Evaluating the effectiveness of foreign capital flows in mitigation of gender inequality in Developing countries

Over the decades, foreign capital inflows (FCIs) have been contributing to the economic growth and development of underdeveloped and developing economies. However, it is imperative to inspect the effect of FCIs on gender inequality (GI). The latter includes SDG 5 which addresses the elimination of GI in all its forms. The existing empirical literature on the relationship between FCI-GI nexus shows mixed results. The current study scrutinized the effects of FCIs on GI in a panel of 71 developing economies for the time period 2001-2019. The study used the system generalized methods of moments (GMM) for model estimation. The positive and significant impact of remittances on G I was explored. It was found that official development assistance (ODA) caused an increase in GI in developing economies. The results showed that gross domestic product (GDP) and trade openness (TOP) increased GI. However, good governance was found to reduce GI in developing economies. The outcomes provide a guideline for the role of FCIs in reducing GI in developing economies

A Blockchain-Based Framework for Distributed Agile Software Testing Life Cycle

A blockchain-based framework for distributed agile software testing life cycle is an innovative approach that uses blockchain technology to optimize the software testing process. Previously, various methods were employed to address communication and collaboration challenges in software testing, but they were deficient in aspects such as trust, traceability, and security. Additionally, a significant cause of project failure was the non-completion of unit testing by developers, leading to delayed testing. This paper integration of blockchain technology in software testing resolves critical concerns related to transparency, trust, coordination, and communication. We have proposed a blockchain based framework named as TestingPlus. TestingPlus framework utilizes blockchain technology to provide a secure and transparent platform for acceptance testing and payment verification. By leveraging smart contracts on a private Ethereum blockchain, TestingPlus can help to ensure that both the testing team and the development team are working towards a common goal and are compensated fairly for their contributions.Comment: 4 figures, 12 page

Political Stability and the Resolve to Save: The Case of Pakistan

Savings is potential solution to consume the scarce resources in an efficient way, which helps large scale production, improved productivity of the labor and result in increased economic development. The purpose of this study is to examine how macroeconomic indicators like GDP growth rate, income, inflation rate and interest rate affect gross national savings rate of Pakistan and how political stability influence the relationship between these four macroeconomic indicators and savings rate. Using 10 years macroeconomic data of Pakistan from year 2006-2015, multiple regression analysis technique was run and  it was found that all four macroeconomic indicators significantly affects the savings rate. Income appeared to be strongest predictor in causing an increase in the savings rate. Although GDP found to be have an inverse relationship with savings rate. Political stability appeared to be non-significant in influencing the relationship between macroeconomic factors and savings rate

Impact of International Trade and Trade Duties on Current Account Balance of the Balance of Payment: A study of N-11 Countries

This study is aimed to investigate the impact of international trade and trade duties upon the current account balance of the balance of payment of N-11 countries. Two constituents of each factor have been considered for the purpose of analysis. For International trade, import (IMPT) and export (EXPT) of goods and services have been considered whereas, for trade duties, taxes on international trade (TOIT) and customs and other import duties (CID) have been taken as the research variables whereas, current account balance (CAB) has been taken as the dependent variable. For the purpose of analysis panel data of N-11 countries for 27 years from 1990 to 2016 has been tested using different econometric technique such as Panel unit root test, Panel co-integration test, Hausman test, Panel regression analysis and Panel causality analysis. The results demonstrate that overall research variables are co-integrated and having long term relationship and affecting each other in the conventional manner. Notably, it is observed via results that in case of N-11 countries the CAB itself is the regulating factor and all other factors are adjusted according to the movement of CAB. The study provides recommendations for the rectification of current account deficit position and also provides scope for future research as well

Market Efficiency, Market Anomalies, Causes, Evidences, and Some Behavioral Aspects of Market Anomalies

Market efficiency hypothesis suggests that markets are rational and their prices fully reflect all available information. Due to the timely actions of investors prices of stocks quickly adjust to the new information, and reflect all the available information. So no investor can beat the market by generating abnormal returns. But it is found in many stock exchanges of the world that these markets are not following the rules of EMH. The functioning of these stock markets deviate from the rules of EMH. These deviations are called anomalies. Anomalies could occur once and disappear, or could occur repeatedly. This literature survey is of its own type that discusses the occurrence of different type of calendar anomalies, technical anomalies and fundamental anomalies with their evidences in different stock markets around the world. The paper also discusses the opinion of different researchers about the possible causes of anomalies, how anomalies should be dealt, and what ere the behavioral aspects of anomalies. This issue is still a grey area for research. Key Words: EMH, CAPM, Calender Anomalies, Technical Anomalies, Fundamental Anomalies

Poverty Status and Factors Affecting Household Poverty in Southern Punjab: An Empirical Analysis

The strategies expected to mitigate poverty tend to identify factors that are closely related to poverty and that could have influenced the policy implications. A household level data was collected to examine the poverty status and factors affecting poverty in Southern Punjab. A logistic regression technique was employed for the present analyses. The findings show that age and education of the household head, own house, spouse participation, remittances, number of earners in the household and physical assets reduces the probability of being poor in Southern Punjab. However, large household size, occupation in the primary sector, high dependency ratio and mental disability are associated with an increased probability of being poor in Southern Punjab. Government should adopt effective policy measures to generate employment and encourage the attainment of education for the poor households for the mitigation of poverty in this region

Co-movement between Sukuk, Conventional Bond and Islamic Stock Markets under Bullish and Bearish Market Conditions: An Application of Quantile-on-Quantile Regression

This study explores the asymmetric co-movement between conventional bonds market, sukuk market and Islamic stock markets of top ten Islamic economies. The study used daily data ranging from 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2019. However, for the dependency structure, we used Quantile-on-Quantile (QQ) method, which captures the dependence between the entire distributions of financial assets and uncovers some nuance features of the relationship. The empirical findings show that under the stress condition (bearish condition), both bonds and stocks markets negatively commove. However, in the bullish market condition, these markets show week positive correlation/ co-movement in all the sample economies. The findings also confirmed that under the bearish condition, a mild negative correlation exists between sukuk and Islamic stock markets except for Malaysia. However, in the bullish market condition, sukuk markets and stock markets show strong positive correlation in all sample economies. Furthermore, study also enriches quantiles estimation by using quantiles granger causality approach. The findings show that the conventional bond market, sukuk market and Islamic stock market granger cause to each other on all the quantiles (in bullish or bearish market conditions)

Analysis of user-generated content from online social communities to characterize and predict depression degree

The identification of a mental disorder at its early stages is a challenging task because it requires clinical interventions that may not be feasible in many cases. Social media such as online communities and blog posts have shown some promising features to help detect and characterise mental disorder at an early stage. In this work, we make use of user-generated content to identify depression and further characterise its degree of severity. We used the user-generated post contents and its associated mood tag to understand and differentiate the linguistic style and sentiments of the user content. We applied machine learning and statistical analysis methods to discriminate the depressive posts and communities from non-depressive ones. The depression degree of a depressed post is identified using variations of valence values based on the mood tag. The proposed methodology achieved 90%, 95% and 92% accuracy for the classification of depressive posts, depressive communities and depression degree, respectively. </jats:p