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Blockchains and cryptocurrencies, open banking, virtual assets, and artificial intelligence have become the buzzword of this decade. This book focuses on these ‘disruptive'financial technologies that provide alternatives to the traditional financial services typically offered by regulated financial institutions. Financial technologies are characterized by the innovative ways in which they initiate, support or extend traditional financial services or offer alternative financial pathways and products. However, these financial technologies also pose money laundering and terrorist and proliferation financing as well as cyber security risks that require mitigation. This edited volume addresses a range of regulatory and enforcement challenges related to financial technology and financial crime. The book responds to the United Nations'Sustainable Development Goals, in particular in relation to economic development, employment, national security, law enforcement and social well-being. Fostering responsible financial innovation promotes long-term economic growth, inclusion, and improved living standards. This book explores how to promote financial innovation while mitigating risks in a way that ensures financial prosperity and social inclusion.

This book covers practical and philosophical aspects of Engineering, paying special attention to the social impacts of emerging technologies. Some fundamentals of philosophy of technology are introduced followed by social, economic, and environmental discussion and implications in different disciplines. Each chapter provides insights on the responsibilities involved in the design of engineering projects. The examples presented combine concepts about the impacts of Engineering in society at the same time that incorporates new technological models, yielding an innovative approach about the topics.

This book discusses the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in global transportation infrastructure. Seen as a way to provide vital services in an era of shrinking government budgets, public-private partnerships have become an increasingly important part of travel infrastructure worldwide. This book describes and analyzes the structure of various models of PPPs in various countries, evaluating their effectiveness, and drawing policy implications for future use. Written by leading international researchers and practitioners in the transportation field, each chapter is a case study on the adoption, implementation, and outcome of transportation services in different municipalities. Taken together, these diverse case studies provide an integrated framework for evaluating and using PPPs. Providing rigorous empirical analysis of PPPs in transportation, this volume will be of interest to researchers in public administration, political science, and economics as well as practitioners andpolicymakers involved in establishing and monitoring PPPs in transportation.

This book contains the papers presented at the 20th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI 2021), held virtually by Aberystwyth University, 8–10th September 2021. This marks the 20th anniversary of UKCI; a testament to the increasing role and importance of Computational Intelligence (CI) and the continuing interest in its development. UKCI provides a forum for the academic community and industry to share ideas and experience in this field. EDMA 2021, the 4th International Engineering Data- and Model-Driven Applications workshop, is also incorporated and held in conjunction with UKCI 2021. Paper submissions were invited in the areas of fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary computation, machine learning, data mining, cognitive computing, intelligent robotics, hybrid methods, deep learning and applications of CI.

This book features original papers from the 3rd International Conference on Smart IoT Systems: Innovations and Computing (SSIC 2021), presenting scientific work related to smart solution concepts. It discusses scientific works related to smart solutions concept in the context of computational collective intelligence consisted of interaction between smart devices for smart environments and interactions. Thanks to the high-quality content and the broad range of the topics covered, the book appeals to researchers pursuing advanced studies.

This open access book presents a new generation multi-criteria, multi-stake holder, decision aide, called an'institutional compass'. Based on hard data, the compass tells us what quality-direction we are heading in as an institution, region, system or organisation. The quality is not chosen from the usual scalar qualities of: good, neutral and bad. Instead, it is a quality chosen between: harmony, discipline and excitement. None is good in and of itself. We need some of each. The compass marks a new generation in four respects. 1. The representation of the data is intuitive and simple to understand, and therefore can be used to communicate and justify policy decisions. 2. Any data can be included, i.e., none is excluded. This makes the compass tailored to particular situations, voices and contexts. 3. The data includes different time horizons and different types of value: monetary, use, social, sentimental, religious, intrinsic, existential... 4. The process of compass construction can be made inclusive at several junctions. An institutional compass can be extended to evaluate products, add normativity to a systems analysis, reflect world-views such as that of ecological economists or function as an accounting system to manage scarce resources. There are four parts to the book. The first part introduces the general ideas behind the compass. In the second part, the author presents the method for constructing the compass. This includes data collection, data analysis and a mathematical formula to aggregate the data into a single holistic reading. In the third part, the author extends the methodology: to incorporate it into systems science, adding a normative and quality-direction dimension, to use it as a non-linear accounting method and more thoroughly to reflect the philosophy of ecological economists to give a real measure of sustainability. In the fourth part, we see three case studies: one for the World Health Organisation, a second is the use of the compass to label products in a shop and the third is as a regional compass for Hauts-de-France. The book ends with philosophical conclusions. Throughout the book, we see tight arguments, refreshing ideas and a thorough treatment of objectivity in decision making.

This book offers a comprehensive review of smart technologies and perspectives on their application in urban engineering. It covers a wide range of applications, from transport and energy management to digital manufacturing, smart city, environment, and sustainable development, providing readers with new ideas for future research and collaborations. This book presents select papers from the International Conference on Smart Technologies in Urban Engineering (STUE-2022), held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on June 9–11, 2022. All the contributions offer plenty of valuable information and would be of great benefit to the experience exchange among scientists in urban engineering.

