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On one hand, Islamic banking and finance is an aspiration to radically transform banks and the financial system to conform with interpretations of Islamic ethics and morals. On the other hand, such high aspirations patently conflict with the existing global, US$3.6 trillion market dominated by profit‐oriented private banks. These aspirations also potentially conflict with the technical details of how financial products are constructed to be “Shariah compliant.” How do Islamic financial practitioners reconcile their vision of the Islamic good society with the products and processes observed at work? One such theological tool and cultural concept is to interpret Islamic financial products as relying on hiyal, a legal stratagem used to provide remedies and alleviate predicaments, to provide an escape from the unlawful to the lawful. This essay summarizes how thinkers in Malaysia are developing the concept of hiyal either to critique or to promote Islamic finance. As a contribution to anthropological and postcolonial theorizing, the essay concludes by exploring how the concept of hiyal can help us understand contrivances, conspiracies, cons, and stratagems. This theoretical tool kit can assist social scientists in exploring the gap between people's economic behaviors and their aspirations for what a good economy should look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the world is to achieve an energy transition to address climate change, global finance must shift rapidly away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Despite the prominence of global finance in International Political Economy (IPE), it is striking that one of the key institutions – export credit agencies (ECAs) – that provide a significantly larger volume of public investment in fossil fuels than multilateral financial institutions, such as the World Bank, has been largely overlooked in the literature. In this commentary, we argue that IPE scholars are well placed to lead research on the role of ECAs in the energy transition. Specifically, we consider ECA behaviour, such as lending decisions, to be the outcome of interest, and propose three possible sets of factors that are likely to shape ECA lending: Namely, domestic political economy factors, climate governance and international security. In doing so, we set out a research agenda for IPE in relation to ECAs by laying out a series of research questions and linking them to adjacent streams in the literature. This largely unexplored research agenda has great potential to expand not only our understanding of ECAs in IPE, but also the shape of the energy transition in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current scientific and political discourse surrounding the transformation of the scientific publication system, significant attention is focused on Diamond Open Access (OA). Diamond OA is characterized by no charges for readers or authors and relies on monetary allowances and voluntary work. This article explores the potential and challenges of Diamond OA journals, using Germany as a case study. Two key questions are addressed: first, the current role of such journals in the scientific publication system is determined through bibliometric analysis across various disciplines. Second, an investigation is conducted to assess the sustainability of Diamond OA journals and identify associated structural problems or potential breaking points. This investigation includes an in-depth expert interview study involving 20 editors of Diamond OA journals. The empirical results are presented using a landscape map that considers two dimensions: 'monetized and gift-based completion of tasks' and 'journal team size.' The bibliometric analysis reveals a substantial number of Diamond OA journals in the social sciences and humanities, but limited adoption in other fields. The model proves effective for small to mid-sized journals, but not for larger ones. Additionally, it was found that 23 Diamond OA journals have recently discontinued their operations. The expert interviews demonstrate the diversity within the landscape and the usefulness of the two dimensions in understanding key differences. Journals in two of the four quadrants of the map exemplify sustainable conditions, while the other two quadrants raise concerns about long-term stability. These concerns include limited funding leading to a lack of division of labor and an excessive burden on highly committed members. Gift-like contributions, while appealing, also present challenges as potential donors not only decide whether to contribute but also how to contribute, potentially creating friction between the gift and the journal's requirements. Furthermore, journals in the lower right quadrant often rely on third-party funding, necessitating a transformation once the funding expires. Common pathways for sustaining operations include lobbying for funding at the journal's home institution or increasing reliance on gift-based completion of tasks. These findings underscore the need for the development of more sustainable funding models to ensure the success of Diamond OA journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we outline a vignette of the Bioscience Technology Facility (BTF) at the University of York as a singular exemplar of the Full Cost Recovery model. It is fully appreciated that every facility operates slightly differently, and each are subject to various rules at the institutional, regional and national level. Understanding the regulations that need to be followed for your cost recovery model may require discussion with your administrators to ensure compliance regulations for your Institution and governing bodies are followed. The below is almost a pick and mix of ways of working. It is, however, one of the few examples that is able to fully recover its operating costs within an academic environment and has sought and obtained full institutional and funders support. This model is now being much more widely adopted across the United Kingdom although again always with slightly different interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents profit on alienation (POA) as one of the sources of profit in capitalist economies. In addition to identifying and situating POA among other profit flows, we have attempted to operationalize it in the real estate and finance sectors. In the