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Fiscal and monetary policies are considered a main tool for any economy to achieve the desirable goals or to counter-cycle any problem facing the economy and one of the biggest deals facing any society is climate change. Thus, in this paper we are studying the effect of these policies on climate change by using panel data models across various countries according to income levels in the period from 1990 to 2020. The study explores how economic policies influence carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions to provide valuable insights for policymakers and researchers to integrate environmental considerations into economic decision-making processes. The findings indicate that economic policies significantly influence CO₂ emissions in both middle and high-income countries, except for the tax revenue in high-income countries. Findings reveal significant relationships between fiscal and monetary outcomes, highlighting the role of economic policies in addressing climate change.

The extended Poisson-Tweedie (EPT) regression model is one of the count data regression models. It's a more flexible model in count data; since EPT model can be used in two situations: over-dispersion or under-dispersion but under assumption that this model uses second moment to be more flexible model. However, when the predictor (explanatory) variables of the EPT model are highly correlated, this means that there is the multicollinearity problem in the model. It causes inflation of the standard error of the maximum likelihood estimates and makes some of the significant variables insignificant. To handle and reduce the impact of the multicollinearity problem in the EPT model, we developed ridge estimators for this model. A theoretical comparison between the maximum likelihood and the proposed ridge estimators is done. The efficiency of the estimators is evaluated using the mean squared error (MSE). The simulation study and real-life application are used to evaluate the proposed estimators. We examined the performance of seven ridge estimators of the biasing parameter (k) to determine the most appropriate ridge estimator for this model. The simulation and application results showed that the proposed ridge estimator is superior to the maximum likelihood estimator, as it has the smallest MSE.

China’s rapid industrialization and urbanization have led to significant nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, contributing to severe atmospheric pollution. Understanding the driving factors behind these emissions is crucial for effective pollution control and environmental management. Therefore, this study is an attempt to provide insights into the influence of socioeconomic factors and explore spatial dependencies of NOx emissions in China in 2022 employing spatial regression models (SRMs). Among the SRMs considered, the spatial Durbin model (SDM) is identified as the most suitable for analyzing regional NOx emissions. The study highlights the importance of controlling electricity consumption and vehicle emissions for addressing air pollution in Chinese regions. Specifically, a one billion kilowatt-hour increase in electricity consumption leads to approximately 549.6 tons of NOx emissions, and an increase of 1000 vehicles in a region results in an average increase of 7113.4 tons of NOx emissions in the same region. Furthermore, per capita consumption expenditure (PCEXP) and research and development (R&D) expenditure exhibit negative direct and spillover impacts. Contrary to previous studies, this research finds that changes in urban population density do not have a significant direct or indirect effect on NOx emissions within the studied areas. Moreover, we conducted additional investigations to assess the effectiveness of government action plans in reducing NOx emissions. Specifically, we evaluated the impact of Phases 1 and 2 of the Clean Air Action Plan, launched in 2013 and 2018, respectively, on the socioeconomic drivers of NOx emissions. Therefore, the data were modeled for the years 2013 and 2017 and compared to the results obtained for 2022. The findings indicate that over the entire period (2013–2022), the emission controls mandated by the action plan resulted in significant reductions in the impact of many of the studied NOx drivers. In conclusion, based on the results, this study presents recommendations to mitigate NOx emissions.

COVID-19 has caused a global health crisis and severe economic and social consequences. Unprecedented economic disruption and high unemployment are the pronounced impacts of the pandemic. The current study is primarily concerned with the effects of COVID-19-induced labour market outcomes on workers' subjective wellbeing in four MENA countries using the Combined COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Survey. The study documented that COVID-19-induced labour market changes negatively affected workers' subjective wellbeing after controlling for work characteristics, risks, social distancing, and socio-demographic variables. Job loss, income reduction, and wage delay were the most significant labour changes that deteriorated workers' subjective wellbeing. Our findings underscore the need for policy responses that reduce workers' vulnerability and sustain their livelihoods. Mental health services and income support policies are important tools to enhance subjective wellbeing of economically affected workers.

