Help or Hurt? The Impact of ESG on Firm Performance in S&P 500 Non-Financial Firms

The paper aims to investigate the impact of ESG practice on firms’ financial performance in the context of U.S. market from 2018 to 2020. The paper examines a sample of 57 U.S. non-financial firms belonging to the S&P 500. The Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) estimation is employed with an instrumental variable - the political views of the states where the studied firms are located. The paper shows that having a better practice of ESG could enhance firms’ financial performance measured by ROA, ROE, and TobinQ. These findings are consistent with the stakeholder-focused theory instead of shareholder-focus perspective. In addition, the magnitude of the influence of the ESG practice on TobinQ is significantly higher than that of the ESG-ROA and ESG-ROE relations. It reveals that the ESG benefits could make the firms appear more attractive to investors, creating higher market values of the firms’ assets and then higher TobinQ ratio. Not as the TobinQ enhancement, the significant improvement in ROA and ROE would be realized in the long run rather than short term. The low managerial ownership in the U.S. market may increase the chance of ESG overinvestment by the firms’ managers, hence reducing firm value. However, under the pressure of the investors’ strong demand for socially responsible investing, the U.S. firms tend to become involved in ESG activities, obtaining a strong stakeholder commitment and thus creating additional firm value in the long run

INVESTMENT TRENDS OF VIETNAMESE YOUNG PEOPLE

To examine the investment trends of Vietnamese young people, the research team surveyed the investment trends of young people living, studying, and working in Vietnam. Survey results show that the investment trends of young people today are diverse in investment types such as (1) Real estate investment, (2) Financial investment, (3) Gold investment; (4) Bank deposit… The research team also learned from survey participants about their priorities for investment channels and clarified the investment characteristics of young people. Through analyzing survey data, the research team had some discussions on investment trends of young people, raising young people's awareness of investment activities and choosing appropriate investment channels to optimize profitability for young investors and minimize risks

東南アジアにおける季節性洪水の間接影響を考慮したノロウイルス感染リスク評価

博士（農学）岩手大

Sustainability assessment of coastal ecosystems: DPSIR analysis for beaches at the Northeast Coast of Vietnam

The Northeastern coastal zone of Vietnam possesses high biodiversity and rich ecosystems like coral reefs, seagrasses, beaches and mangroves. It also includes the Ha Long Bay Natural Heritage site (UNESCO 1994) and the Cat Ba Biosphere Reserve (MAB/UNESCO 2004) as well as hosts the Economic Development Triangle (Hai Phong-Ha Noi-Quang Ninh) established by the Government of Vietnam. As one of the coastal ecosystems, sandy beach ecosystems attracted more attention during recent decades because of their essential role for human welfare and in environmental protection. A few studies concentrated on sustainable management of sandy beach based on environmental and ecological protection and enhance the beach quality for recreational use. The DPSIR (Driving force Pressure State Impact Response) framework describes the logical interaction among systems and finds out the cause and consequence of social-economic development activities to the environment and resources. In this study, the DPSIR was applied on the sandy beaches in the Northeastern coast of Vietnam to reveal the main environmental problems on sandy beaches including the decline of the natural landscape around the beaches and the degradation of the environment. It also pointed out that tourism development in association with urbanization and sea reclamation is the main driving forces for environmental degradation of the sandy beaches. Therefore, local authorities of Hai Phong and Quang Ninh should take into account several main responses to policies on inter-province coordination and managerial measures with a wider scope, which integrate socio-economic and physical factors, proximity, accessibility, and neighborhood to manage healthy coastal ecosystems and sandy beaches in particular. An integrated coastal management program for the Northeastern coast of Vietnam needs to be developed and carried out to follow the laws of Vietnam as well as to meet local urgent requirements

Real-time Damper Force Estimation for Automotive Suspension: A Generalized H2/LPV Approach

The real-time knowledge of the damper force is of paramount importance in controlling and diagnosing automotive suspension systems. This study presents a generalized H2/LPV observer for damper force estimation of a semi-active electro-rheological (ER) suspension system. First, an extended quarter-car model augmented with the nonlinear and dynamical model of the semi-active suspension system is written into the quasi-LPV formulation. Then, the damper force estimation method is developed through a generalized H2/LPV observer whose objective is to handle the impact of unknown road disturbances and sensor noise on the estimation errors of the state variables thanks to the H2 norm. The measured sprung and unsprung mass accelerations of the quarter-car system are used as inputs for the observer. The proposed approach is simulated with validated model of the 1/5-scaled real vehicle testbed of GIPSA-lab. Simulation results show the performance of the estimation method against unknown disturbances, emphasizing the effectiveness of the damper force estimation in real time

Some Theoretical and Practical Issues on the Impact of CSR on the Vietnam Textile and Garment Enterprises Operational Efficiency

The paper shows the impacts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the operational efficiency of Vietnamese textile enterprises by using primary data from qualitative analysis methods. The results show that corporate social responsibility has a great influence on the operational efficiency of textile enterprises in many ways. On that basis, the article proposes several recommendations for the Government of Vietnam as well as Vietnamese textile enterprises to well perform corporate social responsibilities. Keywords:Corporate social responsibility (CSR), operational efficiency, financial performance DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-15-04 Publication date:May 31st 202

Modified Method for prefabricated vertical drain consolidation analysis

Ground improvement with the prefabricated vertical drain (PVD) has become widely employed for soft ground treatment because of its economical and efficient method. While numerous numerical and analytical methods have been derived for PVD however, it is still an extensively high demand for a simpler and more accurate method for design steps. This paper proposes a method for solving the problem of one-dimensional (1D) consolidation with prefabricated vertical drains. The current approach introduces a 1D equivalent permeability, increasing linearly with depth to perform the consolidation of soft ground improved with PVD. The analytical solutions have been carried out and verified by analyses for two cases of one-way drainage and two-way drainage for uniform soil layer. The results show that the error of excess pore pressure determined by the proposed method is less than that obtained by the simpler method of Chai and smaller than 10% compared to the theoretical solution. The paper also compares the analytical solution with the FEM by ABAQUS software. It is found that the excess pore pressures and consolidation degrees obtained by these methods are similar and close to the theory. These confirm that the introduced 1D equivalent permeability can be employed to perform the consolidation of PVD improvement by analytical and FEM methods

Modified Method for prefabricated vertical drain consolidation analysis

Ground improvement with the prefabricated vertical drain (PVD) has become widely employed for soft ground treatment because of its economical and efficient method. While numerous numerical and analytical methods have been derived for PVD however, it is still an extensively high demand for a simpler and more accurate method for design steps. This paper proposes a method for solving the problem of one-dimensional (1D) consolidation with prefabricated vertical drains. The current approach introduces a 1D equivalent permeability, increasing linearly with depth to perform the consolidation of soft ground improved with PVD. The analytical solutions have been carried out and verified by analyses for two cases of one-way drainage and two-way drainage for uniform soil layer. The results show that the error of excess pore pressure determined by the proposed method is less than that obtained by the simpler method of Chai and smaller than 10% compared to the theoretical solution. The paper also compares the analytical solution with the FEM by ABAQUS software. It is found that the excess pore pressures and consolidation degrees obtained by these methods are similar and close to the theory. These confirm that the introduced 1D equivalent permeability can be employed to perform the consolidation of PVD improvement by analytical and FEM methods