Lucene4IR: Developing information retrieval evaluation resources using Lucene

The workshop and hackathon on developing Information Retrieval Evaluation Resources using Lucene (L4IR) was held on the 8th and 9th of September, 2016 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK and funded by the ESF Elias Network. The event featured three main elements: (i) a series of keynote and invited talks on industry, teaching and evaluation; (ii) planning, coding and hacking where a number of groups created modules and infrastructure to use Lucene to undertake TREC based evaluations; and (iii) a number of breakout groups discussing challenges, opportunities and problems in bridging the divide between academia and industry, and how we can use Lucene for teaching and learning Information Retrieval (IR). The event was composed of a mix and blend of academics, experts and students wanting to learn, share and create evaluation resources for the community. The hacking was intense and the discussions lively creating the basis of many useful tools but also raising numerous issues. It was clear that by adopting and contributing to most widely used and supported Open Source IR toolkit, there were many benefits for academics, students, researchers, developers and practitioners - providing a basis for stronger evaluation practices, increased reproducibility, more efficient knowledge transfer, greater collaboration between academia and industry, and shared teaching and training resources

Can National Innovation Substitute The Role of Environmental Regulation to Improve Corporate Environmental Performance?

Environmental regulatory uncertainty has attracted extraordinary attention among scholars, managers, policy-makers and other members of society. Despite this increasing attention, the impact of environmental regulatory uncertainty on the environmental approaches of firms is difficult to estimate in the business context. Considering that environmental regulations are not the only mechanism enabling firms to develop proactive environmental management practices, we show that the national institutional profile delineates a firm’s environmental progress. Specifically, we argue that the national level of innovation is an essential institutional condition that can encourage firms to develop advanced environmental approaches and even overcoming the effect of environmental regulatory uncertainty on corporate environmental performance. Using a sample of 1,912 firms from 19 countries, we developed different scenarios that combine the effects of environmental regulatory uncertainty and the national level of innovation. Knowledge of these different situations illustrates how managers cope with environmental regulatory uncertainty.Environmental Regulatory Uncertainty; National Level of Innovation; Corporate Environmental Performance

Fundamental Forces Driving United States and International Financial Regulations Reform

Multiple forces create a systemic crisis of the proportions of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Global and domestic financial reform is a difficult and perplexing task, one that is likely to take many years, and one that will surely continue to be shaped by a diverse range of forces. Recent measures remain incomplete and in some cases are even proving to be misdirected. This article considers seven fundamental forces shaping actions on future reform, specifically the (1) long term impact of the Crisis (and all financial crises); (2) increase in the “financialization” of the global economy, seemingly disproportionate to the growth in the real economy; (3) dramatic increase in financial interconnectedness worldwide, accompanied by a growing complexity in financial institutions and the regulatory framework, all of which could be becoming unmanageable; (4) “human factor” in finance, which tends to confound our assumptions about market behavior; (5) growth in the critical yet little understood and regulated “shadow banking system;” (6) deep technology revolution, which continues to transform the dynamics of the global economy; and (7) “next convergence” between Western and “emerging” economies, which is changing the global economic profile and presenting profound new challenges to financial refor

Where does novelty come from? : transnational municipal networks in global climate governance