The book provides an analysis of the emergence, evolution, and transformation of transnational securities regulation and of the influences from and the interactions between global regulatory powers in the field. Combining insights from law and political science, the work employs a two-tier complementary'on-the-books'and'in-action” approach. The more classical'on-the-books'approach draws on scholarship in United States and European Union securities regulation; transnational regulation and global administrative law; regime complexity; global governance studies; and the regulatory production of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). The law in-action approach leverages the author's experience as Compliance senior professional in a multinational financial institution as well as research interviews with senior IOSCO staff.The author's findings enable the reader to develop an original understanding of IOSCO, its standards, and its unique place in the transnational regulatory arena. They also challenge the doxa that the US are the only driving regulatory power in the securities area when in fact, other regulatory powers are emerging – for the time being, the EU. The balance has shifted and regulatory compromises are achieved at different points in the rule making process.

This volume is a collection of essays of a philosophical nature on the subject of technology, introducing authors from the Portuguese-speaking community, namely from Portugal itself, Africa and Brazil. Their contributions detail a unique perspective on technology, placing this important topic within the historical, ideological and social contexts of their countries, all of which share a common language. The shared history of these countries and the cultural and economic specificities of each one have stimulated singular insights into these thinkers'reflections.The essays are thematically diverse. Among the topics covered are technogenic knowledge, visions of technology, risks and uncertainties, mediatization, digitalization, and datafication, engineering practice and ethics, alternative technoscientific strategies, ontotechnologies of the body, virtual and archive. The contributions also explore other themes that are more closely related to the semi-peripheral world, such as technological dependence and the incorporation of Western technology into the social structure of ancestral communities.This book appeals to students and researchers and provides a voice to authors whose work are not usually available in English-language publications. It serves as an ideal guide for all those who seek rigorous and geographically widespread knowledge regarding thinking on technology in several Portuguese-speaking countries.

This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of macroeconomic relationships and explains the most important macroeconomic variables in an easy-to-understand manner. The reader is introduced to important macroeconomic variables such as inflation and aggregate demand in chapters that build on one another. They learn, among other things, how economic crises arise or the role and functioning of money, capital and goods markets. The aim is to provide the reader with economic knowledge that can be applied in business practice. The economics material has been deliberately selected so that business studies content is usefully supplemented. However, detailed explanations and both application-oriented and practice-related examples and exercises make it easy for non-economists to understand the complex economic topics. Well-founded knowledge presented in an immediately comprehensible way!

This book discusses the role of the property market cycle in real estate valuation. Challenging traditional property valuation methods that rely on current market conditions and economic trends, this book argues for a re-evaluation of the relationship between property valuation and cycles in property markets. The book is divided into two parts. The first part gathers research on property market cycle analysis and the delicate problems dealing with property market information including the development of the real estate market index, appraisal bias, and the use of time series in plotting the market cycle. The second part proposes several possible modifications to the traditional income approach methodologies, including cyclical capitalization and the hedonic price method. Furthermore, this part also addresses the need for amendments to current s property valuation standards and institutional regulations. Written by an international cross-section of expert voices in market cycles andproperty valuation, the book is a comprehensive resource for any researcher or upper-level student studying economic volatility.

This Handbook provides the most comprehensive account of energy governance in Europe, examining both energy governance at the European level and the development of energy policy in 30 European countries. Authored by leading scholars, the first part of the book offers a broad overview of the topics of energy research, including theories of energy transitions, strategies and norms of energy policy, governance instruments in the field, and challenges of energy governance. In the second part, it examines the internal and external dimensions of energy governance in the European Union. The third part presents in-depth country studies, which investigate national trajectories of energy policy, including an analysis of the policy instruments and coordination mechanisms for energy transitions. It closes with a comparative analysis of national energy governance. This book is a definitive resource for scholars in energy and climate research as well as decision makers in national governments and EU institutions.

This book develops insights of digitalization and the future of financial services to originate an innovative approach to financial field, in order to underpin research and practice in the wide area of digital finance. The aim of this book is to extend our understandings on how digitalization and the future of financial services can be helpful in different business circumstances in many cross-functional financial areas, such as financial markets, financial risk management, financial technologies, investment finance, etc. Thus, the book aims at addressing the relevance of digital finance for different players, highlighting differences in tools and processes as well as identifying innovative practices in financial digitalization. This can result in some novel theoretical and practical insights that can foster financial players, in order to proactively explore and exploit opportunities in financial digitalization and offset financial risks and increase efficiency.