empirical part of the article, we estimate POA in those sectors in Turkey for the period 2010–2019. The extent of estimated profits based on POA in those sectors is not insignificant. These findings confirm our position that utilizing POA in exploring capitalist dynamics would be a fruitful endeavor. JEL Classification : B3, B51, H27, G51 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the current state, challenges, and future possibilities in the field of African arts. It discusses various aspects, including access to resources and spaces, the growing international interest in African art, the sustainability of the art market on the continent, the importance of mentorship and collaboration, and the role of young scholars in shaping the field's development. It highlight the need for broader access, sustainable funding, meaningful mentorship, financial literacy, and collaborative efforts to ensure the continued growth and relevance of African arts.

The hegemonic understanding of the green transition will require a massive surge in mineral extraction. We contend that this entails wider, radical shifts in 21st century financialised capitalism. While there has been increasing critical interest in the role of finance capital in development, the links between finance, extraction, and the green transition have been largely overlooked. We fill this gap by arguing that the green transition, understood as a transformation of global capitalism, is marked by new rounds of appropriation, exploitation, and extraction, (re)producing dependencies for resource‐rich Global South countries. These emergent geographies of the green transition are best evaluated through what we call the “finance‐extraction‐transitions nexus”. The nexus highlights the interplay between finance capital, mineral extraction, and the material, socio‐economic, and environmental implications of the green transition. This provides new ways to theoretically, conceptually, and methodologically engage with resource extraction and the green transition in the age of financialised capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the composition, distribution, and history of school funding in Australia through a spatial lens (Soja 2010). We explore multi-scalar school funding policy through three layers of economic maldistribution. We sketch the funding disparities between the three school sectors (public, Catholic, and independent) exposing a spatial injustice in policies of school choice; the spatial and economic maldistribution between state jurisdictions; and the economic maldistribution within state public systems, including the ability of their school communities to contribute funds. Spatial injustice is uncovered in economic maldistribution within and across these policy layers, adding nuance to existing school funding debates. The Australian case is relevant to international explorations of school funding as an example of 'unjust practice' in the hierarchies between schools across sectors, between jurisdictions, and within systems of public [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heterodox economists debate if Keynesian/Kaleckian or Marxian/Harrodian results apply in the long-run. This paper explores different financial mechanisms in neo-Kaleckian models with the: (1) traditional closure of an endogenous utilisation rate; and, (2) supermultiplier closure where the utilisation rate is restored to its normal degree in the long-run. Keynesian/Kaleckian results are obtained regardless of the assumptions on the utilisation rate. Attention is also given to circuitist intra-period endogenous money financing relations, and to financial adjustments that increase the elasticity of household portfolio adjustments and firm liability-side management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence methods based on deep learning (DL) have recently made significant progress in many different areas including free text classification and sentiment analysis. We believe that corporate governance is one of these areas, where DL can generate very valuable and differential knowledge, for example, by analyzing the biographies of independent directors, which allows for qualitative modeling of their profile in an automatic way. For this technology to be accepted it is important to be able to explain how it generates its results. In this work we have developed a six-dimensional labeled dataset of independent director biographies, implemented three recurrent DL models based on LSTM and transformers along with four ensembles, one of which is an innovative proposal based on a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), trained them using Spanish language and economics and finance terminology and performed a comprehensive test study that demonstrates the accuracy of the results. We have also performed a complete study of explainability using the SHAP methodology by comparatively analyzing the developed models. We have achieved a mean error (MAE) of 8% in the modeling of the open text biographies, which has allowed us to perform a case study of time analysis that has detected significant variations in the composition of the Standard Expertise Profile (SEP) of the boards of directors, related to the crisis of the period 2008–2013. This work shows that DL technology can be accurately applied to free text analysis in the finance and economic domain, by automatically analyzing large volumes of data to generate knowledge that would have been unattainable by other means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments implemented social distancing requirements, lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. These caused unprecedented disruptions, especially in industries that often rely heavily on the labour of temporary migrants. As a result, temporary migrants were particularly disadvantaged by measures to safeguard population health. We critically scrutinise government policies related to temporary migrants in Australia during the pandemic. The Australian Government provided financial safety nets to individuals and families who were citizens and permanent residents, while deliberately excluding temporary migrants from such support. In contrast, efforts were made at the state level to compensate for this hardship. We trace how the Victorian Government ultimately came to provide financial support for temporary migrants. The case highlights how the