Green credit policy (GCP) relies on financial means to promote environmental governance. Whether it can achieve the goals of economic development and environmental protection, especially in the context of different institutional supplies, remains to be scientifically tested. Based on the implementation of China’s Green Credit Guidelines in 2012, this study uses panel data of Chinese companies from 2009 to 2019 to explore the influence of GCP on green technology innovation and the role of institutional supply in it. The results show that GCP is instrumental in promoting green innovation in heavily polluting enterprises, and the promotion effect is heterogeneous based on green patent types, firms’ ownership, and regional financial development levels. Further analysis finds that the supply of environmental protection systems by local governments can strengthen the green innovation effect of GCP. However, the institutional supply of innovation has not yet released a promotional effect. This paper finds that green credit can be used as an environmental governance tool and provides inspiration for local governments to issue environmental protection policies scientifically.

Overall development of a country largely depends on the economic policy instruments particularly fiscal and monetary policy to streamline the development and continue the developmental progress. These two policies have significant effects on long-term growth. It is noticed that policy adoption and reforms in both fiscal and monetary policies undertaken by Southeast Asian nations during the 1960s through 1990s have contributed to their advancement. This paper discusses the strategies for flourishing as emerging economies. Examples from Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are highlighted in this study. It is found that prudent fiscal and monetary policy, effective discounting and interest rate; modernized tax system and most importantly policy regime are the contributing factors of these emerging economies. However, in spite of high-income growth and development because of supportive these policy initiatives, administrative and politico-economic constraints challenged the path of economies. Long-term development strategies are suggested to sustain the growth and continue the development pace.

Under the background of digital economy, global tax governance has become one of the important topics in today's world development and change. In recent years, new challenges, such as tax base erosion and profit transfer, and the imbalance of cross-border tax source division, have become prominent, forcing the reform of international tax rules and the reshaping of international tax order. Based on this, the article first deeply digs into the scale and cross-border characteristics of the spatial-temporal aggregation of the digital economy, and comprehensively evaluates its impact on the global tax governance pattern. After that, the article combs out the realistic picture and challenges of the current digital tax reform from the aspects of theoretical basis, basic principles and governance mechanism. Finally, based on China's basic national conditions, the article puts forward some institutional ideas and policy suggestions, with a view to improving China's participation, voice and influence in global tax governance, and also enabling governments, enterprises and residents of various countries to enjoy the fruits of world economic development fairly and promote the construction of Community of Shared Future for Mankind.

With the continuous advancement of technological revolution and industrial transformation, digital finance supported by big data and artificial intelligence has become an important engine for promoting carbon neutrality. We measured the industrial structure transformation index (ISU) of 30 provinces in China, and discussed the spatial spillover effect and transmission mechanism between digital finance and ISU using the spatial Durbin model. The research results demonstrate that the digital finance development can significantly improve the local ISU. Interestingly, the impact of digital finance on the ISU of adjacent areas has a significantly negative spatial spillover effect, which still exists under the different spatial weight matrix. Digital finance can improve ISU by improving green technology innovation, upgrading industrial structure, and alleviating capital allocation. We also found that the higher degree of marketization and environmental regulation can increase the positive influences of digital finance on ISU. This research proves the effectiveness of the digital finance in improving energy efficiency, and it encourages policymakers around the world to rely on digital finance to promote ecological governance and achieve high-quality economic development.

The Oswald hypothesis is that home ownership reduces mobility and through that channel results in poorer labor market outcomes. There has been only limited previous evidence on the Australian case. Here we use data from the first four Australian censuses of the twenty-first century, aggregated at the smallest geographical areas for which statistics are released. We propose testing the Oswald hypothesis by estimating the effect of home ownership on the full-time employment rate. Modelling the unemployment rate, as is often done in testing the hypothesis, produces implausible results with respect to the control variables, most likely due to the limitations of the official definition of unemployment. We find that, in modelling the full-time employment rate, the control variables for educational and demographic factors have the theoretically plausible effects, while variables capturing rates for both outright home ownership and with mortgage home ownership are positively related to full-time employment rates, with the effect of the former stronger than the latter. Our findings strongly contradict the Oswald hypothesis.

