This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) deposits across 13 African nations from 2016 to 2022, using a seven-year dataset and Ordinary Least Squares estimator. Notably, it uncovers a significant positive link between the pandemic and SMEs deposits, indicating heightened reserves amidst economic uncertainty, potentially driven by risk mitigation or government support. Associations between gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, unemployment, foreign direct investment (FDI), exchange rates, and SMEs deposits were evident, showcasing higher GDP aligning with increased deposits, while inflation and unemployment linked to reduced ones. FDI showed a positive influence, and exchange rate fluctuations notably affected SMEs deposits, especially for those in international trade. These findings emphasize policy reconsideration for crisis strategies supporting SMEs reserves during uncertainty and interventions addressing inflation, unemployment, and exchange rate risks. Future research exploring regional nuances and global comparisons could further enrich policymaking for resilient SMEs amid evolving economic landscapes.

Many of Keynes´s ideas and concepts are proven correct in this paper. The demand side, mainly business investments, drives the economy. Business firms steer the business cycle via profit expectations and animal spirits. Injections to and withdrawals from the circular flow of income are multiplied throughout the economy in accordance with Keynes´s multiplier. A sudden and sharp rise in households´ saving rates has a detrimental effect on aggregate demand, in line with Keynes´s paradox of thrift. Finance, not saving in the S=I sense, is the necessary condition for business investments and economic growth to be realized. Keynes´s finance motive thus makes money endogenous, contradicting the textbook result that exogenous money steers aggregate demand, contradicting the mainstream loanable funds theory and putting into question the Keynesian theory of sticky prices as a condition for real growth. However, a crucial omission in Keynes´s productive writings is the lack of an accelerator tying income to investment. Some of his followers such as Paul Samuelson tried to remedy that by developing multiplier-accelerator models. The problem with them is that the accelerator lacks micro foundations, in specific disregarding business confidence. Linking macro accounting identities with empirical national accounts data for five major economies produces the finding that business firms explain more than all aggregate expenditure growth during a 25-year period. Thus, it is concluded that business confidence is the root of the business cycle. Making the accelerator account for business confidence casts new light on the perhaps most well-known Keynesian “truth”: active fiscal policy as a main force stabilizing the business cycle. With business confidence being the endogenous and ubiquitous variable driving the business cycle, it turns out that any exogenous factor has the possibility to affect it. Policy needs to be viewed as a competing factor to the factor(s) driving the cycle in the other, destabilizing direction. The more powerful those factors are (e.g., a deadly virus), the tougher it gets for policy to “win” the competition, turning business confidence around. This leads up to the paper´s main conclusion: the worse the economy, the stronger is the case for active fiscal policy, but the lesser is the chance for it to succeed.

This paper presents an operational framework for assessing the trajectories of production, energy, emissions, and capital accumulation to ensure the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The framework combines widely used methodologies (STIRPAT, system dynamics, and optimization) to simulate the pathways of variables until a target year. The CO-STIRPAT dynamic system allows us to identify the spillover pathways from carbon policy to economic growth based on output optimization principles; to conduct a more systematic analysis of the interconnections between the main drivers that determine carbon emissions; to develop a cost-effective climate policy mix that is a backbone for the right combination of carbon pricing, energy efficiency, and carbon intensity; and to assess NDC targets with respect to ambition gaps, implementation gaps, and feasibility.

Excessive volatility in financial markets can disrupt economic activity, affect investor and consumer confidence, and potentially lead to financial crises in an economy. Due to this backdrop, this study examined the link between asset class volatility and the output gap in Nigeria. The asset classes were categorized into stock, crude, gold, and bitcoin. The study adopted the GARCH and Bayesian VAR approach and found that all share index has an initial negative impulse with output gap while other asset classes have a positive impulse on output gap. The outcome of this study revealed to both policymakers and economists the potential risks and vulnerabilities of asset class volatility in the economy. Based on this result, recommendations are made amongst which is the strengthening of the Nigerian stock market to help with the inflationary pressures this is because the Nigerian stock market hurt the output gap also, the government should prioritize investing in crude, gold, and bitcoin to push the actual output to full capacity, which brings about employment.