interests of precarious members of society can go from being ignored to receiving the attention necessary to produce a policy change to meet their needs. With its emphasis on the role policy narratives play in shaping outcomes for temporary migrants, the analytical approach utilised here could inform future studies of migrant treatment in other contexts as well as studies focusing on other vulnerable and politically marginalised members of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to reflect on Matthew 19:16-26 as a theological offer to foster the capacity of financial giving practices in spiritual ministry for Generation Z. This is to anticipate the theology of prosperity, which is often misused, and the selfish management of wealth. This theological reflection is essential to understand that Generation Z views spiritual growth separately from the practice of blessing. The impact is that Generation Z needs to care more to support funds in spiritual activities and services around them. The research method applied consists in a descriptive qualitative approach through constructive analysis of scientific discourse. With the use of this method, it is argued that Generation Z needs some basic theological reflection regarding using God's blessings to give funds and treasures after the COVID-19 pandemic in support of spiritual activities around them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of regional autonomy by giving broad, real and responsible authority to regions in a proportional manner is realized by regulating, distributing and utilizing national resources as well as balancing central and regional finances. Drinking water services in urban areas, PDAM Tirta Sejuk Gayo Les Regency carries out its operations according to company principles, namely efficiency and seeking profits, in order to meet the target of filling regional government coffers. The aim of this research is to understand the strategic issues of PDAM Tirta Sejuk and formulate management strategies that should be implemented in the era of autonomy in order to be able to increase the PAD of Gayo Lues Regency and to find out strategies for improving services to the community. This research method uses a qualitative descriptive approach. This research uses SWOT analysis. Conclusion Currently only 21% (10,500 connections) of Gayo Lues residents can enjoy clean water facilities from PDAM. This condition is still far from the national target which requires 60% of urban residents to be able to enjoy clean water facilities. Of all employees working at PDAM, it can be seen that the composition of the number of employees who have a D3 educational background or above is very small, only 14.01% when compared with the number of employees who have an educational background below D3 is 85.99%. Such conditions indicate that the quality of employees is still low, and the high number of water leaks certainly has a big impact on the efficiency of the PDAM itself. For the customer community, this condition is clearly detrimental because the quantity, quality and continuity of clean water needed to meet their daily needs does not meet expectations, which means reducing their satisfaction with the services provided by PDAM Tirta Sejuk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media networks provide an aggregation of news and content, allowing users to share and discuss topics of greatest interest to them. Users can enrich the news by providing context and opinions that are useful to other users. Understanding topics of interest sheds light on the collective thinking of a group of individuals and offers important insights for exploring a given field. Among the fields of interest on social media networks, finance stands out. Automatically identifying and organizing the main issues that users discuss can be useful for multiple purposes, e.g., identifying the preferred types of loans could be useful for refining targeted advertising. Our work aims to identify and organize the topics discussed on a social media network that are related to the financial sector. For this, we propose an approach that consists of analyzing posts from Reddit communities oriented to finance. First, posts were gathered and cleaned to remove punctuation, links, and images. Then, textual similarity was computed to match posts with classes from dedicated ontologies designed for the financial sector. Finally, the populated ontology was analyzed to identify clusters of concepts. The results showed that the proposed approach and corresponding tool can summarize topics from a large number of Reddit posts using the identified classes. Over 70% of posts were linked to ontologies when considering both posts and comments, which shows that the automatic support given to posts related to financial concepts had a high degree of success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models of finance rationality expect individuals to actively prepare for retirement by consistently investing and building a diversified asset portfolio, with any behavior deviating from these expectations being identified as irresponsible. This framework of (ir)rationality and (ir)responsibility ignores the role of constraints in shaping financial behavior. Extending economic geographic insights on everyday financial practices as complex processes of meaning-making, we reveal how varied approaches to retirement savings are shaped by the experience of constraints inherent in a capitalist welfare state. Using the accounts of forty-two interviewed women and people with a minority ethnic background in the UK, we show how the interplay between everyday rationalities and structural constraints construct variegated financial subjectivities and practices that reflect the context that individuals face. Our findings contribute to the theorization of variegated financial subjects and disrupt the application of corrective policy measures, such as financial education, which put more pressure on individuals rather than tackling the inequalities inherent in the capitalist welfare state broadly and in the pension system specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many deep learning works on financial time-series forecasting focus on predicting future prices/returns of individual assets with numerical price-related information for trading, and hence propose models designed for univariate, single-task, and/or unimodal