Colonialism and Industrialization: Empirical Results

This paper presents theory and evidence to show that imperialism was a major factor impeding the spread of the industrial revolution during the century ending in the 1950s. Two empirical results stand out. First, analysis of historical evidence shows that most sovereign countries were implementing active industrial policies during the nineteenth century, while policies in dependent countries were biased in the opposite direction. Second, when allowance is made for economic determinants, industrialization in dependent countries in 1960 is found to be significantly lower than in sovereign countries. This result is shown to be quite robust to changes in data, sample size, functional forms, and specifications of the estimating equations. In particular, the basic results are not affected by the inclusion of a dummy for Sub-Saharan Africa

Some Economic Results of the Civilizing Mission

This paper proposes three tasks. It briefly delineates the character of the civilizing mission and the interests it served, especially the colonization of Asia and Africa. In addition, the claims of the civilizing mission and the neoclassical theory of trade are tested empirically by comparing growth rates of sovereign countries and colonies, and of colonies before and after they gained sovereignty. Finally, we offer a quick review of the changing dynamics of the global economy as goods which were hitherto non-tradable become increasingly tradable.Civilizing mission; imperialism; colonization; global economy; neoclassical theory; free trade; growth rates; non-tradable goods; tradable goods

Global Disparities Since 1800:Trends and Regional Patterns

This paper reviews the growing body of evidence on the relative economic standing of different regions of the world in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In general, it does not find support for Eurocentric claims regarding Western Europe’s early economic lead. The Eurocentric claims are based primarily on estimates of a per capita income, which are plagued by conceptual problems, make demands on historical data that are generally unavailable, and they use questionable assumptions to reconstruct early per capita income. A careful examination of these conjectural estimates of per capita income, however, does not support claims that Western Europe had a substantial lead over the rest of the world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An examination of several alternative indices of living standards in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries – such as real wages, labor productivity in agriculture, and urbanization – also fails to confirm claims of European superiority. In addition, this paper examines the progress of global disparities – including the presence of regional patterns – using estimates of per capita income.Global economy; Disparities; Regional patterns; Per capita income; Real wages; Labor productivity; Agriculture; Eurocentric

MAIL: Malware Analysis Intermediate Language

This paper introduces and presents a new language named MAIL (Malware Analysis Intermediate Language). MAIL is basically used for building malware analysis and detection tools. MAIL provides an abstract representation of an assembly program and hence the ability of a tool to automate malware analysis and detection. By translating binaries compiled for different platforms to MAIL, a tool can achieve platform independence. Each MAIL statement is annotated with patterns that can be used by a tool to optimize malware analysis and detection

Cybersecurity: Past, Present and Future

The digital transformation has created a new digital space known as cyberspace. This new cyberspace has improved the workings of businesses, organizations, governments, society as a whole, and day to day life of an individual. With these improvements come new challenges, and one of the main challenges is security. The security of the new cyberspace is called cybersecurity. Cyberspace has created new technologies and environments such as cloud computing, smart devices, IoTs, and several others. To keep pace with these advancements in cyber technologies there is a need to expand research and develop new cybersecurity methods and tools to secure these domains and environments. This book is an effort to introduce the reader to the field of cybersecurity, highlight current issues and challenges, and provide future directions to mitigate or resolve them. The main specializations of cybersecurity covered in this book are software security, hardware security, the evolution of malware, biometrics, cyber intelligence, and cyber forensics. We must learn from the past, evolve our present and improve the future. Based on this objective, the book covers the past, present, and future of these main specializations of cybersecurity. The book also examines the upcoming areas of research in cyber intelligence, such as hybrid augmented and explainable artificial intelligence (AI). Human and AI collaboration can significantly increase the performance of a cybersecurity system. Interpreting and explaining machine learning models, i.e., explainable AI is an emerging field of study and has a lot of potentials to improve the role of AI in cybersecurity.Comment: Author's copy of the book published under ISBN: 978-620-4-74421-

SIFT -- File Fragment Classification Without Metadata

A vital issue of file carving in digital forensics is type classification of file fragments when the filesystem metadata is missing. Over the past decades, there have been several efforts for developing methods to classify file fragments. In this research, a novel sifting approach, named SIFT (Sifting File Types), is proposed. SIFT outperforms the other state-of-the-art techniques by at least 8%. (1) One of the significant differences between SIFT and others is that SIFT uses a single byte as a separate feature, i.e., a total of 256 (0x00 - 0xFF) features. We also call this a lossless feature (information) extraction, i.e., there is no loss of information. (2) The other significant difference is the technique used to estimate inter-Classes and intra-Classes information gain of a feature. Unlike others, SIFT adapts TF-IDF for this purpose, and computes and assigns weight to each byte (feature) in a fragment (sample). With these significant differences and approaches, SIFT produces promising (better) results compared to other works

An Empirical Study of the Relationship between Macroeconomic Variables and Stock Price: A Study on Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE)

Literature strongly supports vibration of the stock price as a consequence of various macroeconomic factors (Darrat, 1990; Fama & Schwert, 1977; Jaffe & Mandelker, 1976; Nelson, 1976; Pearce & Roley, 1985; Ripley, 1973). This study has investigated the explanatory power of various macro-factors such as inflation rate, exchange rate, interest rate, money supply and production index on the variability of the stock price in Bangladesh. Multiple regression analysis has been conducted to asses the relationship between the stated macro economic factors with stock price. All share price index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange has been used as a proxy for stock price, the dependent variable of the study. No significant relationship has been found between the stock price and any of the macroeconomic factors. The study bodes well for advanced empirical models with additional macroeconomic variables.