Understanding the Relationship between Online Discussions and Bitcoin Return and Volume: Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis

This thesis examines Bitcoin related discussions on Bitcointalk.com over the 2013-2022 period. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling algorithm, we discover eight distinct topics: Mining, Regulation, Investment/trading, Public perception, Bitcoin’s nature, Wallet, Payment, and Other. Importantly, we find differences in relations between different topics’ sentiment, disagreement (proxy for uncertainty) and hype (proxy for attention) on one hand and Bitcoin return and trading volume on the other hand. Specifically, among all topics, only the sentiment and disagreement of Investment/trading topic have significant contemporaneous relation with Bitcoin return. In addition, sentiment and disagreement of several topics, such as Mining and Wallet, show significant relationships with Bitcoin return only on the tails of the return distribution (bullish and bearish markets). In contrast, sentiment, disagreement, and hype of each topic show significant relation with Bitcoin volume across the entire distribution. In addition, whereas hype has a positive relation with trading volume in a low-volume market, this relation becomes negative in a high-volume market

The effect of green supply chain management practices on environmental performance and competitive advantage: a case study of the cement industry

Nowadays, sustainable development has been introduced and integrated into production and operation management field through the concept of the green supply chain. Green regulations and principles have gained the interest of managers and practitioners in selecting innovative practices for suppliers and organisations. Accordingly, the present study aims to evaluate the relationship between a green supplier, green innovation, environmental performance, and competitive advantage in the cement industry, which is an important industry for Iran. This study is descriptive in nature and conducted based on correlation and structural equation modelling. Managers and experts of cement companies in Fars Province are selected as samples for the study. A questionnaire and Smart-PLS software were used as research tools. The results of data analysis show that there is a positive and significant relationship between a green supplier, green innovations and environmental performance of an organisation, while there is a negative yet significant relationship between a green supplier, green innovations and environmental performance of an organisation. There is also a significant positive relationship between green innovation and environmental performance on one hand, and environmental performance and competitive advantage on the other. First published online: 01 Nov 201

Proposing an agile strategy for a steel industry supply chain through the integration of balance scorecard and Interpretive Structural Modeling

The internal and external environment of all organizations challenges them adapt to the best practices and reconsider their relationship throughout the supply chain. In this paper, the authors have tried to propose an agile strategy for the supply chain of a steel company, which ranks 3rd in Iran in Gross Sale with 16,000 employees, in order to respond quickly to ever-changing needs. To do this, through the literature review the framework of balanced scorecard was utilized to structure agility factors in the supply chain of the steel industry. Then the experts were interviewed to reconcile on the factors identified. Utilizing 24 questionnaires by the use of Interpretive Structural Modeling framework, the relationship and sequence of factors were obtained from experts. The final model developed in the paper presents the agility factors for the steel industry supply chain. Also, these factors are grouped within the four perspectives of the BSC to better enhance the results and pursue action. The ISM method identifies the priority of each factor which provides a better understanding of the underlying relationship of the factors for the managers to implement the strategies more reliably. The proposed model for strategy formulation can be utilized in strategy formulation problems over various types of supply chain