settings. Forecasting for investment and risk management involves multiple tasks in multivariate settings: forecasts of expected returns and risks of assets in portfolios, and correlations between these assets. As different sources/types of time-series influence future returns, risks, and correlations of assets in different ways, it is also important to capture time-series from different modalities. Hence, this article addresses financial time-series forecasting for investment and risk management in a multivariate, multitask, and multimodal setting. Financial time-series forecasting, however, is challenging due to the low signal-to-noise ratios typical in financial time-series, and as intra-series and inter-series relationships of assets evolve across time. To address these challenges, our proposed Temporal Implicit Multimodal Network (TIME) model learns implicit inter-series relationship networks between assets from multimodal financial time-series at multiple time-steps adaptively. TIME then uses dynamic network and temporal encoding modules to jointly capture such evolving relationships, multimodal financial time-series, and temporal representations. Our experiments show that TIME outperforms other state-of-the-art models on multiple forecasting tasks and investment and risk management applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accepted by: Giorgio Consigli The passive management approach offers conservative investors a way to reduce risk concerning the market. This investment strategy aims at replicating a specific index, such as the NASDAQ Composite or the FTSE100 index. The problem is that buying all the index's assets incurs high rebalancing costs, and this harms future returns. The index tracking problem concerns building a portfolio that follows a specific benchmark with fewer transaction costs. Since a subset of assets is required to solve the index problem this class of problems is NP-hard, and in the past years, researchers have been studying solution approaches to obtain more practical tracking portfolios. This work brings an analysis, spanning the last three decades, of the advances in mathematical approaches for index tracking. The systematic literature review covered important issues, such as the most relevant research areas, solution methods and model structures. Special attention was given to the exploration and analysis of metaheuristics applied to the index tracking problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 2010s, a spectacular fall in prices for a class of mineral commodities called the rare earth elements (REEs) and the collapse of hundreds of new exploration companies made clear the fragility of the high-risk markets around these companies and the strategies of legitimation that supported them. New regulatory processes built around technical disclosures generated vast stores of geotechnical data. Rather than generating trust among market actors, however, these processes dramatically altered the temporalities of global extraction and energized unruly narrative spaces. In their efforts to keep mineral claims active and companies afloat, REE-focused exploration experts have struggled to navigate different arenas of discussion while holding their respective logics in tension. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with exploration geologists and promoters, this article examines how experts federate flows of 'serious' and 'speculative' information in both carefully regulated reports and rumor-filled online forums. Such spaces are organized by aesthetic conventions and social criteria for establishing persuasiveness—forms that STS scholars have long analyzed as literary technologies. Rather than helping to secure experts' authority, however, I argue that the diverse literary technologies that now dominate exploration promotion and finance work have radically redistributed interpretive roles. In their struggles to mediate senses of 'crisis' endemic within venture markets, exploration experts must enact the ideals undergirding new regulatory requirements even as they learn to defer to the speculative musings of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State funding for public higher education institutions is crucial in supporting college access and completion, particularly among students from historically under-represented groups, yet little is known about the mechanisms that states use to allocate funds and how they are affected by financial challenges. This article provides the first detailed longitudinal typology of state funding strategies, focusing particularly on formula volatility and equity. We find a gradual shift toward funding models that include a combination of base-adjusted and enrollment and performance metrics, along with a growing focus on equity. During recessions, states frequently revert to across-the-board funding cuts, further disadvantaging under-resourced institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers in Europe have embraced the notion that they can and should drive economic growth by promoting digital technology. Efforts to do so, known as 'digital transformation', involve reallocating labour and capital to more efficient uses, especially those that produce technological innovation. Recent research has shed light on the politics of updating institutions for education and skills training, but we know little about the politics of reallocating capital in the current episode of economic upgrading, despite the specific and sizable costs of producing technological innovation. What strategies are policymakers implementing to finance technological innovation, especially in Europe's periphery, where states lack fiscal resources? Focusing on the case of Portugal, this article illustrates the centrality of development financial institutions to financing technological innovation, identifying a distinct type of digital transformation in Europe's periphery, where the state plays a marginal role in governing key aspects of economic upgrading. Instead, private finance allocates capital, and international organisations like the European Commission design policies to govern capital allocation. This article develops a framework for analysing the politics of digital transformation in Europe's periphery that centres transnational actors and institutions, rather than the state, in directing the path of technological and