In the behavioral domain, this study discloses the pattern between microblogging-opinionated information and yields on the investment. This phenomenon is particularly related to the political instability in the Pakistan’s economy through the multivariate techniques. Pre-political crisis, the pessimistic sentiments were priced in yields on the investment. In environments of political instability, the intensity of decline in yields was more responsive against an incline in the negative opinions. Meanwhile, the intensity of increase in returns was less responsive against an incline in the positive opinions. The findings were further supported by the Bayesian approach. Before the political instability takes place in the Pakistan’s economy, the occurrence of yields was noted in response to the bearish market period. Post-political instability, there was a higher posterior probability for occurrence of returns against the bearish market period. Conversely, a higher posterior likelihood was noted for occurrence of investment’s yields in response to the bullish market period, but this relevance was not completely probable. From the impulse response analysis, the response of returns was reported against the standard deviation shocks in the microblogging sentiment indicators. The analysis may have potential implications in terms of disclosing the investors’ behavior from a political perspective.

This article discusses the pressing need to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into education to facilitate customizable, individualized, and on-demand learning pathways. At the same time, while AI has the potential to expand the learner base and improve learning outcomes, the development of NACE Competencies and durable skills – communication, critical thinking, creativity, leadership, adaptability, and emotional intelligence - must be purposefully integrated in curriculum design now more than ever. Recent studies have shown that AI-driven learning pathways can achieve outcomes more quickly, but this comes at the cost of the development of durable skills. Therefore, traditional student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions must be prioritized. As such, this study proposes a balanced approach to curriculum design to ensure the best outcomes for learners, where durable skill development is prioritized alongside subject-specific skills and rote memorization. Additionally, the article highlights the need for a combination of Just in Time Training (JITT) approaches, facilitated by AI technology, to reach the implementation of durable skills. The article concludes by questioning how to develop human skills in an increasingly AI-driven education system and emphasizes the importance of curriculum design and traditional learning approaches in creating a cohesive learning experience that develops durable skills in students. It is necessary to recognize that AI-driven education cannot replace the development of human skills, and that traditional interactions play a crucial role in developing these skills.

This paper attempts to introduce an overlapping generations structure into Paul Krugman's "The world's smallest macroeconomic model" (Krugman (1999)) to examine the implications of fiscal policy, particularly fiscal deficits, in a framework suitable for policy analysis. In that paper, Krugman argued that under the price rigidity assumption, a shortage in the money supply leads to underemployment and recession, so increasing the money supply would eliminate underemployment and restore full employment. But how can the money supply be increased? I show that in order to restore full employment out of a recession, a fiscal deficit is needed to increase the money supply. I also show that in a growing economy, fiscal deficits are necessary to maintain full employment at constant prices or inflation. Fiscal deficits are not only effective in pulling the economy out of recession, they are even necessary for growth to continue without recession or inflation. The fiscal deficit in this paper represents the difference between government spending and government revenues. If this difference is positive, we say that the government is in deficit. Krugman's original model is a one-period static model. I intend to extend this model to a dynamic overlapping generations model.

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) may, in the coming decades, result in tens of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in additional economic activity. While much of the discussion surrounding AAM focuses on the technical aspects of the nascent industry, estimates of the potential economic impact vary significantly. Much less attention has been paid in the literature to potential externalities, positive and negative, and how these externalities may impact estimates of economic impact. We argue that much work remains to be done before policy advisors and decisions makers can formulate and implement strategies based on the projections of future economic impact of AAM.

This study investigates the impact of inventor CEOs on firm performance using a manually collected database of firms' inventors. Our findings reveal that, on average, firms with inventor CEOs experience a one- and two-percentage-point increase in ROA and ROE, respectively, compared to firms with noninventor CEOs. To address potential endogeneity issues, we employ turnover analysis, an instrumental variable approach, and propensity score matching. The estimation results suggest that inventor CEOs significantly enhance firm performance by fostering innovation and total factor productivity. This research contributes novel evidence on the relationship between inventor CEOs and firm performance.

The study investigates the impact of COVID-19 on African exchange rates, employing a panel dataset over the period 2016-2022 from 13 African economies and employing pooled OLS estimator. The findings reveal a noteworthy positive correlation between COVID-19 levels and exchange rates within the region. However, this association necessitates deeper exploration due to its multifaceted implications, including economic disruptions, government interventions, global market interconnections, regional stability perceptions, and investor behavior. Economic indicators, such as GDP, inflation rate, real interest rate, and unemployment rate, significantly influence exchange rates. While GDP positively impacts exchange rates through economic growth, investor confidence, and trade strength, controlled inflation fosters investor confidence and export competitiveness, positively affecting exchange rates. Moreover, a pronounced positive impact of the real interest rate indicates economic stability, attracting investment and contributing to currency appreciation. Conversely, high unemployment negatively affects exchange rates, signaling economic weaknesses and eroding investor confidence. These findings emphasize nuanced policy responses for managing health crisis-induced economic disruptions and suggest future research directions focusing on specific country-level analyses and multifaceted factors influencing currency valuations within African economies.

