spectral causality approach, univariate GARCH, EGARCH, FIGARCH, DCC-GARCH, and Markov Regime Switching (MRS) – GARCH. The four main findings were: first, spectral causality tests signalled dynamic non-linearities in the relationship between the three commodity futures prices and the BRICS stock indices. Second, the predominantly non-linear relationship between commodity prices and stock prices was reflected in the nexus between the national output proxies and the indices of the five main commodity classes. Third, spectral causality analysis revealed that the causal structures between commodity prices and national output proxies were non-linear and dynamic. Fourth, the Nyblom parameter stability tests revealed evidence of structural breaks in the data that was analysed. The DCC-GARCH model uncovered strong evidence of contagion, spillovers, and interdependence. The study added to the body of knowledge in three ways. First, micro and macro levels of commodity price changes were linked with corresponding stock market performance indicator changes. Second, unlike earlier studies on the commodity price – stock market performance – economic growth nexus, the study employed spectral causality analysis, single - regime GARCH analysis, Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) – GARCH and a two-step Markov – Regime – Switching – GARCH as a unified analytical approach. Third, spectral causality graphs depicting relationships between stock indices and national output proxies revealed benign business cycle effects, thus, contributing to broadening the scope of business cycle theoryBusiness ManagementPhD. (Management Studies

Accounting for Culture

Many scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers in the cultural sector argue that Canadian cultural policy is at a crossroads: that the environment for cultural policy-making has evolved substantially and that traditional rationales for state intervention no longer apply. The concept of cultural citizenship is a relative newcomer to the cultural policy landscape, and offers a potentially compelling alternative rationale for government intervention in the cultural sector. Likewise, the articulation and use of cultural indicators and of governance concepts are also new arrivals, emerging as potentially powerful tools for policy and program development. Accounting for Culture is a unique collection of essays from leading Canadian and international scholars that critically examines cultural citizenship, cultural indicators, and governance in the context of evolving cultural practices and cultural policy-making. It will be of great interest to scholars of cultural policy, communications, cultural studies, and public administration alike. </i

Wastewater Management in Industrial Zones of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta : A Socio-spatial Analysis of Environmental Management in a Transition Economy

Industrial zones were introduced to Vietnam in the late 1990s, and have sprouted across the country. The largely agrarian Mekong Delta boasts of hosting about a hundred industrial zones. Although important policy tools in attracting foreign investment, the zones also impact adversely upon the environment. Given their prevalence and policy weight, it is important to understand the workings of environmental management in the industrial zones. The triad of missing capacity- financing-regulation is the common diagnosis for environmental management problems, and the structural features and contradictions of the Vietnamese state and its transition economy, which take centre stage in other analyses of the political economy, have been largely neglected. This work seeks to explore and reintroduce this context into its analysis of wastewater management in the industrial zones of the Vietnam Mekong Delta by employing an institutional analysis and an inductive research strategy. The qualitative empirical data comprises 100 semi-structured interviews with state agencies, companies, consultants, households affected by pollution, provincial documents, as well as media reports in four provinces along the Hau River during the period May 2011 to February 2012. Socio-spatiality was found to offer explanatory power and contextualised insights. The Vietnamese state administration system manifested itself vertically in hierarchical relations, and horizontally with ambiguous operational boundaries between agencies of technically equal standing. Both the operational mandates of the state agencies and even non-state monitoring processes were shaped by this administration structure. The industrial zone itself was vested with social and symbolic meanings accented by the spatial incompatibility between its physical location and management. Law was found to be the medium that expressed and facilitated these multiple dimensions of socio- spatiality of hierarchy, place meanings, and operational territories. The institutional analysis shows itself, retrospectively, to be an implicitly spatial research strategy that does not incline to any one dimension of socio-spatiality. Thus, the rediscovery of multiple dimensions of socio-spatiality underpins this work’s call to better contextualise environmental management analyses through the implicitly spatial institutional analysis