structural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objetive and Provocation: work in finance has historically had a great affinity with positivist and functionalist approaches, as well as alignment with utilitarian and neoliberal ideologies. The objective of this provocation is to reflect on the predominant epistemes in the field of finance, as well as the limitations of such approaches for the development of studies in the area, provoking about the emergence of a movement that has been establishing resistance strategies that can change the status quo of the finance field. Conclusion: bringing new epistemological and methodological approaches, in addition to pointing out more critical approaches and supportive, sustainable and cooperative alternatives to financial and economic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The progressive integration of Tunisia into the international capital market implies deep institutional and social transformations as well as the positioning of the country in the semi-periphery of the capitalist world-economy. From the mid-19th and during the twentieth century, the growing Tunisia's debt paved the way to a compulsory financial administration of the North African country by 1870. Likewise, this process favoured the development of a capitalist class, whose origins were both exogenous and endogenous, drawing its power from doing business with the global financial élites. Thus, we assist to the birth of a capitalist class with local and international interests, also called afterward compradors. Adopting an original comparative approach, this article shows that the integration of a country into the global economy, mainly when occurring through a growing foreign debt, paves the way not only to the birth of a local capitalist class drawing its power from the circulation of capital but also to the permanent positioning of the country in the semi-periphery of the capitalist world-economy. The access to the international capital markets, according to the rules of the controlling powers and elites, makes the indebted country less independent in its economic policy choices, thus modifying its class structure in favour of the new capitalist elites, and their interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is motivated by one of the factors in realizing good governance as a system that has been published by the government, namely SPBE to utilize Information Technology as a means of realizing good governance. SIPD is part of SPBE which is designed as an internal local government system for financial management so that this information can provide effective benefits in decision making. The problem is that the system can run well if its users accept and understand it well. Factors that influence the increase in its use is the acceptance of each individual who becomes a user. This study aims to determine the effect of Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use (perceived ease of use) of Regional Government Information Systems (SIPD) on the Application of Regional Financial Management Systems in North Minahasa Regency. The approach used is quantitative with this type of correlational research. Data collection using a questionnaire. Data analysis technique using multiple regression. The results of this study can be concluded that the Perceived Usefulness of SIPD has a positive and significant effect on the application of the regional financial management system in North Minahasa Regency with a coefficient of determination of 53.90%. Perceived Ease of Use (perceived ease of use) SIPD has a positive and significant effect on the application of regional financial management systems in North Minahasa Regency with a coefficient of determination of 18.60%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do policy experimentation regimes breakdown? And, if there are recognizable patterns of experimental failure, what might explain the variation? Focusing on aviation, finance and food safety, this article considers why a policy style that has been credited with China's successes in the past is failing to address governance challenges in these sectors at present. The article moves beyond discussions of policy mis-implementation by reframing experimental failure as a case of policy maladaptation under conditions of complexity and ambiguity. Maladaptation describes how approaches used in previous periods to foster adaptation can inadvertently make a system less resilient in the future. The analysis shows how the degree of consolidation of previously successful experimental regimes lends itself to certain types of maladaptation in the present: consolidated regimes are unable to generate policy alternatives (aviation), moderately consolidated regimes are maladapted for selection (finance), and unconsolidated regimes impede niche creation (food safety). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US economic policy in the late twentieth century privileged the financial sector by advancing generous tax breaks for wealthy Americans and traders and prioritizing union-busting and cuts to social programs, producing a violence of deprivation against the poor and marginalized others. Simultaneously, the Reagan administration sought to shore up its political coalition in the post-Watergate era by appealing to a newly engaged Christian right with conservative social policies including pushback against the sexual revolution and the formation of the Meese Commission to study restrictions on pornography. These significant changes in culture found their way into a wealth of media including journalism, films, and novels that processed the seemingly contradictory moral claims underlying these policies: greed is good; sex is bad. This article draws on financial and literary theory to examine how two iconic novels from the era, Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991), exploit representations of sexualized violence to ramify and then explore the latent links among sex, violence, and finance. Each novel satirizes Wall Street's violent indifference by embodying it in a figure of elite, white masculinity whose privilege is expressed through sex. The novels' critiques, however, turn out to be self-contradictory, as their disavowal of the fictionality of finance is bound up with a concomitant investment in regressive sexual politics. In so doing, the novels demonstrate that culture-industry efforts to push back against economic deregulation may be allied with the cultural systems that support that deregulation or enable it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of asset manager capitalism, which refers to the central role that asset management firms play in contemporary capitalist finance. It explains that asset management has become dominant due to the growth of retirement savings assets and the outsourcing of investment activities. The industry is diverse, with different types of managers focusing on various investment strategies. The article also highlights the concentration of the asset management sector in the global North, particularly in the US. It further explores how asset managers influence capitalist enterprises through their investments and their power over governments. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for further research in this area. [Extracted from the article]