Liquidity can be a real phenomenon for execution of the financial holding. Its risk falls in debate to impose a conditional cost on the counterparty. The time-varying liquidity is often linked to the expected fundamental value of an investment. In this work, the microblogging-based informed transaction is examined as a determinant of the liquidity-facilitating cost. Most importantly, this study investigates the economic blockade era and post-pandemic uncertainty. The sentiment indicators were found to be determinants of liquidity. These findings were consistent in the post-pandemic period. However, the investor pessimistic sentiment was a priced risk factor in liquidity during the economic blockade period. Based on the Bayesian theorem, a relativeness was reported between sentiment indicators and the liquidity-facilitating cost. The same findings were depicted in environments of the pandemic era. Nevertheless, the posterior probability indicated an occurrence of the liquidity-associated cost in response to the pessimistic sentiments during the economic blockade period. This quantification may have potential implications in terms of exploring liquidity from the microblogging perceptive.

Competitive balance indicates the degree of control participating teams have over a sports competition. Supporters look for excuses to justify their team’s defeat and the triumph of their rivals. If the competition has required a preliminary qualifying group stage, they will argue that the winning team was in an "easy group" from the start, and their team was unlucky to be in a "difficult group". It is therefore of interest to determine what is an "easy group" and what is a "difficult group". This is directly related to the concept of competitive balance. We have a wide range of indices to measure competitive balance. We will use the Distance to Competitive Balance, a standardized index that complies cardinality property. The perfectly unbalanced distribution is the truncated cascade, which allows the maximum value of concentration to be obtained. We focus our attention on the UEFA Champions League, before and after competition, and we measure the competitive balance of the qualifying stage groups between the 1999/2000 and 2022/2023 seasons. The composition of the UEFA Champions League groups seems to be balanced and has no influence on which team will be the champion. A highly competitive group will be more "difficult" in terms of qualifying than a highly concentrated one. Supporters say that their team was unlucky to be in a “difficult” group, but the data does not prove them right.

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.

This paper explores the transformative journey from traditional e-commerce to the emerging realm of virtual commerce (v-commerce) within the metaverse, a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual reality. The metaverse, with its immersive and interactive capabilities, is reshaping the landscape of economic activities, creating a paradigm shift in the way consumers shop, sell, and buy goods and services. The study delves into the impact of virtual reality (VR) technologies on consumer behavior, business models, and the overall economy. It investigates how VR is revolutionizing the shopping experience by offering immersive, personalized, and interactive platforms, thereby influencing con-sumer decision-making processes. The paper further examines the implications of these changes for businesses, particularly in terms of strategy, operations, and customer engagement. Moreover, the paper discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by the metaverse economy, including issues related to privacy, security, digital divide, and regulatory frameworks. It also highlights the potential of v-commerce to drive economic growth, innovation, and sustainability in the digital age. The paper concludes with a discussion on the future directions of v-commerce and the potential strategies for businesses to thrive in this new economic landscape.

Influenced by traditional notions of solidarity, when a province’s planning can be highly aligned with that of the central government, the province is perceived to be more collective and thus able to receive financial or resource favors from the central government. This consistency, as is often the case, reflected in doing the same thing as the central government. This situation may lead governors to ignore local economic performance and thus reduce regional innovation efficiency, as in the case of China’s Great Leap Forward. Likewise, it is possible to get better resources (energy or capital) by demonstrating managerial submissiveness, thus improving the regional innovation efficiency. Therefore, to verify the relationship between imitative governance and regional innovation efficiency, we collected relevant data from 31 major provincial administrative units in China, calculated the degree of imitative governance between provincial government work reports and central government work reports through text similarity, as well as utilized the SBM-DEA model to evaluate regional innovation efficiency. Meanwhile, we provide a new explanation of the phenomenon from the perspective of resource inclination. Finally, the empirical results show that imitative governance promotes local innovation efficiency and is moderated by resource inclination.