Spatio-temporal correlation of extreme climate indices and river flood discharges

The occurrence of floods is strongly related to specific climatic conditions that favor extreme precipitation events. Although the impact of precipitation and temperature patterns on river flows is a well discussed topic in hydrology, few studies have focused on the rainfall and temperature extremes in their relation with peak discharges. This work presents a comparative analysis of Climate Change Indices (ETCCDI) annual time series, calculated using the NorthWestern Italy Optimal Interpolation (NWIOI) dataset, and annual maximum flows in the Piedmont Region. The Spearman’s rank correlation was used to determine which indices are temporally correlated with peak discharges, allowing to hypothesize the main physical processes involved in the production of floods. The correlation hypothesis was verified with the Spearman’s rank correlation test, considering a Student’s t-distribution with a 5% significance level. Moreover, the influence of climate variability on the tendency of annual maximum discharges was examined by correlating trends of climate indices with trends of the discharge series. These were calculated using the Theil-Sen slope estimator and tested with the Mann-Kendall test at the 5% significance level. The results highlight that while extreme precipitation indices are highly correlated with extreme discharges at the annual timescale, the interannual changes of extreme discharges may be better explained by the interannual changes of the total annual precipitation. This suggests that projections of the annual precipitation may be used as covariates for non-stationary flood frequency analysis

The adaptation of supply chains to climate change

Today, more and more organisations recognise that climate change is happening and have already begun to suffer from the impacts of this change. However, the predominant response to this challenge has been one of mitigation, not necessarily to protect companies and supply chains from the impacts of climate change, but rather to reduce the impact of business and logistics on the environment. In order to prepare organisations and their supply networks for the projected impacts, the concept of adaptation to climate change has recently attracted increasing attention amongst scientists and practitioners. As most research has been conducted in the public sector, this thesis aims to determine how supply networks in the private sector can adapt to climate change and its related risk factors. The field research is designed as a single large case study and investigates a global coffee supply network. As the coffee industry is very sensitive to climate change it has already taken actions to make the supply network more resilient and can therefore offer valuable insights into the concept of adaptation to climate change. Multiple interviews were conducted and the information received was analysed using two developed a priori models concluded from literature. This research contributes to the literature in supply chain risk management by adding supply chain climate risk (SCCR) as a new sub category of external supply chain risk and extends the literature in ‘learning’ by proposing a process model of network learning as a solution to enable supply networks to adapt to climate change. This thesis also offers a number of mechanisms to provide decision makers with practical recommendations that should be implemented throughout the coffee supply network. Therefore, for the first time, this research addresses the contemporary problem of climate change by taking a supply network perspective and proposing a network learning process that enables an adaptation to the identified and location-specific climate risk. Besides its contribution to theory, this thesis is also highly relevant for practitioners as it offers clear managerial guidance of how the researched coffee supply network can become more resilient to climate change

The impact of ex-auditors' employment with audit clients of perceptions of auditor independence

This study examined whether the practice of ex-auditors’ employment with audit clients affects perceptions of auditor independence from the perspective of financial statement users in Malaysia. It has been argued that the main problem with employment with an audit client is the ability of current auditors to remain independent when dealing with top managers who were previously their fellow auditors. The collapse of Enron in 2001 in the United States, along with other infamous financial scandals like Global Crossing and Waste Management revealed that in each of these companies, the senior accounting and finance officers were hired directly from their external auditors. The results of the study showed that financial statement users are concerned about the practice of ex-auditors seeking employment with audit clients. However, the cooling-off period of 2 years that audit firms must observe before an audit partner joins a client company (otherwise, the firms have to resign from the audit engagement) was perceived as sufficient to safeguard auditor independence. As the majority of respondents seemed to support the current policy, a reduction or an extension of the existing cooling-off period is deemed not necessary

The Compliance with Intellectual Property Laws and their Enforcement in Jordan- A post-WTO Review & Analysis