In California, wildfires caused by electrical infrastructure have left the state's investor-owned power utilities with major and growing liabilities. But even in such an incendiary environment, the financial industry has demonstrated that it can profit from disaster. This paper uses the 2019-2020 bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric to explain how. In it, I show how "risk" in California's electricity industry is legally constituted, mediated, and allocated. First, I explain how financial perceptions of wildfire risk in California's electricity industry are shaped by the state's legal and regulatory environment, and how the law is used to manage this risk. I then turn to PG&E's bankruptcy to show how litigation functions as a financial strategy. In court, risk is endogenous to legal-financial practice. I develop the concepts of "legal arbitrage" and "leverage" to explain how law mediates the relationship between risk and finance. I adapt the concept of legal arbitrage to show how financial assets (like those in a utility with unprecedented wildfire liabilities) can possess both legal and market value, which can and often do diverge in circumstances of distress. I use the term leverage to refer to a particular kind of legal-financial power which enables actors to transfer risk away from themselves and onto others. In working through these concepts, I argue that that mainstream perceptions of risk in the financial industry are inadequate, especially in an era of increasing climate insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ESG metrics are increasingly important in the global investment management industry. Why this came to pass given the limited appetite for responsible investing in the industry is the subject of this paper. Although the business case for ESG provides an explanation for its increasing uptake whereby market actors are increasingly convinced of the merits of ESG as a profit centre, this explanation is insufficient. By contrast, the adoption the ESG programme offers a means of rewriting the terms of risk management and value creation that while grounded in the business case also serve to address challenges to the legitimacy of the global asset management industry. These developments are illustrated in a case study of the establishment and growth of TruCost and its purchase by S&P Global in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years, Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall have been well established measures of market risk and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision recommends their use when controlling risk. But their computations might be intractable if we do not rely on simplifying assumptions, in particular on distributions of returns. One of the difficulties is linked to the need for Integral Constrained Optimizations. In this article, two new stochastic optimization-based Simulated Annealing algorithms are proposed for addressing problems associated with the use of statistical methods that rely on extremizing a non-necessarily differentiable criterion function, therefore facing the problem of the computation of a non-analytically reducible integral constraint. We first provide an illustrative example when maximizing an integral constrained likelihood for the stress-strength reliability that confirms the effectiveness of the algorithms. Our results indicate no clear difference in convergence, but we favor the use of the problem approximation strategy styled algorithm as it is less expensive in terms of computing time. Second, we run a classical financial problem such as portfolio optimization, showing the potential of our proposed methods in financial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its emergence in the early 1990s, the Sinaloa Cartel has effectively surmounted all challenges to its existence, while, simultaneously, successfully developing its illegal ventures in Mexico and beyond. Based on evidence from the accounts of witnesses who testified in the prosecution of Joaquin Guzmán Loera (also known as El Chapo), one of the Sinaloa Cartel's most prominent figures, we argue that this OCG's resilience partially derives from the illegal governance practices it has implemented in the criminal markets in which it operates. In particular, we contend that the Sinaloa Cartel's reliance on four types of illegal governance have been pivotal in promoting its capacity to weather adversity, namely: (1) judicial, (2) financial, (3) political and (4) regulatory governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary times, developed economies are adopting environmentally friendly initiatives such as green finance and energy efficiency. However, the factors affecting energy efficiency are widely explored, and green finance remains overlooked in the empirical literature. The present research examines the drivers of sustainable green finance in OECD economies during 2004–2021. The study uses several panel diagnostic tests and validates the mixed integration order of the variables. Still, the long-run equilibrium relationship is valid between financial inclusion, energy efficiency, human capital, foreign trade, composite risk, and green finance. Using panel autoregressive distributed lag model, the study found that financial inclusion, energy efficiency, foreign trade, and composite risk significantly improve green finance in the long run. However, only energy efficiency is effective in the short run. On the other hand, human capital