Based on the panel data of western central-cities from 2002 to 2021, this paper uses the intermediary effect model to analyze the relationship between urban internationalization, innovation ability and urban competitiveness. It is found that: (1) The internationalization of western central-cities has a positive and direct impact on the promotion of urban competitiveness, which has a significant impact on economic strength and infrastructure, and a weak impact on government efficiency and market efficiency The marginal growth effect of internationalization on urban scale will gradually decrease with the improvement of urban development level. (2) The continuous promotion of city internationalization can promote the innovation ability to enhance the competitiveness of the city. Compared with the internationalization of cities, the influence of innovation ability on the competitiveness of cities is small, and the innovation ability of western central-cities and each city is weak. The scale effect has become the main motivation to promote the competitiveness of cities. (3) In the process of internationalization of western central-cities, innovation ability has a part of intermediary effect on the improvement of urban competitiveness, and the effect on urban “hard environment” is significantly greater than that on urban “Soft-environment”. The results of direct and indirect impact tests show that the impact of the process of internationalization of western central-cities on urban competitiveness is exogenous.

The sensitive nature of interest rate has spurred empirical interests on the factors that determine it. This paper examined the joint impact of exchange rate and foreign direct investment inflows on interest rate in Nigeria over the period from 1981-2022. The study made use of the auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test and results of findings reveal that in both the short-run and the long-run the impact of the interaction between FDI inflows and exchange rate on real interest rate was negative and significant. Also, while credit to the private sector was found to have significant positive impact on real interest rate in both the time horizons, the impact of consumer price index was negative only in the short. Oil revenue was found to impact positively on real interest rate only in the long-run, but the impact of broad money supply was negative and significant in both the short-run and the long-run. The study suggests that policies to regulate domestic interest rate should focus on joint regulation of both exchange rate and FDI inflows and this requires a synergy between monetary and fiscal policies.

The impact of international tourism on emerging markets has been overwhelmingly beneficial. Despite the obvious benefits of tourism, it comes at a high price for the environment in the form of pollution. Brazil's annual tourist influx has the potential to boost economic development and damage the country's ecosystems. The objective of this investigation is to analyze, using time series data ranging from 1990 to 2019, the effects of tourism and economic growth (GDP) on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in Brazil. The stationarity of the data was examined by employing unit root tests, and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique was used to investigate the link between the factors, taking both the long- and the short-run into consideration. This research shows that there are long-term and short-term ties between Brazil's tourism industry, GDP, and CO₂ emissions. Yet, both tourism and economic expansion have had serious negative effects on Brazil's ecology. These results indicate that in order to maintain environmental quality in Brazil, policymakers need to pursue more eco-friendly economic expansion as well as environmentally conscious tourist regulations.

The business world is a competitive place, and enterprises must cultivate sustainable relationships with their clients to gain customer loyalty. Concepts of relationship marketing (RM) are becoming vital in the service industry. Different RM strategies are used to attract customers, but some of these strategies do not achieve customer loyalty as easily as predicted due to customers’ changing behaviour patterns. This paper investigates the impact of RM strategies on customer loyalty through relationship qualities (customer satisfaction and trust) by concentrating on the high-end hairdressing sector in Auckland. Additionally, this research investigates the expectations of customers of high-end hair salons formed by RM strategies, which influence their satisfaction, trust, and customer loyalty to their service provider. The results indicate that brand image shows a significant relevance to trust, satisfaction, and customer loyalty claiming that brand image is an essential element of RM. Additionally, this investigations revels that, hair salons in Auckland are looking forward to ascertaining a sustainable relationship with their clients through a spectrum of strategies such as positive brand image, good service quality, reasonable price, and good value deals to earn optimistic relationship quality, which will ultimately escalate to customer loyalty. Findings of this research will be useful in supporting hair salons to gain a greater understanding of their customers by adopting effective RM strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on economies everywhere, affecting everything from supply chain networks to international trade as a direct result of the increased vulnerability of more nations and the disruption of the activities of key traders. This research study examines how COVID-19 affected the supply chain on a worldwide and regional scale, as well as the systemic policy and economic steps governments and businesses took to rebound and maintain resilience. COVID-19 has had a significant influence, prompting governments and businesses to take steps to fortify their operations and businesses against disruptions, highlight the necessity for resilience in supply chains and emphasize the importance of managing risk. The supply value chain is at risk from the prolonged implementation of COVID-19 trade measures like border closure, export restrictions, and import sanctions. Many businesses are transitioning from a "recovery mode" to a resilient and sustainable mode" and are beginning to plan for the future. The study suggests that corporate and government leaders should prioritize proactive and adaptable policy, economic, and structural adjustment. This research will be useful to policymakers and industry leaders in their efforts to lessen the effect of COVID-19 on the global supply chain by enforcing governmental, economic, and business reforms built on resilient supply chains and mitigating economic risks during tough times.

