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The authors examine the effects of a firm's and its competitors' online reviews on its demand within the hotel industry. The authors leverage a unique data set of actual bookings from properties of a major hotel chain in six different markets in the United States, supplemented with online reviews garnered from a popular social media platform. The findings indicate that not only a hotel's own reviews but also its competitors' reviews have a significant impact on the hotel's booking performance. The impact of review sentiment is amplified if the focal hotel also charges higher prices or when the volume of reviews is high. The authors establish heterogeneous effects across consumer segments (business vs. leisure travelers) and by the type of review content (objective vs. subjective attributes to assess quality). Specifically, both a hotel's own reviews and its competitors' reviews have a larger impact on bookings for business travelers compared with leisure travelers, and for reviews that mainly discuss subjective attributes, for which consumers need to rely on the experiences of others to assess the quality of a hotel prior to their stay. The study provides a set of comprehensive insights on the impact of both own and competitors' online reviews on a focal hotel's bookings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large divergence in the returns of top-performing star firms and the rest of the economy is substantially reduced when we account for the mismeasurement of intangible capital. Star firms produce and invest more per dollar in invested capital, have more valuable innovations as measured by the market value of patents, and are as exposed to competitive shocks as nonstars. Star firms have higher markups that are predicted early in their life cycle at a time when they are small. Overall, after we correct for the mismeasurement of intangibles, the evidence points to the superior ability of star firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the liability of foreignness has been shown to present real economic barriers for foreign firms in various contexts around the globe, scholars continue to debate what drives this liability in different market contexts: lack of information due to institutional distance, lack of social embeddedness, discrimination, or something else. In this study, we propose a new theory, that in corporate lobbying within the nonmarket strategy context, the liability of foreignness is driven in no small part by a values-based ideological conflict stemming from the divide between democracy and autocracy. Private-sector firms from autocratic countries face costs of illegitimacy in Washington, D.C., and professional corporate lobbyists charge such firms a fee premium, in effect, to pay for legitimacy. We conduct an empirical study of the lobbying fees charged by professional corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to their domestic and foreign firm clients, and the results strongly support the predictions of our theory. We also show that the liability of foreignness in this context endures for foreign firms from autocratic countries over the 15-year length of our sample period. Offering a new theoretical perspective as well as new empirical findings regarding the liability of foreignness, our study has practical implications for managers of foreign firms and may also generalize to other market contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test the signaling view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement using two complementary quasi-natural experiments that impose exogenous negative pressure on stock prices. Firms under such adverse price pressure increase CSR activities compared to otherwise similar firms. This effect concentrates among firms with stronger signaling incentives, namely, those facing greater information asymmetry, more product market competition, higher shareholder litigation risk, and higher stock price crash risk. Firms under the exogenous negative price pressure mainly improve CSR strengths, including costly environmental investments. We also find that CSR engagement attracts socially responsible investors and lowers the cost of capital for signaling firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By employing a dynamic model with two limit order books, we show that fragmentation is associated with reduced competition among liquidity suppliers and lower picking-off risk of limit orders. Due to these countervailing channels, the impact of fragmentation on liquidity and welfare differs with asset volatility: When volatility is high (low), liquidity and aggregate welfare in a fragmented market are higher (lower) than in a single market. However, fragmentation always shifts welfare away from agents with exogenous trading motives and toward intermediaries. We empirically corroborate our model's predictions about liquidity. Our model reconciles the mixed results in the empirical literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how labor mobility restrictions like noncompete agreements affect firms' investment decisions. Using matched employee-employer data from LinkedIn, I show that increases in the enforceability of noncompete agreements lead to widespread declines in employee departures, specifically in knowledge-intensive occupations. Established firms that rely more on these knowledge-intensive occupations increase their investment rate in physical capital. However, new firm entry in corresponding sectors declines. I provide evidence for different mechanisms to explain these patterns. Together, the findings show that labor frictions play an important role in investment decisions. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does proprietary knowledge protection (PKP) spur or hinder the product-market performance of new firms? Exploiting the staggered adoptions of the inevitable disclosure doctrine by U.S. State Courts, which enhance PKP, we show that treated firms increase industry-adjusted sales growth by 2% compared to control firms. The effect is concentrated among small and young firms and increases with the scope of proprietary knowledge and rivals' access to external finance. PKP encourages firms to develop new products and stimulates initial public offering activity. Our results suggest that PKP alleviates predation risk associated with "deep-pocket" rivals by allowing firms to maintain competitive advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publishers face an existential threat from a variety of news aggregators, such as free aggregators (e.g., Google News, Yahoo News), micropayment-facilitating aggregators (e.g., Blendle), and subscription-charging aggregators (e.g., Apple News+). The authors seek to theoretically examine whether publishers can collaborate and compete with the different types of news aggregators and, if so, what pricing and content-sharing strategies publishers should pursue. In the absence of a news aggregator, publishers sell their content as a composite publication; this intensifies interpublisher price competition and hurts publishers' profits. A free aggregator, however, could help unbundle the articles of a publisher. Moreover, if publishers share articles on the same topic with a free aggregator, they can completely eliminate interpublisher competition and replace it with competition between the aggregator and the publishers, but they only partially eliminate interpublisher competition if they share articles on different topics with it. Yet, the free aggregator needs to bring sufficient additional traffic to the publishers to motivate them to share content and collaborate with it. Conversely, publishers will be willing to collaborate with a micropayment-facilitating aggregator even if it does not bring additional traffic to the publishers. This is because a micropayment-facilitating aggregator helps publishers unbundle their content and price discriminate. Lastly, publishers can be motivated to collaborate even with a subscription-charging aggregator that is powerful enough to dictate the terms of the revenue-sharing arrangement with the publishers. This is because the subscription-charging aggregator improves its profits without hurting the publishers' surplus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research has uncovered an array of visible competitive dynamics, a strategic world of competition lies beneath the surface that should also be theorized and empirically traced. We investigate the strategic consequences of "media–rival" common ownership, in which investors own a media company and a non-media focal firm's rivals. We posit that focal firms receive worse coverage from media outlets when institutional investors hold substantial ownership in both a media company and the focal firm's rivals because the investors' common holdings provide them with incentives and power to enhance the competitiveness of their portfolio firms by tainting the focal firm's media coverage. We account for three moderators to show that this effect amplifies when investors have stronger incentives and power to influence the media and when media executives have incentives to cater to the interests of their investors. Using a novel dataset on common ownership of rival firms and media companies, we find support for our theory. Our study reveals a new invisible hand underlying competitive markets and offers a new view of the media as a strategic tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, the Federal Trade Commission stopped enforcing its fictitious reference pricing guidelines, emphasizing the search qualities of price and the belief that competition would drive out deceptive behavior. Yet this practice of posting false, inflated comparison prices alongside sale prices has proliferated. Building on prior analytic work and the documented effects of reference pricing on search behavior and consumer choice, the authors develop a descriptive model explaining why fictitious reference pricing has spread instead of being extinguished by competition. After summarizing the model with a series of generalizations, the authors consider potential regulatory solutions to the problem. They propose that disclosure of the true normal price charged may be the only solution that could plausibly influence both consumer and firm behavior. Then, based on the existing literature, interviews with practitioners and regulators, an analysis of other nations' approaches, and the results of a laboratory study of 900 consumers to examine how they integrate "true normal price" information into deal evaluations, the authors develop a set of propositions about the likely effects of requiring firms to disclose recent selling prices for goods, identifying both potential benefits and challenges associated with such a requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once scaled, online platforms reconfigure value to remain competitive. Reconfiguration in online platforms may take a different form than in pipelines, as online platforms are intermediaries that generate network effects among the sides they connect. They also face stiff competition from other spheres due to lower barriers to entry. Why and how do online platforms reconfigure value? By examining 13 Indian online platforms that have achieved a certain level of success (such as tipped markets, investor confidence, or profitability), this article offers four strategies for reconfiguring online platforms: enhance interactions, enhance capabilities, offer new services, and nurture new transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. equity exchanges have experienced a dramatic increase in competition from new entrants, resulting in the fragmentation of trading across venues. While market quality has generally improved over this period, we show most of the improvements have accrued to the largest stocks. We then show this bifurcation in market quality is related to the fragmentation of trading. Theoretically, more exchange competition should reduce trading costs, yet it may also increase adverse selection for liquidity providers, leading to higher spreads. We document evidence of both effects (fragmentation improves market quality for large stocks while small stocks experience relatively worse quality). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homeowners who originally bought when marketwide price levels were high (low) fetch high (low) sales prices and rents, even decades later. We study the propagation of reference-dependence to neighboring listings. The "spillover" reference point effect is about one-half as large as the "own" reference point effect. Neither house quality nor location appears capable of explaining the result. Using a simple model to provide empirical predictions, we find support for a competition-based mechanism. We quantify the aggregate effect of own and spillover reference point effects on aggregate prices and/or rents at the ZIP code level. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why would some firms persist with continued operations when facing unfavorable economic conditions? Although prior studies have investigated the roles of uncertainty and sunk costs as sources of inertia, an unacknowledged type of sunk cost associated with temporary suspensions of operations is related to the erosion of existing capabilities. Building on the resource-based view and real options theory, we argue that resource idling contributes to capability erosion and that the anticipated capability loss motivates firms to refrain from idling their resources under demand uncertainty in the first place. The negative effects of uncertainty on resource idling are likely to be particularly strong for firms with superior capabilities and for those having a greater reliance on human capital. Using data on oil drilling contractors in Texas, the empirical evidence lends support to our theoretical arguments. Our insights suggest that resource idling shapes the development path of capabilities and risks jeopardizing firms' competitive advantages. The seemingly operational decision of temporarily idling resources can therefore be quite strategic for a firm, and "hysteresis," or inertia in continuing operations, can preserve firms' capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using novel shadow bank funding data, I find that shadow banks are funded by the very banks they compete with when originating mortgages. Evidence suggests that banks have market power in the upstream market for shadow banks' funding, which in turn softens mortgage market competition through their strategic behaviors in both markets. I build and calibrate a quantitative model of vertical integration and competition to show that those consumers who would most benefit from shadow bank services are the ones to bear the costs. Secondary market innovation could increase downstream competition by reducing shadow banks' reliance on their competitors. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Economically insignificant tick sizes encourage undercutting behavior, thus harming market quality. Theoretical work shows that increasing tick sizes in unconstrained markets reduces undercutting and improves market quality. Equity market pricing grids are generally too coarse to test this prediction. We examine a cryptocurrency market with infinitesimal tick sizes where undercutting limit orders acquire price priority without meaningful economic cost. We show that increasing tick sizes reduces undercutting behavior, increases liquidity provision and quoted depth, and reduces transaction costs for institutional and retail-sized trades while decreasing short-term volatility. Tiny tick sizes are suboptimal, supporting increased minimum trading increments in tick-unconstrained markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine whether competition from domestic industry rivals affects firms' proclivity to undertake foreign direct investment (FDI) and their country location choices. I find that competition affects foreign production decisions and the geography of international investments. While firms enduring stiffer competition are significantly less likely to undertake FDI, this effect is heterogeneous across firms. Competition deters FDI more strongly when costs are heavier, whereas it has weaker effects when efficiency is higher, growth opportunities are valuable, and cash reserves are higher. FDI location models suggest that when going abroad, firms facing stronger competition are more likely to pursue economies of productivity and taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent are multinational corporations able to address societal challenges through voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Based on an in-depth qualitative study of how apparel multinational corporations have addressed labor standards violations since the deadly 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse, we show how CSR managers navigate the tension between the emerging responsible management logic and the highly institutionalized market logic, revealing how some go beyond accommodating responsible management within the market by prioritizing responsible management in market-protected spaces. We theorize the construction of market-protected spaces as a multilevel mechanism for institutionalizing an emerging logic in the context of a field dominated by the market logic via three forms of institutional work: restraining the jurisdiction of the market logic, infusing the responsible management logic with nonmarket elements, and maintaining market-protected spaces against resistance. A "market-protected space" is an institutionally bound space that suspends the dominance of the market logic on selected issues based on a binding institutional infrastructure that allows prioritizing responsible management—unlike voluntary CSR, which still prioritizes the market logic. The concept of a market-protected space maps a path for policy-makers, managers, and other actors interested in institutionalizing responsible management in the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document a novel strategic motive for family business groups to utilize their internal capital markets (ICMs) during financial crises. We