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This paper examines the sources of economic growth in Algeria, studying the key drivers of their slow and weak economic performance, during the period of 1979–2019 from the perspective of the augmented growth accounting framework and the growth regression method. More specifically, the paper uses the augmented growth accounting framework to decompose the aggregate growth of an individual economy to determine the contribution of various inputs and the total factor productivity. The growth regression method, then, links the growth performance of a given country to a set of economic, social, and institutional variables to identify the deep drivers of its economic growth. Results of the accounting framework show that Algeria's growth performance has been weak and modest for decades. This is due, mainly, to labor growth with weak gain in capital accumulation and to sharp losses in the total factor productivity growth. Furthermore, results of the econometrics study stress the importance of the political, institutional, and economic variables and the macroeconomic stability as potential factors that may affect growth in Algeria. These findings highlight the need for policymakers to identify and to target these determinants to improve the long-run economic growth in Algeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of administrative level on local economic growth from the perspective of officials' rank. We notice an interesting phenomenon that higher‐ranking local officials (HRO) serve in cities with lower administrative level, can effectively improve economic performance similar to the effect of promoting administrative level of local government. Based on prefecture‐level city data from 2001 to 2019, we find that HRO can significantly promote local economic growth, especially in cities with lower levels of development. The mechanism analysis shows that the HRO cities not only could receive upper‐level government's favoritism but also tend to shape good business environment to attract investment. Further, HRO is a softer and shorter way than a formal change of regional administrative level, with less negative impact on the surrounding regions. The results provide new evidence that raising administrative level promotes regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to empirically explore the linkage between the cooperative sector and economic growth in Italian provinces (NUTS‐3), through a panel analysis covering the period between 2013 and 2019. We hypothesize that the cooperative sector can contribute to economic growth through its ability to generate social capital, thereby helping to mitigate market failures. The empirical analysis does not provide us with robust evidence of the positive connection between the cooperative sector as a whole and local economic growth. However, when we disaggregate the cooperative sector into ordinary and social cooperatives, we find intriguing results. Indeed, there is robust evidence of a negative relationship between the territorial distribution of ordinary cooperatives and economic growth, while for social cooperatives we find a positive relationship. We interpret these results as showing that the pursuit of general interest objectives, which allows the principle of mutuality to be extended to indirect forms of reciprocity, could make cooperative firms more effective in promoting the economic performance of territories. This is because they are more likely to generate bridging social capital that encourages the spread of generalized trust, a key factor in the advancement of modern market economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural collective‐owned cooperatives (RCOCs) have received significant attention for rural development, alleviating rural poverty, and achieving common welfare in China. Using the Social‐ecological system (SES) framework as a conceptual and analytical lens, this paper clarifies the determinants and the influence mechanism for the economic performance of RCOCs. A mixed method, PLS‐SEM combined NCA approach is applied to 420 smallholder farmers in rural China. The results reveal that rural collective property‐rights system reform (RCPRSR), leadership, social capital, and collective action positively affect the economic performance of RCOCs. Moreover, leadership and social capital also operate through their mediating effect on collective action amongst collective members. Our results further show that RCPRSR, leadership, and social capital are necessary conditions for the high economic performance of RCOCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstact: In this paper we develop nowcasting models for the Pays‐de‐la‐Loire's jobseekers, a dynamic French regional economy. We ask whether these regional nowcasts are more accurate by only using the regional data or by combining the national and regional data. For this purpose, we use penalized regressions, random forest, and dynamic factor models as well as dimension reduction approaches. The best nowcasting performance is provided by the DFM estimated on the regional and regional‐national databases as well as the Elastic‐Net model with a prior screening step for which the national data are the most frequently selected data. For the latter, it appears that the Change in foreign orders in the industry sector, the OECD Composite leading indicator, and the BdF Business sentiment indicator are among the major predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Methods Results Conclusions Indicators of surgical outcomes are designed to objectively evaluate surgical performance, enabling comparisons among surgeons and institutions. In recent years, there has been a surge in complex indicators of perioperative short‐term and long‐term outcomes. The aim of this narrative review is to provide an overview and a critical analysis of surgical outcomes indicators, with a special emphasis on hepato‐pancreato‐biliary (HPB) surgery.A narrative