This book aims to fill the literature gap on digital instruments and FinTech in enhancing green finance. ​Technological innovation can increase transparency, accountability, and speed, decentralize the financial system, improve risk management, increase competition, lower costs, improve efficiency, increase cross-sectoral collaboration and integration, and scale up green finance. Artificial intelligence (AI), distributed ledger technologies (DLT) or blockchain, peer-to-peer lending platforms, big data, Internet-based and mobile-based payment platforms, Internet of Things (IoT), matchmaking platforms including crowdlending, tokenizing green assets are potential means to scale up the green finance for achieving the SDGs. The COVID-19 pandemic, the economic downturns, and the uncertainties shrank the new investments in renewable energy projects globally. Low investment in renewable energy projects could threaten the expansion of greenenergy needed to provide energy security and meet SDG7 and SDG13. Investments in renewable energy projects are scarce because of several risks and a low rate of return. Although several new green financing solutions such as green bonds, green banks, green credit guarantee, carbon taxation, carbon trade, village funds, and community trust funds have been established in different countries, these are insufficient, and alternative ways to finance projects are required. The book provides several high-quality studies on utilizing digitalization, FinTech, financial innovations, and other new technologies to fill the finance gap of green projects to meet the SDG goals. The chapters are written by scholars in diverse countries and regions and include practical policy recommendations.

Now in its 3rd edition, this extensively revised and significantly expanded handbook addresses important new research findings and the global need for action. There is a growing consensus that anthropogenic activities have been driving global climate change and the consequence will be catastrophic for civilization. Reducing the 37.1 billion metric tons of CO2 produced annually (2017 global emissions) along with other greenhouse gases has become a leading grand challenge and the pursuit of sustainable energy, environments and economies is a complex issue affecting the daily life of every citizen. The Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation collates information in this multi-disciplinary area, providing readers with a comprehensive overview on the scientific background and current technologies. Intended for an interdisciplinary, global audience of researchers at universities and in industry, it covers climate change models; established, mature and promising future technologies and ideas; the impact of climate change; strategies for dealing with global warming; the related political frameworks; and climate education.

This three-volume handbook includes state-of-the-art surveys in different areas of neoclassical production economics. Volumes 1 and 2 cover theoretical and methodological issues only. Volume 3 includes surveys of empirical applications in different areas like manufacturing, agriculture, banking, energy and environment, and so forth.

The coronavirus pandemic struck unexpectedly, posing unprecedented challenges around the world. At the same time, this crisis also offers a unique opportunity for reflection, research, and insight regarding this and similar global and domestic crises. There is much to be learned from analysing the effects of the crisis. It provides a chance for a fresh scholarly examination of important aspects of legal regulation, policymaking, and more. This volume pursues these questions from a broad range of Law and Economics perspectives and is divided into two parts. The first part examines the immediate impact of and responses to the coronavirus crisis, while the second explores the future possibilities that scholarly analysis of this crisis can offer. As to the immediate impact and responses, questions of compliance with regulations and safety measures, nudging and decision-making with regard to the coronavirus crisis are examined from the perspective of behavioural economics. In addition, the short- and long-term effects of various emergency policy responses on contract law are studied. Current issues and challenges like the regulation of internet platforms, excessive pricing, the right to adequate food, risk and loss allocation, as well as remote learning and examinations, which have been impacted, brought about, complicated or aggravated by the coronavirus crisis, are analysed in depth. Lastly, future possibilities in the areas of data access rights, economic instability and the balance between political-economic interests and social interests, patenting, food labels and open data are illustrated.

This book focuses on global economic governance covering the following five areas: the theoretical and historical evolution of global economic governance, international financial governance, international trade and investment governance, global climate change and sustainable development governance, and international macroeconomic policy coordination. On the one hand, this book aims to provide a general analytical framework for studying global economic governance. On the other hand, the study on global economic governance involves understanding its historical development, exploring its emergence and evolution, analyzing what challenges global economic governance faces in the context of a new globalization, looking into its future development trends, and proposing the direction of the reform of global economic governance system on the above basis, and finally providing theoretical references and policy advice for China's better participation in global economic governance.

This book gathers the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Computing and Information Technology (IC2IT2022), held on May 19–20, 2022, in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. The topics covered include machine learning, natural language processing, image processing, intelligent systems and algorithms, as well as network and cloud computing. These lead to the major research directions for emerging information technology and innovation, reflecting digital trends.

The book provides a comprehensive review of renewable energy from an economic perspective throughout the last two hundred years, starting from traditional renewable energy based on bio and hydro energy. The focus is on modern renewable energy based on geothermal, wind, and solar energy. It emerged when innovative entrepreneurs captured opportunities for valuable energy services. As the services with renewable energy expanded, the costs of technologies decreased entailing global commercialisation. This enables larger access to energy and emission reduction of carbon dioxide, but also causes larger differences in the energy resources across countries which impedes international policies. That optimistic viewpoint on the shift to the global low-carbon economy is largely based on statistical data about purchasing power, energy consumption and businesses, and valuable energy services in many countries on all continents. The data are presented in 70 tables, graphs, and figures, most of them original. Interpretation of the data are useful in support of decisions making about sustainable development in civil society, businesses, and policy makers as well as for the verifications of scholarly hypotheses and projections in energy and climate policies.