Numerous research studies have highlighted the exponential growth of malware attacks worldwide, posing a significant threat to society. Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly merciless and show no signs of pity towards individuals or organizations. It is evident that cyber criminals will stop at nothing to gain unauthorized access to confidential information. To effectively combat malware attacks, strict cyber laws are necessary, and the use of malware is punishable in many countries. However, the literature has not addressed whether these penalties create deterrence or not. This research article has addressed this gap. In this study, the effectiveness of criminal laws related to malware-related crimes in various jurisdictions was analyzed using the doctrinal research methodology. The cyber laws of the USA, UK, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and China were examined to determine whether the penalties imposed for these crimes are appropriate given the severity of the harm caused. The study concludes that malware penalties should take into account the creation or use of malicious code, targeting individuals or organizations, and the magnitude of consequences, regardless of whether mens rea is present or not.

Memory Denial of Service (M-DoS) attacks refer to a class of cyber-attacks that aim to exhaust the memory resources of a system, rendering it unavailable to legitimate users. This type of attack is particularly dangerous in cloud computing environments, where multiple users share the same resources. Detection and mitigation of M-DoS attacks in real-time is a challenging task, as they often involve a large number of low-rate requests, making it difficult to distinguish them from legitimate traffic. Several real-time detection schemes have been proposed to identify and mitigate M-DoS attacks in cloud computing environments. These schemes can be broadly classified into two categories: signature-based and anomaly-based detection. Signature-based detection methods rely on the identification of specific patterns or characteristics of known M-DoS attack techniques, while anomaly-based detection methods identify abnormal behaviour that deviates from the normal pattern of usage. This study presents a hybrid model for real-time detection of cloud and MDOS attacks using SVM-KNN-LR. The dataset used in this study was collected from various sources and pre-processed to extract relevant features for attack detection. A feature selection process was also applied to identify the most important features for attack detection. The hybrid model achieved an accuracy of 96%, outperforming other individual models such as SVM, KNN, LR, Naive Bayes, Decision Trees, Extra Trees, Bagging Trees, and Random Forests. Confusion matrices were also used to evaluate the performance of each model. In the discussion section, we examined the performance of the hybrid model in detecting MDOS attacks and found that it had a high precision score of 0.97. However, the recall score was lower at 0.87, indicating that the model was not able to detect all instances of MDOS attacks.

BackgroundWith the widespread outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, many countries, including Egypt, have tried to restrict the virus by applying social distancing and precautionary measures. Understanding the impact of COVID-19-induced risks and social distancing measures on individuals' mental health will help mitigate the negative effects of crises by developing appropriate mental health services. This study aimed to investigate the most contributing factors that affected individuals' mental health and how individuals' mental health has changed over the lockdown period in Egypt in 2021.MethodsThe study draws on a nationally representative sample from the combined COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Survey conducted by the Economic Research Forum. The data were collected in Egypt by phone over two waves in February 2021 and June 2021. The total number of respondents is 4,007 individuals. The target population is mobile phone owners aged 18–64 years. The 5-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) is used to assess the individuals' mental health over the past 2 weeks during the pandemic. Penalized models (ridge and LASSO regressions) are used to identify the key drivers of mental health status during the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsThe mean value of mental health (MH) scores is 10.06 (95% CI: 9.90–10.23). The average MH score for men was significantly higher than for women by 0.87. Rural residents also had significantly higher MH scores than their urban counterparts (10.25 vs. 9.85). Middle-aged adults, the unemployed, and respondents in low-income households experienced the lowest MH scores (9.83, 9.29, and 9.23, respectively). Individuals' mental health has deteriorated due to the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regression analysis demonstrated that experiencing food insecurity and a decrease in household income were independent influencing factors for individuals' mental health (p < 0.001). Furthermore, anxiety about economic status and worrying about contracting the virus had greater negative impacts on mental health scores (p < 0.001). In addition, women, middle-aged adults, urban residents, and those belonging to low-income households were at increased risk of poor mental health (p < 0.05).ConclusionThe findings reveal the importance of providing mental health services to support these vulnerable groups during crises and activating social protection policies to protect their food security, incomes, and livelihoods. A gendered policy response to the pandemic is also required to address the mental pressures incurred by women.