find that crisis-period group ICM activity is targeted toward exerting product market dominance over standalone rivals. Groups make significant post-crisis gains in market share that are concentrated among affiliates (and industry segments within affiliates) operating in highly competitive product markets, where capturing such gains is difficult in normal times. These patterns are observed only in emerging markets, suggesting that ICMs enable groups to exploit crises to realize long-term competitive advantages only when rivals face chronic financing frictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does trading in one venue affect the quoting strategies of market makers in other venues? We develop a two-venue imperfect competition model in which market makers face quadratic costs when absorbing shocks. Nonconstant marginal costs imply that absorbing a shock in one venue simultaneously changes marginal costs in all other venues. Moreover, market makers strategically choose which shock(s) to absorb. These two forces may intensify competition, leading to enhanced liquidity. Using Euronext proprietary data, we track individual best bid and ask quotes of intermediaries in each venue. We uncover evidence of strategic cross-venue market-making behavior which is uniquely predicted by our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, advertising allocation decisions have operated mostly at a macro level, comprising determination of the total budget followed by apportionment among media channels. Owing to the rapid and sustained rise of digital media, an additional decision now operates at a micro level, namely, which specific customers to target with advertising. In the macro case, optimal control theory provides a powerful framework for firm profit maximization, specifically allowing for ad response, cost per medium, and discount rate, all in the presence of multiple competing brands. However, optimal control theory has never been applied to the situation of microtargeting individual customers. Consequently, in this study the author shows how optimal control theory can be adapted for application to individual customers. The author estimates a multinomial logit model with individual-specific advertising response parameters. In turn, these parameters are used to determine the optimal number of exposures each customer should receive for each advertising medium. An empirical example demonstrates that using the optimal microtargeting method improves firm profits over existing ad scheduling methods by between 150% and 183%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide new evidence that disruptions in firms' access to credit during the Global Financial Crisis significantly affected product innovation in the consumer goods sector. We combine highly granular retail scan data with lending data and find that credit-constrained firms introduced fewer new products, those products were less novel, and new products sold less well. Overall, these findings suggest that disruptions to credit markets impair firms' ability to compete for profits through new product offerings. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market structure maps spatially represent competitive relationships among brands and products. In these maps, each product is typically visualized in a single map location. Such visualization, however, does not adequately accommodate multimarket membership products (MMPs), which are products that compete in multiple submarkets that are each characterized by distinct competitors and consumer preferences. The author proposes a novel framework that accommodates MMPs by visualizing products in the local context of each submarket in which they compete. This framework is then used to study market structure in the digital camera market. Competitive relationships are inferred from consumers' online searches using bootstrapped neural product embedding. The research shows that 8% of cameras are MMPs and that 50% of all submarkets are affected by MMPs. The map generated with the proposed framework uncovers mismatches between manufacturer positioning and consumer perception of several cameras. An extensive comparison of the proposed framework with alternative mapping methods reveals that (1) commonly used mapping methods misrepresent MMPs' competitive positions in their maps and (2) ignoring MMPs can lead to distorted visualizations of the underlying market structure. Both problems compromise firms' abilities to accurately assess products' competitive positions and evaluate the effectiveness of their positioning strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze whether industry competition influences analyst coverage decisions and whether analysts benefit from covering product market competitors. We find that analysts are more likely to cover a firm when this firm competes with more firms already covered by the analyst. We also find that the intensity of competition among these competitors is additionally important to the coverage decision. Moreover, we find that analysts who cover product market competitors are more likely to obtain analyst star status. These results are consistent with the importance to analysts of industry competition and product market knowledge accumulated through covering product market competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study venture capital firms' (VCs) use of public market information and how attention to this information relates to private market investment outcomes. I link web traffic to public filings hosted on EDGAR to individual VCs. VCs analyze public information about industry peers before most deals. An increase in industry filing views relates positively to the probability of an exit through acquisition, suggesting that public information helps identify paths to acquisition. The effect is stronger when the VC has less access to private information, especially for low-reputation VCs. Policymakers should consider spillover effects on private markets when setting public disclosure requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interplay