This book is the outcome of more than a decade of research and technical development activities at Spain's Geological Survey (IGME) concerning shallow geothermal energy, which were pursued in collaboration with other public bodies and European entities. It presents a compilation of papers on the theoretical foundations of, and practical aspects needed to understand the thermal regime of the topmost subsoil, up to 400 m deep, and the exceptional properties that this underground environment offers, which make it the ideal thermal reservoir for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). In the book's first section, the basic theory of thermodynamics as applied to shallow geothermal energy, heat transfer and fluid mechanics in the geological porous medium is developed. The nature of the subsoil's thermal regime in general and in the urban environment in particular is described. The second section introduces readers to the fundamental aspects of thermal installationsequipped with geothermal heat pumps, describes the types of geothermal exchangers most commonly used, and reviews the techniques used to obtain the thermal parameters of the terrain. It also discusses the potential environmental impacts of shallow geothermal activity and corresponding management strategies, as well as the legal aspects of its regulation for the governance of shallow geothermal resources in the EU in general and Spain in particular. In closing, the book highlights examples of the methodologies'applications, developed by IGME in the city of Zaragoza and the Canary Islands. The theoretical foundations, systematics and concrete applications make the book a valuable reference source for hydrogeologists, engineers and specialized technicians alike.

This book provides perspectives on the latest developments and pertinent issues in the Indian financial sector in current times. The reforms initiated in the nineties in the financial sector have transformed the way financial markets and institutions function today. However, certain sectors like banking, and markets like the capital market have undergone sea changes. The research contributions in this book focus on the issues pertaining to such sectors like banking, NBFCs and the stock market. The opening up of financial markets and emergence of institutional investors have been a significant phenomenon in the Indian context. At this backdrop of increasing financial integration, the impact of financial liberalisation on the overall development of the sector, and how the global policies and events influence the Indian financial sector, are analysed in the book. The emergence of new regulations in the capital markets to instill more discipline and transparency, have also changed the way corporates take financing decisions. For example, regulatory authorities are continuously reviewing norms pertaining to issues like promoters'shareholding owing to risks arising from excessive leverage and the linkages between financial intermediaries. Corporate governance, environmental aspects are some important additions in corporate financing norms in the recent past. The book incorporates a discussion on this, too. Apart from these, the book also has incorporated several aspects on an emerging concept called financial inclusion, its measurement and constraints to achieve the same. And finally, at the backdrop of the disruption created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on the Indian capital market is also discussed. Contributions are based on rigorous empirical research and incorporate the perspectives of renowned academicians in the field of finance and financial economics across the country. Apart from the research community, this book will also be helpful for financial analysts working in the financial sector to have some idea about the current issues, the direction of research on those issues and different perspectives on them.

This book looks at a substantively new model of educational philosophy and its application within the field of tertiary education, in relation to socio-economic development in Southeast Asian members of the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC). Focusing on and drawing from the cross-regional South East Asian Cooperation (SEACO), a network promoting regional economic cooperation, the author presents a thoughtful evocation of a new orientation to educational philosophy and policy within the development context in the time of, and relating to, COVID-19. The generalized worldview of Islamic educational and socio-economic development model is laid down in relation to the philosophy of education and an ethical-scientific structure of development in terms of the theory of knowledge (epistemology, episteme). The foundation of scientific thought and a comparative Islamic worldview in understanding the unified reality of ‘everything'is presented. The objectivity of socio-scientific learning at all levels of educational development is further explained within the context of SEACO and its think tank vis-à-vis a reconstructive perspective in which the Islamic episteme of the unity of knowledge and its substantive methodology is addressed and unpacked. The book is relevant to policymakers and scholarly researchers in Islamic philosophy and development and higher education in Southeast Asia and in the Muslim world and more broadly for the world of learning.

This book provides the ultimate goal of economic studies to predict how the economy develops—and what will happen if we implement different policies. To be able to do that, we need to have a good understanding of what causes what in economics. Prediction and causality in economics are the main topics of this book's chapters; they use both more traditional and more innovative techniques—including quantum ideas -- to make predictions about the world economy (international trade, exchange rates), about a country's economy (gross domestic product, stock index, inflation rate), and about individual enterprises, banks, and micro-finance institutions: their future performance (including the risk of bankruptcy), their stock prices, and their liquidity. Several papers study how COVID-19 has influenced the world economy.This book helps practitioners and researchers to learn more about prediction and causality in economics -- and to further develop this important research direction.

This book covers many aspects of excessive expansion of cross-border capital flows underlying the global financial crises that occurred in succession in the form of the subprime mortgage crisis, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the European debt crisis. Obtaining a broader picture of financial flows at the global level from various perspectives is essential to comprehensively understand the fundamental causes for a series of global-scale financial crises and to formulate effective policy responses in the future. The topics addressed here include a basic concept and overview of global liquidity in a broad sense, domestic and international credit activities of financial institutions in both advanced and emerging countries, and global demand for US dollars. Offshore bond issuance in BRICs countries, including its implications for the Chinese shadow banking sector, uncovered interest rate parity puzzle, and related policies such as capital controls are covered as well. This book ishighly recommended to readers who seek an in-depth and up-to-date integrated overview of the dynamics of today's globalized financial markets.