BackgroundThis research endeavors to examine the potential effects of human and societal interactions on individuals’ post-traumatic growth in the aftermath of the Corona outbreak. To achieve the aforementioned objective, the current research investigates the correlations between post-traumatic growth and group identity, while also examining the potential mediating function of social–emotional competence.MethodsA cross-sectional design included a representative sample of 2,637 high school students located in the capital territory of Pakistan using convenience sampling method. To explore the associations, correlation and mediation analyzes utilizing the group identification scale, the social–emotional competence scale, and the post-traumatic growth scale was performed with SPSS PROCESS 4 macro and AMOS.ResultsThe findings demonstrated that group identification emerged as a substantial predictor substantially associated with post-traumatic growth. Moreover, the relationship linking group identification and post-traumatic growth was found to be partially moderated by social–emotional competence.ConclusionThe phenomenon of group identification can exert influence on post-traumatic growth through both direct and mediating pathways, with the latter being essentially mediated by social–emotional competence. The aforementioned outcomes possess significant academic and practical implications concerning the promotion of post-traumatic growth and the improvement of psychological well-being after the Corona outbreak.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered employment and income distribution, impacting women and men differently. This study investigates the negative effects of COVID-19 on the labour market, focusing on the gender gap in five countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The study indicates whether women are more susceptible to losing their jobs, either temporarily or permanently, switching their primary occupation, and experiencing decreased working hours and income compared to men during the COVID-19 outbreak. The study utilizes a multivariate Probit model to estimate the relationship between gender and adverse labour outcomes controlling for correlations among outcomes. Data are obtained from the Combined COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Survey, covering Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, and Sudan. The findings of this study offer empirical evidence of the gender gap in labour market outcomes during the pandemic. Women are more likely than men to experience negative work outcomes, such as permanent job loss and change in their main job. The increased childcare and housework responsibilities have significantly impacted women's labour market outcomes during the pandemic. However, the availability of telework has reduced the likelihood of job loss among women. The study's results contribute to a better understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on gender inequality in understudied MENA countries. Mitigation policies should focus on supporting vulnerable women who have experienced disproportionate negative effects of COVID-19.

This study introduces a new two-parameter Liu estimator (PMTPLE) for addressing the multicollinearity problem in the Poisson regression model (PRM). The estimation of the PRM is traditionally accomplished through the Poisson maximum likelihood estimator (PMLE). However, when the explanatory variables are correlated, thus leading to multicollinearity, the variance or standard error of the PMLE is inflated. To address this issue, several alternative estimators have been introduced, including the Poisson ridge regression estimator (PRRE), Liu estimator (PLE), and adjusted Liu estimator (PALE), each of them relying on a single shrinkage parameter. The PMTPLE uses two shrinkage parameters, which enhances its adaptability and robustness in the presence of multicollinearity between explanatory variables. To assess the performance of the PMTPLE compared to the four existing estimators (the PMLE, PRRE, PLE, and PALE), a simulation study is conducted that encompasses various scenarios and two empirical applications. The evaluation of the performance is based on the mean square error (MSE) criterion. The theoretical comparison, simulation results, and findings of the two applications consistently demonstrate the superiority of the PMTPLE over the other estimators, establishing it as a robust solution for count data analysis under multicollinearity conditions.

