Telling the whole story: using mulitple lenses for policy analysis

The poster outlines three critical lenses with potential to more explicitly inform social policy analyses. They are represented here as policy historiography, policy genealogy and policy archaeology. Without claiming absolute distinctions between their interests, the poster couples policy historiography with substantive issues of policy at particular hegemonic moments, policy genealogy with social actors’ engagement with policy, and policy archaeology with conditions that regulate policy formations. Essentially, this is a heuristic framework to reveal historical rules and regularities of policy that are peculiar to certain times and political governments or new leaderships; to position policy formulation process as a dynamic interplay of policy actors across local, national and international boundaries; and finally to synthesise findings generated from multiple perspectives to displace complexities and contradictions and arrive at a deeper understanding of policy at all its levels including fact-finding, formulation, implementation and evaluation

Revisiting Overconfidence In Investment Decision-Making: Further Evidence From The U.S. Market

Investor overconfidence leads to excessive trading due to positive returns, causing inefficiencies in stock markets. Using a novel methodology, we build on the previous literature by investigating the existence of overconfidence by studying the causal relationship between return and trading volume covering the COVID-19 period. We implement a nonlinear approach to Granger causality based on multilayer feedforward neural networks on daily returns and trading volumes from 2016 to 2021, covering 1424 daily observations of the S&P 500 index. The results provide evidence of overconfidence among investors. Such behavior may be linked to the increase in the number of investors. However, there is a decline in the rate of returns during the study period, implying uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

Digital twin-driven real-time planning, monitoring, and controlling in food supply chains

There needs to be more clarity about when and how the digital twin approach could benefit the food supply chains. In this study, we develop and solve an integrated problem of procurement, production, and distribution strategies (PPDs) in a medium-scale food processing company. Using the digital twin approach, the model considers the industrial symbiosis opportunities between the supplier, manufacturer, and customer using interval and sequence variables operating in a constrained environment using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) and agent-based simulation (ABS) methodology. The study optimizes the make-span and lead time, simultaneously achieving a higher level of digitalization. The analysis demonstrates how digital twin accelerates supply chain productivity by improving makespan time, data redundancy (DR), optimal scheduling plan (OSP), overall operations effectiveness (OOE), overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and capacity utilization. Our findings provide compelling evidence that the seamless integration PPDs enormously enhance production flexibility, resulting in an excellent service level of 94 %. Managers leverage real-time simulation to accurately estimate the replenishment point with minimal lead time, ensuring optimized operations. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that implementing PPDs has yielded considerable benefits. Specifically, we observed a remarkable 65 % utilization of the pasteurizer and aging vessel and an impressive 97 % utilization of the freezer. Moreover, by applying the DT model, the present model found a notable 6 % reduction in backlog, further streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency

Do market, resource and knowledge distance impact inbound cross-border acquisition?

With the increasing phenomena of cross-border acquisition (CBA) activities in emerging economies (EE), evidence about “distance” factors that make these economies attractive to home country firms is sparse. Given this background, we employ major locational advantage distance measures such as market, resource, and knowledge distances and examine their impact on the value and number of inbound CBAs in India. We source inbound CBA deal data from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database for the 1990–2020 period during which 47 home countries were making acquisitions of targets in India. We develop relevant hypotheses based on a literature review. We run tobit and negative binomial regression models on a final sample of 921 country-pair-year observations to test the hypotheses. The results show that increasing market and knowledge distances enhanced the value and number of India's inbound CBAs, fueled by the country's growth potential and knowledge base. However, we find no evidence of a role played by resource distance