This study empirically examines the effect of corporate governance on the relation between CEO power and firm leverage. Results from OLS and industry fixed effects regressions show that CEO power is positively associated with firm leverage. However, this association is driven by the strength of corporate governance as powerful CEOs tend to choose higher levels of debt only when corporate governance is strong. When corporate governance is weak, CEO power does not seem to have any effect on firm leverage. Overall, results indicate that strong corporate governance mitigates the severity of manager-shareholder conflicts and induces powerful CEOs to choose higher leverage.

The relation between fund flows and returns in the Australian ETF industry is assessed in this study. Daily data from 43 equity ETFs over the period 2019-2023 are used. The main research objective is to accentuate whether past returns can predict future fund flows and in what way and vice versa. According to the results of the applied regression analysis, past flows and past returns can predict to some extent concurrent flows. This is also the case about concurrent returns. However, in both cases, the results are not unanimous and depend on the specification of the applied regression model.

This paper examines the efficiency, in its weak form, of the clean energy stock indices, Clean Coal Technologies, Clean Energy Fuels, and Wilderhill, as well as the cryptocurrencies classified as "dirty", due to their excessive energy consumption, such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETH Classic), and Litecoin (LTC), from January 2020 to May 30, 2023. In order to meet the research objectives, the aim is to answer the following research question, namely whether: i) the events of 2020 and 2022 accentuated the persistence in the clean energy and dirty energy indices? The results show that clean energy indices such as digital currencies classified as "dirty" show autocorrelation in their returns; the prices are not independent and identically distributed (i.i.d). In conclusion, arbitrage strategies can be used to obtain abnormal returns, but caution is needed as prices can rise above their real market value and reduce trading profitability. This study contributes to the knowledge base on sustainable finance by teaching investors how to use forecasting strategies on the future values of their investments.

As the COVID-19 epidemic swept the world in early 2020, it is worth watching how it affects the total factor productivity of enterprises. Based on the theory of information asymmetry and the data of A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2021, this paper conducts an empirical study on the relationship between COVID-19 and the total factor productivity of enterprises. The results show that the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic can significantly reduce the total factor productivity of enterprises, and the conclusion is still true after a series of robustness tests. Taking the financing constraint as an intervening variable, it clearly reveals a transmission mechanism, that is to say, the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic exacerbates the financing constraint of the enterprise, thus it makes the total factor productivity of the enterprise reduce. It is further found that the above effects are more obvious for small and medium-sized enterprises and non-intelligent enterprises. Based on this, the government should implement some active economic development policies to create a free, relaxed and orderly market environment for enterprise financing. At the same time, enterprises should not only pay attention to digital and intelligent development, and transform into technology-intensive enterprises, but also strengthen the awareness of worry. Enterprises should store "more grain" for preparing for the cold winter.

The answer to how to stop economic growth must be political rather than economic. Economic growth made by men has an impetus which can only be stopped by a deliberate choice. It takes national and international decisions to stop it. In order to organize a moratorium on economic growth (which eventually must lead to a stop on growth) I suggest to create blocks of nations in the world. The European Union can function as a model for such a block. The E.U. is on its way of becoming a supra-national government which was created to ensure a level playing field for its members. Now it is meant to create economic growth for its members, in the future its administration should be used to stop it. Blocks should agree on the targets to reach a durable economy. Globally or between certain more advanced blocks a date should be set to stop economic growth after that date. Each block should implement the goals to reach a durable economy and prevent products reaching its market that violate the goals of durability. Blocks in developing countries cannot be expected to stop economic growth. They need that growth for two reasons. Eventually they must reach the level of existence in the more advanced block and secondly they must have the time to improve the standard for durability of their products. They need the aid of the developed countries to reach a higher but also more durable level of production, but this aid comes with a quid pro quo, In the meantime they must do their utmost to stop wars in their regions and conduct a responsible population-policy to reduce the growth of their population and let it reduce on the long term.