review of outcome measures was conducted using a combined text and MeSH search strategy to identify relevant articles focused on perioperative outcomes, specifically within HPB surgery.The literature search yielded 624 records, and 94 studies were included in the analysis. Included papers were classified depending on whether they assessed intraoperative or postoperative specific or composite outcomes, and whether they assessed purely clinical or combined clinical and socio‐economic indicators. Specific indicators included in composite outcomes were categorized into three main domains: intraoperative metrics, postoperative outcomes, and oncological outcomes. While postoperative mortality, complications, hospital stay and readmission were the indicators most frequently included in composite outcomes, oncological outcomes were rarely considered.The evolution of surgical outcomes has shifted from the simplistic assessment of crude mortality rates to complex composite outcomes. Whether the recent explosion of publications on these topics has a clinical impact in real life is questionable. Outcomes from the patient perspective, integrating social and financial indicators, are not yet integrated into most of these composite analytical tools but should not be underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard recession forecasting based on economic indicators has become unsettled due to COVID‐19 pandemic's limited but influential data. This paper proposes a new non‐parametric approach to computing predictive probabilities of future recessions that is robust to influential observations and other data irregularities. The method simulates forecasts using past data histories embedded into a symbolic space. Then, the forecasts are converted into probability statements, which are weighted by the forecast probabilities of their respective symbols. Using GDP data from G7, our proposal outperforms other parametric approaches in classifying future national business cycle phases, especially including data from 2020 in the sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the predictability of the changes in Brent oil futures prices using a multilayer perceptron artificial neural network that exploits the information contained in the largest possible set of economic indicators. Feature engineering is employed to identify the most important predictors of the change in Brent oil futures prices. We find that oil‐market‐specific variables are important predictors. Our findings also suggest that forecasts of the change in the Brent oil futures prices from the multilayer perceptron that exploits the informational content of all and oil‐market‐specific predictors exhibit higher statistical forecast accuracy than the random walk. Tests of forecast optimality indicate that the forecasts generated using oil‐market‐specific predictors are optimal. We discuss the policymaking and practical relevance of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the economic confidence indicators' reaction to the environment surrounding the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using Eurostat's monthly data for the economic sentiment in European Union countries, we found that, in the COVID‐19 era, confidence and perceptions about the economy are strongly dominated by factors related to the pandemic, more so by policy measures and the vaccination process than by the direct health impact of the coronavirus. This is found to be prevalent across the multiple dimensions of economic sentiment. Moreover, standard macroeconomic variables seem to play a smaller and more marginal role during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the territorial, economic, and social factors that affect the evolution of bullfighting festivities in Spain. Using data from the Ministry of Culture and Sports, we employ panel data regression models to analyze bullfighting celebrations from 2011 to 2019 before the COVID pandemic. The main findings include the significant role of public interest and attendance in bullfights, the heterogeneity of regions responses to the decline in festivities, and the influence of rural depopulation on this decline. Additionally, political factors, particularly support for animal welfare parties, negatively affect bullfighting celebrations, while economic indicators show no significant impact during the study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between corporate purpose and disaster response. To that aim, we use a unique dataset generated by Just Capital's COVID‐19 response tracker that characterizes the early responses of 928 companies included in the Russell 1000 Index generated by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We marry this data to the Business Roundtable Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation (BRT‐CPS) signatories list, which includes 210 firms that declared "a fundamental commitment to all stakeholders" as their corporate purpose. We estimate the differential impact of BRT‐CPS signees on the rest. After controlling our results with financial indicators and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data, we convey that BRT‐CPS signees were more likely to develop strategies that benefited their surrounding communities and other stakeholders. Moreover, corporations with high ESG were less likely to have an early response that directly benefited stakeholders other than shareholders, except for layoffs and unpaid leave. Finally, we discuss the outcomes considering the symbolic management theory, corporate purpose literature, and its relation to stakeholder management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cap‐and‐trade regulation is increasingly adopted by countries and governments to curb carbon emissions. This regulation can be implemented based on two rules, that is, the traditional cap allocation rule and the linear cap allocation rule. Considering the impact of online channel structure on the manufacturer's production and