between investors' demand and providers' incentives has shaped the evolution of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). While early ETFs invested in broad-based indexes and therefore offered diversification at low cost, more recent products track niche portfolios and charge high fees. Strikingly, over their first 5 years, specialized ETFs lose about 30 |$\%$| (risk-adjusted). This underperformance cannot be explained by high fees or hedging demand. Rather, it is driven by the overvaluation of the underlying stocks at the time of the launch. Our results are consistent with providers catering to investors' extrapolative beliefs by issuing specialized ETFs that track attention-grabbing themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When organizations take radically new forms, employees' minds and bodies can also take radically new forms, but prior organizational research has lacked the concepts and data to understand such qualitative changes in persons. For 17 years, I studied a profound societal change, the market turn, inside organizations at their center, investment banks on Wall Street. The banks took a new, market-like form that facilitated the emergence of a cultural–historical new form of personhood, the body entrepreneur. Unlike traditional organizations, which predictably reward employee effort, the banks gradually decoupled rewards from effort, paying bankers for winning first internal and then external competitions and increasingly exposing them to market risk. Bankers internalized this entrepreneurial positioning by transforming their minds and bodies into resources for competitive success regardless of health consequences. As rewards became more elusive, bankers invested more resources, first the mind and then the body, and controlled them in progressively more powerful ways, first through cognitive techniques, then through self-experimentation with drugs. Bankers thus intervened more radically in their minds and bodies than organizations legitimately can, resulting in two qualitative person changes. One, bankers constructed personhood in cultural–historical new ways, changing from the traditional psychological self, which locates processes such as emotions and motivation in the mind, toward a somatic self, the body entrepreneur, which locates them in the body as brain states that bankers could self-design. Two, the body functioned in new ways: not inside–out as a biological imperative but outside–in, fluidly adjusting to changing situations. Whereas prior organizational theories have assumed what the body is, I problematize it, empirically studying the self-technologies through which people construct the culturally situated biologies that compel them to unproblematically reproduce new, market-like organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The product market competition affects the non-neutrality of monetary policy. This paper quantitatively assesses its impact on the slope of the Phillips curve through the channels of nominal and real rigidity. We build a New Keynesian model using the Kimball aggregator and the Calvo staggered pricing scheme. We show that a more competitive market environment has opposite effects on the slope of the Phillips curve by increasing the real rigidity and lowering the nominal rigidity. We then estimated the model using regional data of China. The Bayesian estimation shows that the response of inflation-output trade-off is larger in the region with a high degree of competition. Counterfactual experiments demonstrate that nominal rigidity has a dominant role and accounts for the majority of the difference in the Phillips curve, while the contribution of real rigidity is relatively minor. Our results highlight the key role of nominal rigidity in determining the inflation-output dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a framework for attributing motivations to Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) investment by noting that there are two major subdivisions, those that argue that the investments are undertaken due to macroeconomic factors and those that argue there is a political element as well. The political literature is divided into three subcategories of domestic political considerations, geopolitical competition and economic diplomacy. The literature of the Public Investment Fund (PIF) does not include any discussion of economic diplomacy as a consideration, an omission this article seeks to rectify. Using a realist understanding of international political economy (IPE), the article explores the influence of elites, the nature of PIF investments in America, India, China and Russia, and collaboration with other SWFs on investment. The article concludes that economic diplomacy should be considered as one of a multitude of variables that determine how and where the PIF invests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research Incentive Program increased research production at a set of state universities as measured by total research spending, federally-funded research spending, the number of scholarly publications, and the share of publications published in high impact factor journals. Using a novel dataset and difference-in-differences analytic strategy, we found that TRIP adoption was associated with a 19%-25% increase in research expenditures at emerging research universities in Texas relative to a matched set of comparable universities. However, TRIP did not influence federally-funded research expenditures or journal publication outputs. We also show that federally-funded research expenditures influence publication outputs — both in amount and quality — and that number of full-time faculty influences both federal research expenditures and publication outputs. We discuss contributions to the literature on regional public universities, loose coupling, and research production, as well as implications for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform power poses a number of challenges for competition authorities. One concern is that big tech companies may harm competition through the acquisition of