exhibits a significant adverse influence on green finance. The long-run results are robust due to the significant estimates offered by panel dynamic ordinary least square. Besides, there exist one-way and two-way causal associations between variables. The study recommends improving the financial sector performance to enhance financial inclusivity, increase investment in the energy efficiency sector, and encourage trade in environmentally friendly initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to analyze the impact of green investments and the development of renewable energy on greenhouse gas emissions based on 223 countries in 2011–2021. The information base is the International Renewable Energy Agency, Our World in Data, Climate Policy Initiative, and FTSE Russell. Correlation analysis was used to check the data multicollinearity, multivariate regression analysis with stepwise variable entry—to formalize functional relationships. All variables characterizing the dynamics of green investments and the development of alternative energy, the number of annual investments in off-grid renewable energy has the largest impact on the amount of CO2 and N2O. Thus, an annual investment increase of USD 1 million leads to a CO2 emission increase of 4.5 kt and an N2O emission increase of 0.272 kt. Simultaneously, the green economy's market capitalization level has the largest impact on the amount of CH4. In this case, a capitalization increases of USD 1 trillion leads to a CH4 emission increase of 129.53 kt. The dynamics of renewable energy development have a statistically significant effect on only one of the three studied greenhouse gases—CO2 emissions. Here, 1 MW growth of an absolute increase in off-grid renewable energy capacity leads to a 1171.17 kt reduction of CO2 emissions. Checking input data for lags confirmed a time lag of one year between the level of green investments and the level of greenhouse gas emissions. That is, the impact of green investments on the level of greenhouse gas emissions is delayed by one year. The results of regression models taking into account lags confirmed that an increase in the level of green investments has a positive effect on reducing the level of greenhouse gas emissions (an increase in off-grid renewable energy annual investments of USD 1 million leads to a decrease in CO2 of 1.18 kt and N2O of 1.102 kt; the increase in green economy market capitalization of USD 1 trillion leads to a decrease in CH4 emissions of 0.64 kt). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supply chain finance continues to play an important role in servicing businesses that have limited access to finance. With the disruptions associated with the fourth industrial revolution, opportunities exist in Africa to increase participation by small businesses. While the effect of digitalization on supply chain finance has been explored, evidence from Africa is still limited. This study sought to determine the effect of digitalization on supply chain financing of small businesses in Africa. The study utilized a dataset that consists of observations from 4409 small businesses in sub-Saharan Africa, including agricultural businesses. Four indicators of digitalization (use of company websites, social media, online advertisements, and mobile phone ownership) were used to compute and index digitalization. A logit regression model was fitted on the dataset to determine the effect of digitalization on supply chain finance. The results showed that digitalization significantly affects adoption of supply chain finance by small businesses. The results were robust and did not change significantly due to the inclusion of confounding factors. The results additionally indicated that supply chain financing is also affected by education level, company age and government training programmes in supply chain financing (p < 0.05), although there was a significant difference in the adoption of supply chain finance across countries and between small agricultural businesses and businesses from other sectors of the economy. Thus, any efforts to improve financing activities of small businesses should consider their digitalization development. Investments in digitalization infrastructure by Africa governments should be scaled up. The regulatory environment should be kept favourable to facilitate development of inclusive digital markets. Future research should explore available digital solutions, adoption costs and factors that affect demand by small businesses in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is prepared to analyze the causes of the declining trend in central government equity and further identify steps that the Government can take in anticipating the decline in equity. This research was conducted using descriptive analysis methods by analyzing trends in financial statements and comparing with policies and regulations that occurred in the reporting year so that it could not present further information about the reasons or considerations of the Government related to a policy that could increase / decrease equity significantly. As a result, this policy involves a formulation strategy with prudential and planned principles, especially in medium-term fiscal policy. The impact includes an increase in financing expenditures to cover the budget deficit, especially in operational expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study delves into the crucial theme of enhancing income-generating capacity, recognizing its pivotal role in meeting basic human needs and catalyzing prosperity within communities. The motivation behind this research lies in addressing this significant issue through the lens of microfinancing, a viable solution to the identified problem. Focusing on a group of microfinancing units strategically located in North Cotabato, Philippines, this study follows the experiences of personnel within these units. The integration of digitization into their operational procedures aimed to elevate service efficiency, providing a contemporary solution to the challenges faced. The research methodology employed was qualitative, utilizing purposive sampling to gain in-depth insights. Observations, interviews, and informal conversations with key informants, including loan officers, branch managers, and an area monitor, were integral to the inquiry. Both physical and electronic documents played a crucial role in enriching the