European integration efforts are on the brink of collapse. In its current state, the European Monetary Union is unintentionally acting more as a dis-integration factor than as a unifying element. Dirk Meyer provides descriptions, analyses and background information on the current crisis. The book is the result of more than ten years of work on the subject.

With the fast development of the Internet, we are experiencing a shift from the traditional sharing of information and applications as the main purpose of the Web to an emergent paradigm, which locates people at the very center of networks and exploits the value of people's connections, relations, and collaboration. Social networks are also playing a major role in the dynamics and structure of intelligent Web-based networking and collaborative systems. Virtual campuses, virtual communities, and organizations strongly leverage intelligent networking and collaborative systems by a great variety of formal and informal electronic relations, such as business-to-business, peer-to-peer, and many types of online collaborative learning interactions, including the emerging e-learning systems. This has resulted in entangled systems that need to be managed efficiently and in an autonomous way. In addition, latest and powerful technologies based on grid and wireless infrastructure as well as cloud computing are currently enhancing collaborative and networking applications a great deal but also facing new issues and challenges. The principal purpose of the research and development community is to stimulate research that will lead to the creation of responsive environments for networking and, at longer-term, the development of adaptive, secure, mobile, and intuitive intelligent systems for collaborative work and learning. The aim of the book “Advances on Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems” is to provide latest research findings, innovative research results, methods, and development techniques from both theoretical and practical perspectives related to intelligent social networks and collaborative systems, intelligent networking systems, mobile collaborative systems, secure intelligent cloud systems, and so on as well as to reveal synergies among various paradigms in such a multi-disciplinary field intelligentcollaborative systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime, ICDF2C 2021, held in Singapore in December 2021. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually.The 22 reviewed full papers were selected from 52 submissions and present digital forensic technologies and techniques for a variety of applications in criminal investigations, incident response and information security. The focus of ICDS2C 2021 was on various applications and digital evidence and forensics beyond traditional cybercrime investigations and litigation.

This book sheds new light on the remote sensing of agriculture in South/Southeast Asian (S/SEA) countries. S/SEA countries are growing rapidly in terms of population, industrialization, and urbanization. One of the critical challenges in the region is food security. In S/SEA, although total food production and productivity have increased in previous decades, in recent years, the growth rate of food production has slowed down, mostly due to land use change, market forces and policy interventions. Further, the weather and climate systems in the region driven primarily by monsoon variability are resulting in droughts or flooding, impacting agricultural production. Therefore, monitoring crops, including agricultural land cover changes at regular intervals, is essential to predict and prepare for disruptions in the food supply in the S/SEA countries. The current book captures the latest research on the remote sensing of agricultural land cover/ land use changes, including mapping and monitoring crops, crop yields, biophysical parameter retrievals, multi-source data fusion for agricultural applications, and chapters on decision making and early warning systems for food security. The authors of this book are international experts in the field, and their contributions highlight the use of remote sensing and geospatial technologies for agricultural research and applications in South/Southeast Asia.

This book takes a law and economic approach to examine the securities law enforcement in China and provides an in-depth empirical analysis on the enforcement inputs and outputs. In contrast to previous studies, it systematically collects a large sample of judicated securities fraud cases and public sanctions as disclosed by the listed companies. The enforcement regime is further divided into the private enforcement exemplified by the civil litigation imitated by harmed investors and public enforcement by sanctions proceedings initiated by public agencies. Academic researchers, policy makers and practitioners, who are interested in the securities market and regulation could find the information provided in this book interesting.

The Mathematics of Errors presents an original, rigorous and systematic approach to the calculus of errors, targeted at both the engineer and the mathematician. Starting from Gauss's original point of view, the book begins as an introduction suitable for graduate students, leading to recent developments in stochastic analysis and Malliavin calculus, including contributions by the author. Later chapters, aimed at a more mature audience, require some familiarity with stochastic calculus and Dirichlet forms. Sensitivity analysis, in particular, plays an important role in the book. Detailed applications in a range of fields, such as engineering, robotics, statistics, financial mathematics, climate science, or quantum mechanics are discussed through concrete examples. Throughout the book, error analysis is presented in a progressive manner, motivated by examples and appealing to the reader's intuition. By formalizing the intuitive concept of error and richly illustrating its scope for application, this book provides readers with a blueprint to apply advanced mathematics in practical settings. As such, it will be of immediate interest to engineers and scientists, whilst providing mathematicians with an original presentation.Nicolas Bouleau has directed the mathematics center of the Ecole des Ponts ParisTech for more than ten years. He is known for his theory of error propagation in complex models. After a degree in engineering and architecture, he decided to pursue a career in mathematics under the influence of Laurent Schwartz. He has also written on the production of knowledge, sustainable economics and mathematical models in finance. Nicolas Bouleau is a recipient of the Prix Montyon from the French Academy of Sciences.