low‐carbon investment strategy, this paper aims to explore the economic and environmental performances of the two rules. The results show that the linear rule encourages the government to allocate less cap to each unit product as the emission abatement level increases, preventing the manufacturer from gaining a windfall profit from the free carbon credits. Besides, the government could use the traditional cap allocation rule to better control the total carbon emissions but use the linear cap allocation rule to obtain more social welfare as well as economic benefit. No matter which cap allocation rule is implemented, the manufacturer always performs better in reseller mode, and the e‐tailer might perform better in reseller (marketplace) mode given a high (low) low‐carbon investment efficiency. This study enriches the literature on the interplay between the cap allocation rule and selling mode and provides insights into decision‐making for governments and firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the contribution of intangible investment to growth is a challenging and complex task for any country. However, it has become increasingly difficult to determine both the exact magnitude of economic performance and its composition in the case of the Irish economy. This is mainly due to the impact of certain distortionary transactions by a select number of multinationals operating in the Irish jurisdiction. In this paper, we address this issue by assessing, in a detailed manner, the contribution of intangible and tangible assets to the Irish growth story. We control for distortions in the official investment data series while also incorporating intangible assets that are not currently included in the National Accounts. Our results show that the observed unprecedented increase in the official intangible investment has a relatively minor contribution to the actual Irish labor productivity growth. Once the distortions are filtered out, Irish labor productivity growth is driven by tangible capital. More interestingly, non‐national accounts intangible capital has a sizeable pro‐cyclical impact on labor productivity growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown dramatically as a major form of international capital transfer over the past decades. The unprecedented growth of cross‐country FDI flows has been attributed to a rich set of economic, geographical and institutional factors. In this paper, Ι examine the role of financial system heterogeneity as a potential detrimental factor to FDI flows across OECD economies. To do so, Ι use a panel dataset of the most recently updated bilateral FDI data at the country level according to OECD BMD4 definition and construct measures of financial distance using a broad set of financial indicators. The econometric approach consists of a gravity‐style model, estimated according to the latest advancements in econometric techniques in order to avoid omitted variable bias. The results indicate that financial system similarity is associated with increased bilateral FDI flows, a conclusion that is robust across different estimation strategies and financial distance measures. This insightful policy implication for advanced economies is that the restructuring of the financial system and harmonisation to best practices can contribute to economic recovery through the FDI channel as well. Finally, the results highlight the importance for the full implementation of the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates house price dynamics at high frequency using city‐level observations during the period 1994–2022 in Lithuania. We employ multiple time series‐based econometric procedures to examine whether real house prices and house price‐to‐rent ratios exhibit explosive behaviour. According to these recursive right‐tailed test results, we reject the null hypothesis of no‐bubble and find evidence for long and multiple periods of explosive behaviour in the housing market in all major cities during the sample period. While the size of bubbles varies across cities, especially when we use the house price‐to‐rent ratio, there is clearly a similar boom‐bust pattern in Lithuania. Large house price corrections can in turn have adverse effects on economic performance and financial stability, as experienced during the global financial crisis and other episodes in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial distress prediction (FDP) is centrally imported to reduce potential losses of companies and investors. This paper combines social responsibility indicators with financial, management, and textual indicators to construct a multi‐dimensional FDP index system. To increase prediction accuracy, the difference in the number of samples between special treatment and health companies is actively considered, and the synthetic minority oversampling technique is adopted to deal with class‐imbalanced datasets. Moreover, a feature extraction method based on the genetic algorithm is employed to select features as input of machine learning models for predicting financial distress in Chinese listed companies. Experimental results show that ensemble classifiers are the better choice for predicting financial distress, of which gradient boosting decision tree outperforms other classifiers. Textual indicators play the most significant role in complementing traditional financial indicators of FDP, and their financial distress signals emerge earlier compared with management and social responsibility indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluated the performance of OECD's Composite Leading Indicator using the Continuous Wavelet Transform. We used various wavelet tools ‐ wavelet coherency, wavelet phase and wavelet phase difference ‐ to assess the co‐movement between the Composite Leading Indicator and three macroeconomic variables ‐ Industrial Production Index, unemployment rate, and real GDP Growth ‐ at each frequency and moment. We also explored the lead–lag relationship between