emerging companies with a high competitive potential. Such acquisitions may escape ex ante merger control if they do not reach the turnover threshold for mandatory notification. The Commission sought to bridge this enforcement gap with its Article 22 guidance and the Digital Markets Act. This paper evaluates the steps taken by the Commission to increase scrutiny of such mergers. Building on this discussion, the paper examines the AG opinion in Towercast and analyses the residual gap-closing function of Article 102 TFEU. The aim of this paper is to bring the new developments surrounding digital merger control together and assess whether they represent an adequate response to the challenges posed by the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, large digital companies have been gobbling up hundreds of smaller highly innovative firms involved in the collection and the processing of data. Some regulators, academics and practitioners have expressed concerns that Big Tech might use the increased market power and the greater concentration of consumers' personal data stemming from data-driven mergers to harm consumers in the form of lower privacy protection. They wonder whether and to what extent the EU Commission and/or national competition authorities should take into account data protection considerations when reviewing transactions under the Merger Regulation and/or national merger control rules. The Commission's decisional practice points towards three possible routes for integrating privacy concerns into competition analysis. Given their respective shortcomings, we explore the possibility of using the German Federal Cartel Office's line of reasoning in its Facebook decision as a model for the incorporation of privacy considerations into EU data-driven merger analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several theoretical propositions suggest that changes in economic activity can explain the decision to form a cartel. The majority of the propositions claim that cartel formation is more likely in expansionary and less likely in contractionary phases of the business cycle. The propositions are re-examined theoretically and by using data on detected cartels for the European Union. In both cases, the results cannot confirm that more cartels are formed in any of the business cycle phases and that correlated economic growth rates create higher incentives to collude. Furthermore, it cannot be confirmed that more cartels form shortly after respectively the trough or the peak in the business cycle. The conclusion is that cartel formation is unaffected by changes in the business cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's global business competition environment, the significant changes in the market environment make it very difficult for supply chain enterprises to gain a place in the fierce market only by their strength. This article will do the following research work to effectively play the role of supply chain management. First, the concepts, and characteristics, related applications of supply chain information sharing (IS) and genetic algorithm back propagation (GABP) neural networks, are expounded. Then, the feasibility of applying BP neural network (BPNN) to evaluate supply chain IS is analysed. Next, the assessment indicator system for IS is constructed from four aspects: IS infrastructure, IS member characteristics, IS content, and the quality of supply chain enterprises. Finally, the principle and algorithm of BPNN are analysed, the network model is constructed, the BPNN process based on GA is designed, and every step in the process is explained in detail. The sample input is provided for the network model by obtaining and sorting data. The supply chain IS assessment model based on the GABP neural network is constructed. The results show that the assessment model of supply chain IS based on the GABP neural network has high accuracy, and the highest network accuracy reaches 95.01%, which proves that the assessment model based on BPNN has certain advantages for the supply chain IS of the financial industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of brain health in the workplace and its potential to improve overall well-being, economic competitiveness, and business success. It highlights the changing nature of the economy and workforce, with a shift towards intangible assets and an aging population. The declining health of the population, particularly among underemployed groups, has contributed to labor shortages and wage gaps. The article emphasizes the need to focus on brain health to address these challenges and offers insights from neuroscience to develop effective interventions and strategies. It also provides resources for employers to optimize cognitive health and improve workforce availability and diversity. [Extracted from the article]

Intensive wheat production, which produces high yields through the excessive use of chemical inputs and non-renewable energy, is unsustainable in the long term. Innovative cultivation methods such as intercropping can address emerging challenges. This kind of plant association offers the possibility of achieving a balanced yield with the use of a natural nitrogen source. An experiment was conducted for three growing seasons (2020/2021, 2021/2022, 2022/2023) with a combination of three winter wheat varieties (GK Szilárd, Cellule, GK Csillag) and a winter pea variety (Aviron) in three sowing densities to determine the species interaction and the economics of mixed plots. The intercropping systems were evaluated in terms of the land equivalent ratio (LER), aggressivity (A), competitive ratio CR), actual yield loss (AYL), monetary advantage index (MAI), and intercropping advantage (IA). In almost all mixtures, the values of partial A, CR, and AYL indicated that wheat was more competitive than peas due to the overconcentration of mixtures. For MAI, the mixture Cellule/Aviron 75:50 was more profitable than the others in the first two years. Our results draw attention to the influence of the seeding rate, which can contribute to new directions for