The Conway–Maxwell Poisson (COMP) regression model is one of the count data models to account for over– and under–dispersion. In regression analysis, when the explanatory variables are correlated, when there is multicollinearity problem, this inflates the standard error of the maximum likelihood estimates. The Kibria–Lukman estimator was provided to handle the effect of multicollinearity in the linear regression model. Therefore, we proposed to extend this estimator to the COMP model to overcome this problem in the COMP model. The proposed estimator mitigates the adverse effect of multicollinearity on the standard error of the estimates. We used the mean squared error (MSE) as the performance assessment criterion to assess the performance of the proposed estimator and others. Also, we compared the proposed estimator theoretically with other estimators (the ridge and Liu estimators). We employed a simulation study and two life applications to study the performance of the proposed estimator. The simulation study and applications results showed the superiority of the proposed estimator because the MSE of the proposed estimator is smaller than the other estimators.

Recently, research papers have shown a strong interest in modeling count data. The over-dispersion or under-dispersion are frequently seen in the count data. The count data modeling with a broad range of dispersion has been successfully accomplished using the Conway-Maxwell-Poisson regression (COMP) model. The multicollinearity issue is known to have a detrimental impact on the maximum likelihood estimator's variance. To solve this issue, biased estimators as a ridge estimator have repeatedly shown to be an appealing way to minimize the effects of multicollinearity. In this paper, we suggested the jackknife ridge estimator (JCOMPRE) and the modified version of the jackknife ridge estimator (MJCOMPRE) for the COMP model. The proposed estimators (JCOMPRE and MJCOMPRE) are reducing the effects of the multicollinearity and the biasedness of the ridge estimator at the same time. According to the findings of the Monte Carlo simulation study and real-life applications, the proposed estimators have a minimum bias and a minimum mean squared error. This means that the proposed estimators are more efficient than the maximal likelihood estimator and the ridge estimator.

The probit regression model (PRORM) aims to model a binary response with one or more explanatory variables. The parameter of the PRORM is estimated using an estimation method called the maximum likelihood (ML), like a logistic model. When multicollinearity exists, ML performance suffers. In this case, we propose two estimators (the probit modified ridge and probit Dawoud−Kibria estimators) for the PRORM. To assess the proposed estimators' superiority, we have some theoretical comparisons of the proposed probit Dawoud−Kibria estimator with the ML, probit ridge, probit Liu, and probit modified ridge estimators via the mean squared error. A simulation study is offered with several criteria for examining the effectiveness of the suggested estimators' efficiency. In addition, a real-life application is applied to confirm the proposed estimators’ efficiency. The results of the simulation and application indicated that the proposed estimators outperformed ML and probit ridge estimators, especially when there was a strong correlation between the explanatory variables.

The Conway–Maxwell–Poisson (COMP) model is defined as a flexible count regression model used for over- and under-dispersion cases. In regression analysis, when the explanatory variables are highly correlated, this means that there is a multicollinearity problem in the model. This problem increases the standard error of maximum likelihood estimates. To manage the multicollinearity effects in the COMP model, we proposed a new modified Liu estimator based on two shrinkage parameters (k, d). To assess the performance of the proposed estimator, the mean squared error (MSE) criterion is used. The theoretical comparison of the proposed estimator with the ridge, Liu, and modified one-parameter Liu estimators is made. The Monte Carlo simulation and real data application are employed to examine the efficiency of the proposed estimator and to compare it with the ridge, Liu, and modified one-parameter Liu estimators. The results showed the superiority of the proposed estimator as it has the smallest MSE value.

The multicollinearity problem occurrence of the explanatory variables affects the least-squares (LS) estimator seriously in the regression models. The multicollinearity adverse effects on the LS estimation are also investigated by lots of authors. Also, many biased estimators with one-parameter or two-parameters are developed to overcome this problem. But, the estimators with two-parameter have advantages over that with one-parameter where they have two biasing parameters and at least one of them has the property of handling this problem impact. Therefore, we propose a new modified Liu (MLIU) estimator to handle the multicollinearity of the regression model. Also, we give the necessary and sufficient conditions for the outperforming of the proposed MLIU estimator over the LS, ridge, Liu, Kibria-Lukman (KL), and modified ridge type (MRT) estimators by the known mean squares error criterion. The proposed MLIU estimator biasing parameters are derived by minimizing the known scalar mean square error. Simulations and real data are used to give a good view of the performance of the proposed MLIU estimator. We conclude that the proposed MLIU estimator has the highest performance under almost scenarios using different factors, especially in the cases of severe and high degrees of multicollinearity.