Gold has been traditionally well recognized as a safe heaven for financial markets. Lately, Bitcoin has been gradually considered as a popular alternative. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, it has become even more necessary and critical to examine the diversification capability of them to hedge financial risks associated with an unexpected crisis comparable to the pandemic. This paper hence employs the wavelet analysis, complemented by the multivariate DCC-GARCH approach, to measure the coherence of the gold and Bitcoin prices with six representative stock market indices, three for developed economies and three for emerging economies, all of which are heavily affected by the pandemic. To have a more balanced and comprehensive analysis, two-year data are used, spanning from 12th April 2019 to 15th April 2021, which covers approximately one year before and one year after the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that the returns of both gold and Bitcoin are generally not strongly correlated with the market returns of all six indices, particularly for short-term investment horizons. That is, investors in all six indices can benefit through gold, as well as Bitcoin, in terms of hedging. Meanwhile, compared with Bitcoin, gold shows to be less correlated with the indices, particularly for long-term investment horizons. The findings hence suggest that gold and Bitcoin offer diversification benefits to investors in the market indices during a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for short-term investment horizons. The study also reminds policymakers thinking beyond the pandemic about the future of the earth, including air pollution and health, for sustainable development of the whole world.

This study investigates the likelihood of time to bank failures in the US between 2001 and April 2023, based on data collected from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's report on "Bank Failures in Brief - Summary 2001 through 2023". The dataset includes 564 instances of bank failures and several variables that may be related to the likelihood of such events, such as asset amount, deposit amount, ADR, deposit level, asset level, inflation rate, short-term interest rates, bank reserves, and GDP growth rate. We explore the efficacy of machine learning survival models in predicting bank failures and compare the performance of different models. Our findings shed light on the factors that may influence the probability of bank failures with a time perspective and provide insights for improving risk management practices in the banking industry.

When human civilization is thriving to the rapid economic and social development, the deteriorating ecological environment has also pressured the society to put environmental protection issues on the agenda future development. Therefore, green innovation is not merely a requirement for a corporate’s long-term development but the basics of sustainable development of human society. As an objective indicator to measure a company's commitment to social responsibility, corporate environmental responsibility has an extremely important impact on a corporate's business philosophy and innovation strategy. However, the existing literature rarely studies between these two variables. This paper collects the data of listed companies from 2010 to 2019 and empirically tests the impact of corporate environmental responsibility on corporate green innovation. The study finds that corporate environmental responsibility can promote green innovation by reducing financing constraints, improving corporate governance and increasing government subsidies and R&D investment, and the result is still significant under a series of robustness checks. The placebo test suggests that the Jiangsu enterprise responsibility construction pilot has facilitated the development of enterprises' green innovation to a great extent. The conclusions enrich existing literature on corporate environmental responsibility and corporate green innovation, providing implications for government policy orientation, social atmosphere guidance and corporate strategic decision-making process.

By introducing time to build, which creates a time-lag between government investment and the accumulation of productive capital, into an analysis of fiscal stimulus to the economy with financial frictions, we find that the effectiveness of fiscal policy is dampened. While the weakening effects of time to build become significantly weaker alongside with a higher fraction of government bonds allocated to leverage-constrained banks, which can be explained by a high correlation between time to build and financial frictions in both worsening balance sheet conditions of banks. Furthermore, the stimulus effects of public investment become stronger associated with shorter time-to-build period.

The extensive, interdisciplinary nature of construction supply chains make them prone to inefficiencies at organisational interfaces. Inefficiencies are accentuated by the project-centric delivery paradigm, and complex logistics systems between multiple stakeholders. They manifest as a multitude of concurrent activities, processes, and systems both on and off-site. Transportation is the largest component of the logistics domain. Transport operations are inherently fragmented, intrinsic to every business, while vehicle ownership and deployment is typically externalised. Differentiated waste removal and materials delivery further disintegrate the already fragmented construction supply chain. Inefficiencies from the insularity of the planning process across segmental boundaries aggregate incrementally, with impacts visible at the macro level. Re-configuration of activities, resources and actors are acknowledged strategies for optimising logistics and transportation function. This paper investigates the impact of three integration strategies on a manufactured construction products supply chain efficiency. These strategies include vertical integration of distribution, integrated planning for transport operations, and integration of reverse logistics into operations. Sustainability impacts are evaluated according to domestically determined monetary parameters in order to benchmark performance at the business and national scale.