current research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past few years, hydrogen use has come to be considered as an alternative energy carrier in a future decarbonized world. Many developed nations are undergoing a shift towards low-carbon energy sources, driven by the excessive reliance on fossil fuels and the detrimental effects of climate change. This study aims to investigate the potential for hydrogen deployment in the Greek energy market during the next few decades. In this context, green hydrogen's potential application in the Greek market is being assessed, employing an integrated techno-economic model grounded in worldwide trends and localized expenses. The forthcoming years will see an analysis of both the challenges and opportunities surrounding the integration and implementation of hydrogen in new and existing processes within Greece. Many alternative ways to produce hydrogen in Greece are investigated, contemplating different production paths. We evaluate how fluctuations in hydrogen, oil, and carbon prices affect the economics of green hydrogen adoption in oil refining, as is detailed in the draft of the European Union delegated act published in May 2022. The Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) for different scenarios is calculated for the time frame up until 2050. A sensitivity analysis reveals that investment costs, electricity prices, electrolyzer efficiency, and carbon taxes significantly influence the LCOH, ultimately impacting the economic competitiveness of hydrogen production. These findings underscore the importance of aligning public–private partnership agendas in hydrogen production to create optimal conditions for investment attraction and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic libraries are experiencing drastic changes due to unprecedented advancements in technology. This advancement has caused changes in users' information-seeking behavior, increased information competitors, and easy access and availability to free information on the internet. It is unfortunate that all this is happening amidst the dwindling financial support libraries receive from their parent organization. These variations, such as the digital shift and remote access, changing user expectations, open access movement, the need for data management and preservation models are causing havoc and disruption to academic libraries; therefore, academic libraries need to justify their position and relevancy. This paper discusses the conundrum academic libraries face and suggests why and how they should adopt entrepreneurial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift towards digitalization is fundamentally transforming societies and changing lives. Meanwhile, many African countries are lagging behind on the dividends of accelerated digital technologies to address their developmental challenges. This is partly because of the dearth of evidence demonstrating how technological integration impacts on economic growth and poverty reduction. By relying on panel data for the period 2011–2021, this study empirically estimates the degree to which ICT adoption contributes to South Africa's economic competitiveness along four indicators: boosting productivity, accelerating business growth, increasing government operational efficiency, and creating opportunities for people. The data were analyzed using multivariate regression analysis. The findings indicated a strong positive correlation between the application of digital technologies and the improvement of business operations welfare improvement, and GDP growth. The findings suggest to policymakers the need to prioritize interventions that drive investment in digital infrastructure. Given the net positive effects of ICT innovations, it is also recommended that policymakers focus on building the ICT skills of South Africans, while ensuring a business-friendly environment that enables fast digital penetration in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competitiveness is a key requirement for modern companies to survive. Effective corporate governance practices are also fast emerging as a fundamental obligation owed to shareholders and other stakeholders. The connection between competition and good corporate governance is derived from the product market competition hypothesis (PMCH) that projects the idea that operating in competitive markets would increase x-efficiency and decrease agency costs in companies, leading to superior corporate governance. Although a significant amount of work, both theoretical and empirical has been carried out on the efficacy of the PMCH, none of the research has been conclusive. Moreover, there has been no concentrated effort into determining the impact of the PMCH on the specific types of agency problems that are endemic to companies with largely concentrated shareholding structures like India. The paper highlights that a part of the reason behind the waning and unconvincing research on the PMCH (specially in India) has been the focus on competitiveness as an abstract concept or empirical construct, rather than on the regulatory aspect of competition, that is, competition law. This paper examines the connection between competition law and corporate governance, specifically the utility of competition regulation in being used to improve corporate governance in companies. It also considers the effectiveness of competition law in dispelling some of the pervasive Indian corporate governance problems such as tunneling and inefficient related party transactions. Some of the methods that are considered which would have such an impact and thus are recommended by the researcher, are a redefinition of 'dominant position' in the competition law discourse, to include within it pyramidical groups of companies as well as viewing tunneling practices as having an 'appreciable adverse effect' on competition. Doing so would result in numerous efficiencies as competition law could be used to kill two birds with one stone: increasing both competitiveness and good corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]