Formation and Past Evolution of the Meteoroid Complex of Comet 96P/Machholz

The past dynamical evolution of the meteoroid streams associated with comet 96P/Machholz is investigated. The goal is to obtain a coherent picture of the past capture of this large comet into a short period orbit, and its subsequent breakup hierarchy. In particular, the aim is to constrain the earliest epoch that this large first precursor started to supply meteoroids into the interplanetary space. The fragments and meteoroid streams of that past cometary decay constitute a wide multiplex of interplanetary bodies, knows as the 96P/Machholz complex. The largest presently surviving fragment is comet 96P/Machholz, followed by a large amount of debris including the Marsden and Kracht group of sungrazing comets, as well as at least one object of asteroidal appearance e.g., asteroid 2003 EH1. It has been recognized that comet 96P/Machholz can give rise to eight different meteor showers within one Kozai secular cycle. These are the Quadrantids, daytime Arietids, Southern and Northern delta-Aquariids, kappa-Velids, theta-Carinids, alpha-Cetids and the Ursids. The first four showers are strong and well defined. The remaining four showers are weaker and less well constrained. In fact, while the activity of the Southern and Northern delta-Aquariids and kappa-Velids, theta-Carinids stands well above the sporadic meteor background, the existence of the alpha-Cetids and the Ursids, and their association with comet 96P/Machholz is uncertain. Recently, some of these meteor showers have been associated with the Marsden group of sunskirting comets, based on orbital similarity and past dynamical evolution. The fact that these meteoroid streams are associated with more than one parent strongly suggest a possible genetic relationship between these bodies. Using large-scale numerical simulations, the formation and past evolution of each individual meteoroid stream, associated with comet 96P/Machholz and the Marsden group of comets, is explored. Then the simulated shower characteristics are compared with observed ones as constrained by different meteor detection surveys (radar, TV, video, photographic and visual). \indent In the first part of this work, the formation and likely age of the Quadrantids, the strongest among the eight meteor showers, is examined. The Quadrantids are unusual with their very short duration of maximum activity (~17 hours) superimposed over a long-lasting weaker activity. The short duration of the peak activity indicates a narrow stream which on the other hand suggest that it must be young. Using numerical simulations it is demonstrated that the core of the Quadrantids is only 200 years old and is associated with asteroid 2003 EH1, while the broader activity is associated with comet 96P/Machholz. The possible nature of the parent, as a dormant or recently extinct comet, is emphasized. The second part of the work focuses on the age and likely parent of the daytime Arietids meteor shower. Due to their daytime peak activity, the observational characteristics of the Arietids are mostly constrained by radar surveys. The association of the shower with comet 96P/Machholz, and more recent linkage to the Marsden group of sunskirters is examined. Numerical simulations fits to observations suggest that the the Marsden group of comets can not be the dominant parent of the stream, though they contribute to the peak of the shower. The major parent is comet 96P/Machholz and the age of the daytime Arietids is at least 10000 years. The last part of this study investigates the origin and ages of the less-well constrained showers, the Southern and Northern delta-Aquariids, kappa-Velids, theta-Carinids, and the mis-associated alpha-Cetids and Ursids with comet 96P/Machholz. It is demonstrated that the gross features of the observed characteristics of the first four showers can be explained by comet 96P/Machholz while the Marsden group of comets contribute a small fraction to the peak activity of these showers. Furthermore, the association of the Northern delta-Aquariids with the Marsden group of comets, as previously suggested by several authors, is not supported by this study. Instead the bulk contributor to the shower is comet 96P/Machholz, and possibly another minor parent or parents not considered in this work. Furthermore, two showers were established as potential candidates for the misidentified alpha-Cetids and Ursids. These showers are the daytime lambda-Taurids and the much weaker December alpha-Draconids, though the last shower spatially overlaps with the November iota-Draconids, where their separation as individual showers is difficult. Lastly, the derived ages of all showers vary between 12000-20000 years, much older than previous estimates. When these shower age estimates are put into perspective, the observed characteristics of showers are consistent with a scenario of a capture of a large first precursor of the 96P complex circa 20000 BC and its subsequent fragmentation with a major break occurring around 100 AD as origin of the sunskirting comets

ESG disclosure and technological innovation capability of the Chinese listed Companies

The main objective of this study is to explore how ESG disclosure effectively promotes technological innovation capabilities (TIC) and also in different industries (green vs. high-tech). Further, examine the role of financing constraint (FC) in the relationship between the ESG disclosure and TIC. We employed the panel regression model, Causal step approach, Bootstrap mediation effect test, 2SLS, and GMM model. We used Bloomberg’s ESG disclosure score of China’s A-share listed companies from 2011–2019 (1); we found that the ESG disclosure has a significant relationship with corporate innovation indicators (OTI, STI, NSTI) and play a significant role in promoting TIC at different levels of corporate innovation (2) ESG disclosure of non-green (high-tech) industry is more effectively promote TIC than green (non-high tech) industry (3) ESG disclosure can promote corporate innovation by reducing the level of corporate financing constraints, and FC has a partial intermediary role between ESG and TIC

Does investor sentiment create value for asset pricing? An empirical investigation of the <scp>KOSPI</scp>‐listed firms

This paper proposes the development of an improved investor sentiment index (ISI) to apply on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and assess the vitality of sentiment-based factor for explaining critical equity market anomalies in asset pricing in Korea. We follow the methodology of Huang et al. (2015), the align sentiment index, and employ the partial least squares method to overcome the drawbacks of the pioneering BM index of Baker and Wurgler (2006, 2007). Based on the daily trading and price data for individual companies from 2006 to 2021, we construct a novel ISI, which has robust predicting ability for the aggregate stock market return, in comparison to other popular measures of sentiment in the contemporary finance literature. Furthermore, the sentiment-based factor in this paper captures the small firm effect that the asset pricing modelling, containing the more topical Fama–French five factor modelling (5F-FF), has struggled to illuminate completely. Given that our results have shown Korean stock market as fairly well-organised in terms of the availability of the market intelligence, we speculate our results to have important managerial implications for financial regulators in Korea and countries holding similar economic features

Moderating impact of FDI on the growth-environment nexus

This paper aims to investigate the moderating presence of FDI in the nexus amid economic progression and quality of environment in 115 countries, and various income panels of countries from 1992 to 2019, based on a theoretical underpinning of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). The results reveal a significant positive influence of energy consumption on CO2 discharges across all income panels. The interaction between FDI and square of GDP leads to a decrease in CO2 emissions for low and lower-middle income countries, whereas a drop in PM2.5 discharges is distinctively recorded for low, lower middle, high income, and overall income levels. Likewise, the interaction of FDI with manufacturing growth exhibits a negative influence on CO2 emissions reduction in both low and lower-middle income economies, and a reduction in CH4 discharges for upper-middle, high income, and overall income levels. All these results support the EKC hypothesis and offer a useful insight for countries that intend to pursue green economic growth with due consideration for energy consumption and environmental pollution

Harnack's inequality for a class of non-divergent equations in the Heisenberg group

We prove an invariant Harnack's inequality for operators in non-divergence form structured on Heisenberg vector fields when the coefficient matrix is uniformly positive definite, continuous, and symplectic. The method consists in constructing appropriate barriers to obtain pointwise-to-measure estimates for supersolutions in small balls, and then invoking the axiomatic approach from [DGL08] to obtain Harnack's inequality