This book analyzes the issue of European fiscal State aid in order to provide insights into the related evolution prospects and legal problems. State aid has assumed a central position in the field of taxation, becoming the most important instrument of European legal integration, especially in the area of direct taxes. This is the result of major regulatory and interpretative development, which has altered the initial European and national balances in the face of globalization and the problems of the new economy. In this context, the scope and objectives of State aid have progressively broadened, encompassing a significant level of both positive and negative integration of European national tax systems.

This book introduces readers to advanced data science techniques for signal mining in connection with agriculture. It shows how to apply heuristic modeling to improve farm-level efficiency, and how to use sensors and data intelligence to provide closed-loop feedback, while also providing recommendation techniques that yield actionable insights. The book also proposes certain macroeconomic pricing models, which data-mine macroeconomic signals and the influence of global economic trends on small-farm sustainability to provide actionable insights to farmers, helping them avoid financial disasters due to recurrent economic crises. The book is intended to equip current and future software engineering teams and operations research experts with the skills and tools they need in order to fully utilize advanced data science, artificial intelligence, heuristics, and economic models to develop software capabilities that help to achieve sustained food security for future generations.

This book examines the evolving concept of national security and how human systems could be governed in an ever turbulent and dynamic world. It takes a revised look at the concept of national security, previously researched and identified by the author, based on the present context but with a futuristic appreciation of governance, primarily national but extended to global perspectives, in the modern and dynamically shifting world. The book emphasises the need for governments to maximise national security for the well-being of their people. The concept of national security is taken as the key subject of national governance which is extendable to global governance wherein national security is not only the physical or military security alone but also the overall well-being of the people of a nation. This book explores how national security can be achieved by balancing its various elements in different terrains where the game of governance is played in national as well as global perspective. It also presents additional findings and observations to show that the approach is transformative, redefining the key knowledge paradigms. This book is relevant for policy makers, students, researchers and academics who wish to explore and rethink their approach towards governing the human systems, whose well-being is the responsibility of governments.

Commoditization is a major challenge for companies in a wide range of industries, and commodity marketing has become a priority for many top managers. This book tackles the key issues associated with the marketing of commodities and the processes of commoditization and de-commoditization. It summarizes the state of the art on commodity marketing, providing an overview of current debates. It also offers managerial insights, case studies, and guidance to help manage and market commodity goods and services.

This book presents innovations in the field of high-speed rail technology, hyperloop transportation technologies and Maglev system, information and communication technology (ICT) for intelligent transportation systems (ITS), multimodal transportation, sustainable freight transportation, and others.The papers presented in the book are proceedings of the annual scientific forum “TransSiberia”, which is the foremost Russian transport event that focuses on innovations in rail transport. The book also presents research in the field of railway engineering, health monitoring, inspection, NDT&E, and signal processing. Developments in the field of decarbonization of railway transport and new types of fuel as an alternative to electrification are proposed.The issues of sustainable operation and maintenance of railway systems and sustainable freight transportation, such as digitalization and AI technologies for sustainable asset management, operation, and maintenance of railway systems, have received a lot of research attention.The book serves as a medium for railroad academia and industry to exchange new ideas and share the latest achievements, as well as to continue supporting the productivity of the transport industry in a sustainable manner.

This book gathers the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computational Advancement in Communication Circuits and Systems (ICCACCS 2020), organized virtually by Narula Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India. The book presents peer-reviewed papers that highlight new theoretical and experimental findings in the fields of electronics and communication engineering, including interdisciplinary areas like advanced computing, pattern recognition and analysis, and signal and image processing. The respective papers cover a broad range of principles, techniques, and applications in microwave devices, communication and networking, signal and image processing, computations and mathematics, and control.

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.The increasing capacity of digital networks and computing power, together with the resulting connectivity and availability of “big data”, are impacting financial systems worldwide with rapidly advancing deep-learning algorithms and distributed ledger technologies. They transform the structure and performance of financial markets, the service proposition of financial products, the organization of payment systems, the business models of banks, insurance companies and other financial service providers, as well as the design of money supply regimes and central banking.This book, The Future of Financial Systems in the Digital Age: Perspectives from Europe and Japan, brings together leading scholars, policymakers, and regulators from Japan and Europe, all with a profound and long professional background in the field of finance, to analyze the digital transformation of the financial system. The authors analyze the impact of digitalization on the financial system from different perspectives such as transaction costs and with regard to specific topics like the potential of digital and blockchain-based currency systems, the role of algorithmic trading, obstacles in the use of cashless payments, the challenges of regulatory oversight, and the transformation of banking business models. The collection of chapters offers insights from Japanese and European discourses, approaches, and experiences on a topic otherwise dominated by studies about developments in the USA and China.

