Occupying a preeminent position as the globe’s most extensive economic corridor, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) serves as a crucial aquifer for 800 million individuals and harbors almost 50% of the country's paramount water-intensive contaminant producers. The ecological efficiency of these producers within the belt has increasingly come under scholarly scrutiny. Leveraging data from 2004-2012 encompassing 725 such manufacturers and employing the DEA-Malmquist index methodology, this research delineates the eco-efficiency trajectories of these water-centric pollutant producers, shedding light on their spatial-temporal dynamics across the expansive Yangtze Economic Belt. The results are as follows: (1) there’s a discernible enhancement in the eco-efficiency (ML) of these manufacturers situated within the YREB, predominantly propelled by technological change (TC) and shifts in technical efficiency change (TEC); (2) From a spatial perspective, notable disparities emerge in both technological change (TC) and technical efficiency change (TEC) among the belt’s upper, middle, and lower tiers. Intriguingly, the hierarchy for TC and TEC descends as follows: Lower > Upper > Middle; (3) Examining the spatial evolution nuances, 2004 witnessed eco-efficiency distributions ranking from Upper > Middle > Lower. Fast forward to 2012, a marked reconfiguration appears with a distribution pattern of Middle > Lower > Upper.

The Human Development Index (HDI) aims to present a more robust picture of a country’s development status than that suggested by national income per capita. The HDI aggregates dimension indices based on transformed measures for the core values of health, education, and income per capita. Assumptions are made regarding the upper and lower bounds used to re-scale each core value into its dimension index, as well as the functional form used to create the HDI. The treatment of income in the HDI’s construction suggests incompatibilities with its underlying capability theory, which stresses the importance of individuals’ abilities to make their own consumption and life choices. We examine the currently formulated HDI, as well as two influential proposed alternatives which generalize the aggregation functions of the pre-2010 HDI formulation and the current HDI, in light of recent empirical research into the relationship between well-being and income. We use underlying data for 2016, a representative year, to examine distributional changes as well as specific country rankings. We find that the income bounds used to calculate the income dimension index in the HDI should be changed. We also suggest that the three aggregation formulations, along with prominent descriptions of the assumptions and consequent implications of each approach, should be disseminated for policymakers and the public to consider.

This work investigates the strength and the pattern of linkages among the three markets of qualitatively differentiated milk (i.e., conventional, organic without heymilk, and organic with heymilk) in Austria using the flexible TVP-VAR frequency connectedness approach and information on prices from 2018 to 2023. The main empirical findings are: (a) Taken together, the markets have maintained a moderate degree of connectedness to each other.  (b) Price linkages have been frequency-dependent; much of the adjustments to incoming information have been completed within 3 months. (c) Connectedness has been asymmetric; the highest quality (organic with heymilk) has been a net transmitter of price shocks to organic without heymilk. (d) The intensity of connectedness has been time-varying; however, the internal structure of the market network (i.e., the net transmitters and receivers of price shocks) has remained fairly stable.

The current study examines the performance of 76 Japanese equity Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) over the period 1/1/2018-12/31/2022. Performance is estimated in several ways, that is, raw returns, alphas from single- and multi-factor regression models, and risk-adjusted returns. The market timing skills of ETF managers are examined too. The results reveal that, on average, the examined ETFs do not produce any material alpha. The results also indicate that the risk factors suggested by Fama and French (1993 & 2015) are more or less capable of explaining the performance of the Japanese ETFs. Finally, the findings show that 21% of ETF managers possess some sort of market timing skills. However, the managers fail to time the volatility of the stock market.

This paper analyses the influence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on organizational change in SMEs that have yet to be internationalized. A Likert scale questionnaire was applied to 78 SMEs in the change process. The significance level was sought in an ANOVA (analysis of variance) by linking variables concerning ICT, on the one hand, and the effects of ICT on organizational change, on the other hand, as well as specific issues that may promote or hinder the implementation of organizational change. The findings of this study show that both the frequency and the intensity of the ICT backlog were the most influential elements in change management. The main conclusion is that backwardness can be advantageous in specific economic contexts, mainly when the SMEs are oriented toward a part of the population with less experience in the use of technologies or the company is in a country where ICT consumption is not maximized because ICT has exceeded the needs and expectations of the population.

Understanding how academia and industry operate and relate to each other is core to improving the efficiency of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Reason why, this paper focuses on whether university prestige has a homogeneous effect on university entrepreneurship. Specifically, whether the relationship between academic prestige and entrepreneurship varies according to the nature of the firm, digital or not, or according to the size of the entrepreneurial partner. To answer this question, this paper uses a negative binomial regression model with panel data with respect to the number of intellectual property (IP) licences granted by the university, using mainly data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency. The results suggest that although university prestige affects the number of IP licences granted, its effect ceases to be significant when the nature of the licences is digital. Moreover, we cannot claim that the influence of prestige is greater when the licencee is a small company.