This thesis examines the implementation, enforcement and evolution of IP laws and regulations in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The period of interest includes the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty first century, with emphasis on the role played by Free Trade Agreements struck between Jordan and the United States, the European Union, and Jordan’s accession to the World Trade Organization. This thesis also examines the enforcement of the current set of IP laws in Jordan, and looks at their social and economic compatibility with the Jordanian societal norms and economic realities. This thesis argues that Jordanian IP laws lack a meaningful social and economic texture, and have failed to be evenly enforced in Jordan, essentially because they do not fit the Jordanian culture and are not compatible with Jordan’s economic stage of development. Additionally, the thesis argues that IP laws have had insignificant economic impact on the Jordanian economy as the majority of technologies used in Jordan, and the majority of foreign direct investments attracted to Jordan, are not IP related. Finally, the thesis argues that the current Jordanian enforcement model, which is built on coercion by donor countries, is serving the interests of foreign companies to the exclusion of the local citizens, and will not, in the long run, produce an enforcement model based on self-regulation by Jordanians, themselves. The laws, therefore, are unable to produce tangible results for the Jordanian people, or help meet their economic interests. The last part of the thesis deals with recommendations and suggestions aimed at creating an integrated approach to the adoption of IP policies

Networks of Influence: Implementing Politically Sustainable Multinational Stakeholder Strategies

In a bid to gain stakeholder support for their operations, multinational firms operating in politically uncertain environments often inappropriately apply a rational financial approach to a sociopolitical problem. Using the tools of network theory, I present an alternative sociopolitical approach to gaining stakeholder support by engendering cooperative relations and increasing tie formation while minimizing conflict. This dissertation comprises three paper chapters. The first, theory, paper chapter outlines a theory of influence exploring how the firm\u27s strategic position within the network of stakeholders affords it positional benefits of information and reputation, while also highlighting the costs of exposure to pre-existing conflict and the fostering of conflict through asymmetric relations. The second, empirical, paper chapter explores how firms can best manage altercentric and egocentric uncertainty in the nonmarket environment and compares the efficacy of the ex ante strategies that the firm can use to manage both types of uncertainty. I hypothesize and find that through strategic network positioning that affords it information, the firm can manage its egocentric uncertainty; and, by managing how it is perceived through its associations, the firm can also manage stakeholders\u27 altercentric uncertainty. When both strategies are assessed together, I find greater returns to firms in terms of engendering cooperation, minimizing conflict and forming ties by managing altercentric uncertainty through strategic associations. In the third, also empirical, paper chapter, I use insights from structural balance theory to explore the relationship between dyadic structure and triadic closure among networks of actors in the sociopolitical context. I outline and test hypotheses of four types of structural homophily of the actors in the triad—access to resources, status, likeability and number of ties (popularity)—on the likelihood of the closure of that triad. I find that a link that closes an open directed triad is more likely when the actors of the triad have different access to resources, different status, and similar numbers of ties to other actors. I also find that likeability among actors in the triad has no impact on the likelihood of closing that triad. My empirical papers test the relationships among firms and stakeholders in a novel hand-coded database of 51,754 stakeholder events linking 4,623 unique stakeholders of a population of 19 publicly traded gold mining firms which operate 26 mines in 20 largely emerging economies

Twentieth International Seapower Symposium: Report of the Proceedings

https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/iss/1004/thumbnail.jp

5th CARPE Conference HORIZON EUROPE AND BEYOND

CARPE, the Consortium on Applied Research and Professional Education is the first strategic alliance of a number of European universities of applied sciences. The partners aim to encourage cooperation in European research programmes and jointly develop educational programmes.They will also mutually exchange students and staff. An important point of departure in this collaboration is the link between education, research, businesses and organisations, through which knowledge acquires both social and economic value. The CARPE partners are Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Universitat Politècnica de València, Turku University of Applied Sciences, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and the University of Debrecen.Orozco Messana, J. (2019). 5th CARPE Conference HORIZON EUROPE AND BEYOND. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/132663EDITORIA