Abstract Background Out-of-pocket (OOP) health expenditure is a pressing issue in Egypt and far exceeds half of Egypt’s total health spending, threatening the economic viability, and long-term sustainability of Egyptian households. Targeting households at risk of catastrophic health payments based on their characteristics is an obvious pathway to mitigate the impoverishing impacts of OOP health payments on livelihoods. This study was conducted to identify the risk factors of incurring catastrophic health payments hoping to formulate appropriate policies to protect households against financial catastrophes. Methods Using data derived from the Egyptian Household Income, Expenditure, and Consumption Survey (HIECS), a multiplicative heteroskedastic probit model is applied to account for heteroskedasticity and avoid biased and inconsistent estimates. Results Accounting for heteroskedasticity induces notable differences in marginal effects and demonstrates that the impact of some core variables is underestimated and insignificant and in the opposite direction in the homoscedastic probit model. Moreover, our results demonstrate the principal factors besides health status and socioeconomic characteristics responsible for incurring catastrophic health expenditure, such as the use of health services provided by the private sector, which has a dramatic effect on encountering catastrophic health payments. Conclusions The marked differences between estimates of probit and heteroskedastic probit models emphasize the importance of investigating homoscedasticity assumption to avoid policies based on incorrect evidence. Many policies can be built upon our findings, such as enhancing the role of social health insurances in rural areas, expanding health coverage for poor households and chronically ill household heads, and providing adequate financial coverage for households with a high proportion of elderly, sick members, and females. Also, there is an urgent need to limit OOP health payments absorbed by private sector to achieve an acceptable level of fair financing.

As criminal activity increasingly relies on digital devices, the field of digital forensics plays a vital role in identifying and investigating criminals. In this paper, we addressed the problem of anomaly detection in digital forensics data. Our objective was to propose an effective approach for identifying suspicious patterns and activities that could indicate criminal behavior. To achieve this, we introduce a novel method called the Novel Support Vector Neural Network (NSVNN). We evaluated the performance of the NSVNN by conducting experiments on a real-world dataset of digital forensics data. The dataset consisted of various features related to network activity, system logs, and file metadata. Through our experiments, we compared the NSVNN with several existing anomaly detection algorithms, including Support Vector Machines (SVM) and neural networks. We measured and analyzed the performance of each algorithm in terms of the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Furthermore, we provide insights into the specific features that contribute significantly to the detection of anomalies. Our results demonstrated that the NSVNN method outperformed the existing algorithms in terms of anomaly detection accuracy. We also highlight the interpretability of the NSVNN model by analyzing the feature importance and providing insights into the decision-making process. Overall, our research contributes to the field of digital forensics by proposing a novel approach, the NSVNN, for anomaly detection. We emphasize the importance of both performance evaluation and model interpretability in this context, providing practical insights for identifying criminal behavior in digital forensics investigations.

In the censored regression model, the Tobit maximum likelihood estimator is unstable and inefficient in the occurrence of the multicollinearity problem. To reduce this problem's effects, the Tobit ridge and the Tobit Liu estimators are proposed. Therefore, this study proposes a new kind of the Tobit estimation called the Tobit new ridge-type (TNRT) estimator. Also, the TNRT estimator was theoretically compared with the Tobit maximum likelihood, the Tobit ridge, and the Tobit Liu estimators via the mean squared error criterion. Moreover, we performed a Monte Carlo simulation to study the performance of the TNRT estimator compared with the previously defined estimators. Also, we used the Mroz dataset to confirm the theoretical and the simulation study results.