This unique collection of chapters from world experts on person-centered outcome (PCO) measures addresses the following critical questions: Can individual experiences be represented in measurements that do not reduce unique differences to meaningless uniformity? How person-centric are PCO measures? Are PCO measurements capable of delivering the kind of quality assured quantification required for high-stakes decision making? Are PCO measures likely to support improved health care delivery? Have pivotal clinical studies failed to deliver treatments for diseases because of shortcomings in the PCO measures used? Are these shortcomings primarily matters of precision and meaningfulness? Or is the lack of common languages for communicating outcomes also debilitating to quality improvement, research, and the health care economy? Three key issues form an urgent basis for further investigation. First, the numbers generated by PCO measures are increasingly used as the central dependent variables upon which high stakes decisions are made. The rising profile of PCO measures places new demands for higher quality information from scale and test construction, evaluation, selection, and interpretation. Second, PCO measurement science has well-established lessons to be learned from those who have built and established the science over many decades. Finally, the goal in making a PCO measurement is to inform outcome management. As such, it is vitally important that key stakeholders understand that, over the last half century, developments in psychometrics have refocused measurement on illuminating clinically important individual differences in the context of widely reproduced patterns of variation in health and functioning, comparable scale values for quality improvement, and practical explanatory models.This book's audience includes anyone interested in person-centered care, including healthcare researchers and practitioners, policy makers, pharmaceutical industry representatives, clinicians, patient advocates, and metrologists.This is an open access book.

This open access book provides a comprehensive view on data ecosystems and platform economics from methodical and technological foundations up to reports from practical implementations and applications in various industries. To this end, the book is structured in four parts: Part I “Foundations and Contexts” provides a general overview about building, running, and governing data spaces and an introduction to the IDS and GAIA-X projects. Part II “Data Space Technologies” subsequently details various implementation aspects of IDS and GAIA-X, including eg data usage control, the usage of blockchain technologies, or semantic data integration and interoperability. Next, Part III describes various “Use Cases and Data Ecosystems” from various application areas such as agriculture, healthcare, industry, energy, and mobility. Part IV eventually offers an overview of several “Solutions and Applications”, eg including products and experiences from companies like Google, SAP, Huawei, T-Systems, Innopay and many more. Overall, the book provides professionals in industry with an encompassing overview of the technological and economic aspects of data spaces, based on the International Data Spaces and Gaia-X initiatives. It presents implementations and business cases and gives an outlook to future developments. In doing so, it aims at proliferating the vision of a social data market economy based on data spaces which embrace trust and data sovereignty.

COVID-19 has changed not only human lives since the beginning of the year 2020, but systems of human society as well. Legal measures have been employed in every country to mandate the state's control of human behavior in order to stop the pandemic. But the mode of legal control has differed by country, showing different results in terms of constraining the spread of infection. While the behavioral restrictions continue, the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic have been causing another catastrophe, particularly in the most vulnerable sectors of each society. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are typical representatives of such vulnerable groups, compelled to assume the economic burdens of the pandemic that have been shifted from the larger economic actors that hold the advantage in contractual negotiations. Statistical data on infection status have revealed a great gap between countries, such as European nations reaching the level of several thousand deaths per one hundred thousand population, while most Asian countries have maintained a level of one or two digits. Even though COVID-19 affects the whole world, the redistribution of risks in the pandemic is a goal to be pursued in the socio-cultural context of each society. This book explores the law and social changes in Asian countries under the impact of COVID-19, with a particular focus on the social relations surrounding the SMEs. These form the center of contractual relations between various socio-economic actors and at the same time, are a direct counterpart of the governmental SME policies, peculiar to Asian interventionist governments. A comparative approach is taken, using the results of interview surveys based on structured questions conducted via research collaboration between the contributors from Japan as well as other Asian countries. A comparative analysis of the risk redistribution in the pandemic between countries that share similar preconditions is still possibleand meaningful. The authors of this book hold the view that Asian countries have sufficient bases for international comparison, particularly on the risk reallocation in the SME sector, given the relatively well-controlled level of infection, presumably due to the similarity of cooperative social culture. Another basis for comparison is the similarity of the laws surrounding the business operation of SMEs since normal times, which makes it feasible to compare the difference in the pandemic. What risks should be reallocated between whom, and how?

This book makes a substantial and timely contribution to discussions on energy security in Oman, providing a systematic analysis of energy security in Oman from 1920 to 2020. It is particularly relevant in light of the recent global geopolitics of the Gulf particularly, and the Middle Eastern region broadly, as well as connecting to current climate change research and debates. Combining a political sociological account with postcolonial concepts within a theoretical and empirical exploration of energy politics, the book weaves a study of energy security into the historical and contemporary development of political, economic, security, and social structures in Oman. Including interviews with Omani and Oman-based practitioners, as well as grounded in historical documents which include Arabic-language sources, this book evaluates the energy question beyond the typical economic perspective, considering socio-political opportunities and challenges. It also makes economic-related recommendations in tandem with rentier state theory. Unlike the dominant accounts of energy security in Oman, this book sets itself apart by moving away from utilising liberal and realist approaches for its analysis and engages systematically with critical security studies to introduce a non-Eurocentric perspective to the arena. Of interest to scholars in Middle Eastern history, energy security, and security studies, this book assumes an important place in the critical literature on the Gulf, particularly within environmental studies and energy policy literature.