each pair of variables across time and frequency. We concluded that OECD's Composite Leading Indicator is a useful leading indicator of the Industrial Production Index and can be suited for forecasting the unemployment rate. However, it exhibited poor performance regarding GDP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the economic effects of improved broadband access at the firm level. Using a detailed micro data set from 2002 to 2017, we cover almost 20,000 small, medium and large Greek firms and test the relationship between their economic performance with the availability and use of broadband services at the postcode level. We trace the effect of increased access and speeds across industrial sectors and firm sizes. Our results highlight that increases in broadband speeds can improve the financial performance of adopting small firms (sales, profits and labour productivity) by 2% for every speed doubling beyond basic broadband access. Unlike other output metrics, small firms do not generate increasing shares of intangible capital through this adoption process. These effects, which remain strong across a range of robustness checks, suggest that the digital transition for small firms should focus on the causes of adoption (including training and skill development) and move beyond policies aimed at increased broadband availability alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2010 and 2018, Australia saw four sitting prime ministers deposed by their own parties, giving the country the title "the coup capital of the democratic world". In this paper, we use Australian Election Study surveys and commercial opinion poll data to analyse what voters thought of these changes and whether they lifted the electoral fortunes of their respective parties. The results suggest that voters' views of the changes depended on the popularity of the leader in question, but that a desire to see better economic performance reinforced support for a change in prime minister. There is little evidence that opinion polls played a role in any of the changes, at least for voters. There is also no evidence that the changes improved the subsequent vote for each of the parties that changed a prime minister; indeed, in three of the four cases the party vote declined significantly following the change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementing sustainable initiatives requires a competent leader who can sense the importance of entrepreneurial opportunities to outperform their competitors using interpersonal and sustainable skills. Considering this, current research seeks the underlying role of green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO) and green innovation (GI) between leaders' competencies and sustainable performance in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) of an emerging economy. This paper also examines institutional support as a moderator between GI and sustainable performance. The data from 329 SMEs using multi‐respondent and time‐lagged strategies were collected and analyzed using "structural equation modeling." The results demonstrate that leaders' competencies significantly predicted GEO and GI, while GI strongly influences economic performance. Additionally, the association between GI and sustainable performance is strengthened by institutional support. Theoretically, this study empirically tested that leaders' sustainable competencies can lead to GI and sustainable performance. For practitioners, this study proposes that institutional support is an important factor that should be properly exploited for better social, environmental, and economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In any society, the relationship between economy and politics is characterized by controversy, enigmas and mysteries. Economic performance affects political results, and the political environment and its process produce financial results. Brazil was hit by economic and political crises from 2012 to 2016. Such crises made it possible to redesign the correlation network between the assets negotiated on the B3 (Brazil Stock Exchange and Over‐the‐Counter Market). This paper aimed to analyse the main aspects related to the topological structure of the assets negotiated on the B3 and its volatility between the pre‐and post‐2014 electoral periods. Results showed the hierarchical clusters and the evolution of the systemic risk, with the banks leading the concentration in the post‐electoral period. The closeness centrality indices for the minimum variance portfolios were modified by approximately 80% between the pre‐electoral and post‐electoral periods. It was concluded that the political events significantly changed the structure, the risk and the possibility of selecting assets for portfolios in the Brazilian market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The longstanding issue of declining fertility in developed nations motivates a revaluation of the effectiveness of fertility‐targeted policies. This thesis focuses on the 2004 Australian Baby Bonus, a past pronatalist incentive offering a lump sum financial transfer for every child born after 1 July 2004. We employ the synthetic control method to construct a counterfactual scenario for Australia in the absence of the policy's introduction. Using aggregate country‐level data from the World Bank World Indicator's Database from 1998 to 2012, we carefully select suitable Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries as control units and economic indicators to include as covariates. Our primary specification reveals a 6.82% increase in total fertility between 2005 and 2012, induced by the ABB. Robustness tests, including various model specifications, consistently confirm a positive fertility effect. This comparative case study provides a comprehensive analysis of the ABB's impact, emphasising the significance of methodological choices in assessing fertility‐related policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]