In the linear regression model, the multicollinearity effects on the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator performance make it inefficient. To solve this, several estimators are given. The Kibria-Lukman (KL) estimator is a recent estimator that has been proposed to solve the multicollinearity problem. In this paper, a generalized version of the KL estimator is proposed, along with the optimal biasing parameter of our proposed estimator derived by minimizing the scalar mean squared error. Theoretically, the performance of the proposed estimator is compared with the OLS, the generalized ridge, the generalized Liu, and the KL estimators by the matrix mean squared error. Furthermore, a simulation study and the numerical example were performed for comparing the performance of the proposed estimator with the OLS and the KL estimators. The results indicate that the proposed estimator is better than other estimators, especially in cases where the standard deviation of the errors was large and when the correlation between the explanatory variables is very high.

The linear regression model becomes unsuitable when the response variable is expressed as percentages, proportions, and rates. The beta regression (BR) model is more appropriate for the variable of this form. The BR model uses the conventional maximum likelihood estimator (BML), and this estimator may not be efficient when the regressors are linearly dependent. The beta ridge estimator was suggested as an alternative to BML in the literature. In this study, we developed the Dawoud–Kibria estimator to handle multicollinearity in the BR model. The properties of the new estimator are derived. We compared the performance of the estimator with the existing estimators theoretically using the mean squared error criterion. A Monte Carlo simulation and a real-life application were carried out to show the benefits of the proposed estimator. The theoretical comparison, simulation, and real-life application results revealed the superiority of the proposed estimator.

The beta regression is a widely known statistical model when the response (or the dependent) variable has the form of fractions or percentages. In most of the situations in beta regression, the explanatory variables are related to each other which is commonly known as the multicollinearity problem. It is well-known that the multicollinearity problem affects severely the variance of maximum likelihood (ML) estimates. In this article, we developed a new biased estimator (called a two-parameter estimator) for the beta regression model to handle this problem and decrease the variance of the estimation. The properties of the proposed estimator are derived. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed estimator is compared with the ML estimator and other common biased (ridge, Liu, and Liu-type) estimators depending on the mean squared error criterion by making a Monte Carlo simulation study and through two real data applications. The results of the simulation and applications indicated that the proposed estimator outperformed ML, ridge, Liu, and Liu-type estimators.

The Poisson regression model is popularly used to model count data. However, the model suffers drawbacks when there is overdispersion—when the mean of the Poisson distribution is not the same as the variance. In this situation, the Bell regression model fits well to the data. Also, there is a high tendency of excess zeros in the count data. In this case, the zero-inflated Bell regression model is an alternative to the Bell regression model. The parameters of the zero-inflated Bell regression model are mostly estimated using the method of maximum likelihood. Linear dependency is a threat in a real-life application when modeling the relationship between the response variable and two or more explanatory variables in a generalized linear model such as the zero-inflated Bell regression model. It reduced the efficiency of the maximum likelihood estimator. Therefore, we developed the ridge and Liu estimators for the zero-inflated Bell regression model to deal with this issue. The simulation and application results support the dominance of the proposed methods over the conventional maximum likelihood estimator.

The Poisson maximum likelihood (PML) is used to estimate the coefficients of the Poisson regression model (PRM). Since the resulting estimators are sensitive to outliers, different studies have provided robust Poisson regression estimators to alleviate this problem. Additionally, the PML estimator is sensitive to multicollinearity. Therefore, several biased Poisson estimators have been provided to cope with this problem, such as the Poisson ridge estimator, Poisson Liu estimator, Poisson Kibria–Lukman estimator, and Poisson modified Kibria–Lukman estimator. Despite different Poisson biased regression estimators being proposed, there has been no analysis of the robust version of these estimators to deal with the two above-mentioned problems simultaneously, except for the robust Poisson ridge regression estimator, which we have extended by proposing three new robust Poisson one-parameter regression estimators, namely, the robust Poisson Liu (RPL), the robust Poisson Kibria–Lukman (RPKL), and the robust Poisson modified Kibria–Lukman (RPMKL). Theoretical comparisons and Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to show the proposed performance compared with the other estimators. The simulation results indicated that the proposed RPL, RPKL, and RPMKL estimators outperformed the other estimators in different scenarios, in cases where both problems existed. Finally, we analyzed two real datasets to confirm the results.