Au cours des dernières années, les villes ont investi la scène de la gouvernance climatique mondiale. Si elles s’y présentent parfois en leur nom propre, elles sont souvent représentées par les réseaux municipaux transnationaux (RMT). Les RMT forment des structures à l’intérieur desquelles les villes échangent de l’information et des bonnes pratiques et collaborent sur diverses problématiques urbaines. Ils sont aussi des acteurs promouvant les intérêts des villes au niveau mondial. Les chercheurs se sont intéressés à l’émergence des RMT, leurs fonctions et leurs effets. En ce qui concerne ces derniers, une certaine confusion règne quant à la capacité des RMT de générer de nouvelles pratiques de gouvernance et la manière dont ces pratiques émergent. Ce travail se focalise sur les instruments de gouvernance comme nouvelles pratiques des RMT. Les RMT créent ces instruments pour orienter le comportement de leurs villes membres. Ils en mettent en œuvre certains directement, mais en mettent d’autres à disposition des villes pour qu’elles les emploient. Constatant que tous les RMT ne génèrent pas autant de nouveaux instruments, ce travail pose la question suivante : pourquoi certains RMT génèrent-ils plus de nouveautés que d’autres? Pour répondre à cette question, un cadre théorique utilisant la théorie des réseaux et les approches sur les systèmes complexes est construit. Il perçoit les interactions comme étant la condition principale d’émergence de nouveaux instruments. Il emprunte aussi à la théorie des organisations pour étudier l’âge et les ressources organisationnelles des RMT comme possibles autres variables expliquant l’émergence de nouveaux instruments. Ce cadre théorique est testé par le biais d’une étude empirique des interactions et instruments de gouvernance dans un système de 15 RMT. Une analyse de réseaux sociaux et une analyse transversale montrent que la combinaison de la centralité, la diversité et l’âge expliquent les nouveaux instruments des RMT. Une analyse comparative du C40 et du 100RC souligne que lorsque ces variables sont absentes, la présence d’un entrepreneur de gouvernance et d’importantes ressources organisationnelles pourraient également encourager l’émergence de nouveaux instruments de gouvernance. Cette étude contribue aux travaux sur l’influence des RMT dans la gouvernance environnementale et climatique en montrant comment émergent de nouveaux instruments de gouvernance. En ce sens, elle répond à des considérations plus larges sur la nécessaire diversification des instruments permettant de gouverner les villes et les autres acteurs de la gouvernance climatique mondiale.In recent years, cities have become visible in the realm of global climate governance. While they sometimes talk in their own name, they are often represented by Transnational Municipal Networks (TMNs). TMNs are structures in which cities discuss and exchange information and good practices, and collaborate on a variety of urban issues. They can also be considered actors promoting the interests of cities at the global level. Scholars have looked at the emergence of TMNs, their functions, and their effects. There is some confusion regarding the latter, especially the capacity of TMNs to generate novel practices and the way in which these might emerge. This study focuses on governance instruments as novelties generated by TMNs. Considering the fact that not all TMNs generate novel instruments, it asks: why do some TMNs generate more novel governance instruments than others? To answer this question, this research uses a network and complex system framework, seeing interactions as the main enabling condition for the emergence of novel instruments. It also uses some insights from organisational theories to study TMN age and organisational resources as possible variables explaining the emergence of novelty. This study then conducts an empirical analysis on the interactions and governance tools emerging in a system comprising of 15 TMNs. A social network analysis and cross-case analysis show that the combination of centrality, diversity, and age explain TMN novel instruments. A comparative case study of C40 and 100RC underline that, in the absence of high centrality, diversity, and age scores, the presence of a governance entrepreneur and high organisational resources might also explain the rise of novel governance instruments. This research contributes to studies on the influence of TMNs in environmental and climate governance by showing how novel governance instruments emerge. Accordingly, it answers wider concerns about the need for a diversification of tools in order to govern cities as well as other transnational actors of global climate governance

Forecasting Stock Market Prices: A Machine Learning Approach

There has been extensive literature written about the efficiency of the stock market. Practitioners and academicians have debated whether investors can exploit publicly available information to generate excess returns. Clearly predicting the stock market’s return with high accuracy has been enormously difficult, but we are interested in contributing to the continuous exploration of the efficiency of the stock market using machine learning techniques. We also want to examine the relationship between our dataset’s macroeconomic indicators and foreign nations’ stock markets with our target feature—the S&P 500. In this paper, we will be using supervised machine learning models, like Linear Regression, Penalized Regression-Elastic Net, Support Vector Regression, Random Forest, and XGBoost models, to predict monthly stock market returns using historical data from 1992 to 2021. Our results show that it is difficult to forecast stock market returns with high accuracy using the monthly SP&500 monthly returns, and that if investors even rely on the high computational power of machine learning techniques to attempt to forecast stock market returns, they will likely end up making a high-risk bet and lose out substantially on their investment. We also report our dataset features’ importance in relation to the U.S. SP&500 generated by our machine learning model