data collected. Specifically, the study aimed to identify both digitized and non-digitized operational procedures, elucidate the experiences of microfinancing employees concerning these procedures, observe the effects of digitization, and pinpoint immediate improvements resulting from digitization. Key conclusions emerged from the study. Notably, loan processing was identified as the sole procedure yet to undergo digitization. The digitized procedures, encompassing data management, loan disbursement, repayment tracking, and financial reporting, demonstrated notable advantages, characterized by increased speed and reduced errors. Importantly, personnel satisfaction with digitized operational procedures witnessed a positive upturn. Identified improvements that underscore these findings include digitizing loan processing, optimization of loan officers' client-handling capacity, and fortifying institutional data security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the accommodation industry: its strategic business practices that survive in times of crisis of Dipolog City Zamboanga del Norte. The qualitative case study methodology employed to obtain an in-depth investigation of the real-time experiences of the research participants. The study anchored on Fred R. David's (2021) five strategic business management practices: leadership, people, operations, marketing, and financial performance. The study revealed that accommodations industry practicing democratic forms of leadership, hiring of employees based on skills, providing motivations to their employees, operating their business by giving customer satisfaction, advertising their products and services, and ensuring that they attain financial stability. Despite the size of these enterprises, they still carried out sustainability practices that revolve around social, economic, and environmental practices that corporate social responsibility. The study also found out that accommodation industry challenges imposed by external and internal factors. In order to survive the challenges, Accommodation Industry employed business-level strategies to develop competitive advantage in the market. It therefore recommended that accommodation industry develop and strengthen their strategic practices taking into consideration their corporate social responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of company classification is traditionally performed using established standards, such as the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). However, these approaches heavily rely on laborious manual efforts by domain experts, resulting in slow, costly, and vendor-specific assignments. Therefore, we investigate recent natural language processing (NLP) advancements to automate the company classification process. In particular, we employ and evaluate various NLP-based models, including zero-shot learning, One-vs-Rest classification, multi-class classifiers, and ChatGPT-aided classification. We conduct a comprehensive comparison among these models to assess their effectiveness in the company classification task. The evaluation uses the Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) dataset, consisting of textual descriptions of publicly traded companies. Our findings reveal that the RoBERTa and One-vs-Rest classifiers surpass the other methods, achieving F1 scores of 0.81 and 0.80 on the WRDS dataset, respectively. These results demonstrate that deep learning algorithms offer the potential to automate, standardize, and continuously update classification systems in an efficient and cost-effective way. In addition, we introduce several improvements to the multi-class classification techniques: (1) in the zero-shot methodology, we TF-IDF to enhance sector representation, yielding improved accuracy in comparison to standard zero-shot classifiers; (2) next, we use ChatGPT for dataset generation, revealing potential in scenarios where datasets of company descriptions are lacking; and (3) we also employ K-Fold to reduce noise in the WRDS dataset, followed by conducting experiments to assess the impact of noise reduction on the company classification results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines profit-seeking investments that US financial industry actors have made in the name of racial justice since the summer of 2020. This trend, which builds on the proposition of "sustainable" finance that private profits and social benefits can coexist, is known in the industry as racial justice investing. To understand how the industry frames racial justice as an object of financial intervention, I draw from theories of social reproduction, racial capitalism, and social finance to analyze the historical and contemporary processes through which racial in justice is conceived in economic terms as a "gap" between the wealth of white and racialized households. Then, I analyze the political economy of these investments, focusing on how solutions to the wealth gap are oriented around extending credit and economic inclusion to racialized households and business owners. Ultimately I illustrate how the financial industry's investments in closing the racial wealth gap largely sidestep questions of power and, paradoxically, justice that animate many contemporary racial justice movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities face an uncertain funding environment and turbulent marketplace. Financial scenario modelling offers a potential mechanism to assist in navigating a way forward. Our previous paper on UK universities' practice found some variation in the sophistication of the approaches taken, but the overall impression was of a relatively simple approach, with spreadsheets generally viewed as having sufficient functionality to meet current strategic needs. This subsequent paper offers guidance on the construction of financial scenario models. It addresses the key variables that universities may wish to include, and it offers advice on how models might be formulated and evolve. The characteristics of differing approaches taken by universities in meeting their own scenario modelling requirements are explored by identifying three forms of model: basic, intermediate and advanced. The contribution of this paper is to enable universities, in the UK and beyond, to evaluate and improve their own financial scenario modelling practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]