This book explores the possibility and feasibility of building a new model of major-country relations between China and the United States, which is of great significance to the sound interaction between the two countries and the preservation of peace and stability of the world. In early June 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama reached a consensus on building a new model of major-country relations at the historical Sunny lands meeting in California. In the years that followed, the two leaders were committed to that goal despite the different interpretations in its substance. How is the new model of major-country relations conceptualized and developed? What renders it possible? Is the major-country conflict inevitable? These are the basic issues addressed in this book. Now, China-US relations are at a critical juncture. The international community is watching the world's two largest economies and is quite concerned about the future of one of the world's mostcomplicated bilateral relationships. This timely publication of Professor Tao Wenzhao provides us with a realistic approach to managing this vital relationship in a candid and balanced way.

This book explores stakeholders'perspectives, their practices, and engagement with enacting the employability agenda in the context of a rapidly changing world. It explains the need for developing graduate employability under socioeconomic, cultural, and political pressure exposed to the higher education sector. Largely framed within Bourdieu's concepts of social field, habitus, and capital, it explores international stakeholders'perspectives and experiences with graduate employability agenda in different contexts, which serves as a point of reference for the adoption of such initiatives. Based on empirical evidence, the authors develop a new graduate employability framework seeing it as a lifelong process, denote the relationships between types of employability capital, and shed light on the consequences of different strategies to translate employability capital to employment and career outcomes. Overall, this book generates both theoretical and practical insights which help to advance employability programs, better prepare the future workforce, and anticipate turbulence in the labour markets.

The European Monetary Union based on the Maastricht Treaty doesn't exist any longer. Permanent rescue parachutes, joint liability and legal presumptions by the EU Commission lead to a fiscal union with a redistributive character. Bond-purchasingprogrammes endanger the independence of the ECB. As an alternative, Dirk Meyer develops a parallel currency concept for a functioning common currency.

This book examines the management of multiple goals in organizations especially in today's increasingly turbulent business environment. In this book, authors develop a novel concept of goal polychronicity, wherein organizations may attend to multiple goals simultaneously, rather than mono-chronically through sequential attention. This book further investigates the impact of internal organizational control systems and external environmental turbulence on multiple goals management. Empirical evidence is drawn from in-depth interviews of top executives and large-scale survey of top executives from four countries (US, Australia, China, and Israel). The book enriches the understanding of multiple goals and provides evidence-based recommendations to researchers and practitioners in managing multiple goals.

This book covers many hot topics, including theoretical and practical research in many areas such as dynamic analysis, machine learning, supply chain management, operations management, environmental management, uncertainty, and health and hygiene. It showcases advanced management concepts and innovative ideas. The 16th International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management (2022 ICMSEM) will be held in Ankara, Turkey, during August 3-6, 2022. ICMSEM has always been committed to promoting innovation management science (M-S) and engineering management (EM) academic research and development. The book provides researchers and practitioners in the field of Management Science and Engineering Management (MSEM) with the latest, cutting-edge thinking and research in the field. It will appeal to readers interested in these fields, especially those looking for new ideas and research directions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Business and Technology (ICBT2021) organized by EuroMid Academy of Business & Technology (EMABT), held in Istanbul, between 06–07 November 2021. In response to the call for papers for ICBT2021, 485 papers were submitted for presentation and ‎inclusion in the proceedings of the conference. After a careful blind refereeing process, 292 papers ‎were selected for inclusion in the conference proceedings from forty countries. Each of these ‎chapters was evaluated through an editorial board, and each chapter was passed through a double-blind peer-review process.‎The book highlights a range of topics in the fields of technology, ‎entrepreneurship, business administration, ‎accounting, and economics that can contribute to business ‎development in countries, such as ‎learning machines, artificial intelligence, big data, ‎deep ‎‎learning, game-based learning, management ‎information system,‎accounting information ‎system, knowledge management, entrepreneurship, and ‎social enterprise, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, business policy and strategic ‎management, international management and organizations, organizational behavior and HRM, ‎operations management and logistics research, controversial issues in management and organizations, ‎turnaround, corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, legal issues, business ethics, and firm ‎governance, managerial accounting and firm financial affairs, non-traditional research, and creative ‎methodologies.These proceedings are reflecting quality research contributing theoretical and practical implications, for those who are wise to apply the technology within any business sector. It is our hope that the contribution of this book proceedings will be of the academic level which even decision-makers in the various economic and executive-level will get to appreciate.

The proceedings consist of papers accepted by the 5th ICEMGD, which are carefully selected and reviewed by professional reviewers from corresponding research fields and the editing committee of the conference. The papers have a diverse range of topics situated at the intersecting field of Economic Management, Public Administration and Green Development. ICEMGD is working to provide a platform for international participants from fields like macro- and microeconomics, international economics, finance, agricultural economics, health economics, business management and marketing strategies, regional development studies, social governance, and sustainable development. This proceedings volume, together with the conference, looks forward to spark inspirations and promote collaborations. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, professionals and policy makers in the field of economic management, public administration, and development studies. Due to COVID-19, ICEMGD was held online on 12-17 August, 2021.