Can macroeconomic variables explain long term stock market movements? A comparison of the US and Japan

Within the framework of a standard discounted value model we examine whether a number of macroeconomic variables influence stock prices in the US and Japan. A cointegration analysis is applied in order to model the long term relationship between industrial production, the consumer price index, money supply, long term interest rates and stock prices in the US and Japan. For the US we find the data are consistent with a single cointegrating vector, where stock prices are positively related to industrial production and negatively related to both the consumer price index and a long term interest rate. We also find an insignificant (although positive) relationship between US stock prices and the money supply. However, for the Japanese data we find two cointegrating vectors. We find for one vector that stock prices are influenced positively by industrial production and negatively by the money supply. For the second cointegrating vector we find industrial production to be negatively influenced by the consumer price index and a long term interest rate. These contrasting results may be due to the slump in the Japanese economy during the 1990s and consequent liquidity trap.Stock Market Indices, Cointegration, Interest Rates.

ZNANJE I INOVACIJA KAO KONKURENTSKA PREDNOST REPUBLIKE HRVATSKE

Knowledge and investment in innovation is becoming the main criteria of competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to examine concepts of knowledge, innovation and competitiveness. To prove the stated, comparative analysis was conducted on Eurostat data on EU public expenditure on education. Further analysis involved the data of employed and unemployed persons depending on the completed educational program in Croatia. Furthermore, a benchmarking of countries\u27 innovation performance was carried out based on the Global Innovation Index, the Bloomberg Innovation Index and the European Innovation Scoreboard. The aim was to determine the most competitive economies compared to Croatia. The third analysis included innovation performance of Croatian companies. The contribution of the paper is visible in the analysis of the theoretical determination of knowledge and its development completed with the list of future jobs. The importance of the paper is reflected in the necessity of creating strategies corresponding to the future.Znanje i ulaganje u inovaciju postaje osnovni kriterij konkurentnosti. Svrha je ovoga rada ispitati koncepte znanja, inovacije i konkurentnosti. Da bi se dokazalo navedeno, provedena je komparativna analiza Eurostat podataka o EU javnim troškovima za obrazovanje. Daljnja analiza uključivala je podatke o zaposlenima i nezaposlenima, ovisno o završenom stupnju obrazovanja u Hrvatskoj. Nadalje, provedena je usporedna analiza inovacijske uspješnosti zemalja na temelju globalnog inovacijskog indeksa, Bloomberg inovacijskog indeksa i Europskog inovacijskog semafora. Cilj je bio odrediti najkonkurentnije ekonomije u usporedbi s Hrvatskom. Doprinos ovoga rada vidljiv je iz analize teorijske odrednice znanja i njegova razvoja upotpunjenog popisom budućih zaposlenja. Važnost rada odražava se u potrebi stvaranja strategija u skladu s budućim potrebama

The global field of multi-family offices: An institutionalist perspective

We apply the notion of the organisational field to internationally operating multi-family offices. These organisations specialise on the preservation of enterprising and geographically dispersed families’ fortunes. They provide their services across generations and countries. Based on secondary data of Bloomberg’s Top 50 Family Offices, we show that they constitute a global organisational field that comprises two clusters of homogeneity. Clients may decide between two different configurations of activities, depending on their preferences regarding asset management, resource management, family management, and service architecture. The findings also reveal that multi-family offices make relatively similar value propositions all over the world. The distinctiveness of the clusters within the field is not driven by the embeddedness of the multi-family offices in different national environments or their various degrees of international experience. Rather, it is weakly affected by two out of four possible value propositions, namely the exclusiveness and the transparency of services