Liquidity and its associated issues are one of dominant strands in the market microstructure. In this study, microblogging-based behavioral perspective on economic unrest is linked to the market liquidity. The concept of liquidity is examined in terms of price dispersion relative to the quantity traded. The analysis contains the quantification of multiple linear regression, Gaussian distribution technique, and vector error correction methodology. In the economic stability period, the investor’s mood, either in positive manner or pessimistic context, had an influential role on the price impact volume-based liquidity. Meantime, the probability was higher for occurrence of price impact volume-based liquidity in response to the sentiment indicators. In the economic unrest environments, the positive bias investor’s mood was not vigorous enough to influence the dispersion of asset’s prices and trading quantity. Most importantly, the negative bias investor’s emotion was linked to increase the dispersion of asset’s prices relative to the quantity traded. Investors with a lower amount of trading quantity had declined the liquidity in the market. Additionally, there was a higher probability for occurrence of illiquidity in the pessimistic market periods. However, changes in past sentiment series were not associated with changes in pervious liquidity series, either in short run or long run. The findings may be potentially applicable to manage the behavioral perspective of liquidity risk.

Green innovation, driven by China's new development concept, plays a crucial role in high-quality economic development. In line with the green development trend, businesses increasingly prioritize whether their corporate environmental responsibilities (CER) can effectively enhance corporate green innovation (CGI) levels. This paper examines the influence and mechanism of CER on CGI using a dynamic perspective, drawing from 1,640 manually-collected panel data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies between 2010 and 2017. The primary findings indicate that the impact of CER on CGI possesses phase-specific characteristics and a dual effect of "crowding in" and "crowding out." The current phase of CER negatively affects green innovation, while the lag phase has a positive effect. CER's impact on various CGI types is heterogeneous: specifically, it follows an "inverted-N" trajectory (inhibition-promotion-inhibition) for "strategic green innovation" and has a promotional effect on "substantive green innovation," which is stronger and has a longer time lag. The mechanism analysis reveals that financing constraints play a critical mediating role. A heterogeneity analysis based on multiple dimensions (ownership, industry, and location) suggests that CER has a more significant driving force for CGI among state-owned firms, high-polluting industries, and enterprises in inland areas. Finally, the paper presents corresponding suggestions for government and corporate entities.

Carbon emissions trading is essential for reducing carbon emissions, and its role in regional carbon unlocking needs further clarification. This study uses the difference-in-differences (DID) model and synthetic control model (SCM) to evaluate the carbon unlocking effect of China’s six pilot carbon trading provinces. This study found that (1) carbon lock-in effects in China are mainly influenced by technology lock-in and fixed input lock-in; (2) each province’s overall carbon lock-in level presents a decreasing trend yearly, and the regional distribution presents characteristics of “low in the east and high in the west”; (3) carbon emissions trading pilot policies effectively promote the carbon unlocking effect in pilot regions overall, with Guangdong having the most significant unlocking effect. Conversely, Beijing, Hubei, Chongqing, and Shanghai also had different degrees of carbon unlocking. Finally, (4) an assessment of impact mechanisms indicates that technology and institutions have a significant mediating role in effectively promoting carbon unlocking under the carbon trading policy. Conversely, social behavior has an inverse effect, and fixed assets are not affected by the policy. This study demonstrates the carbon unlocking effect of carbon emissions trading and provides a quantitative reference for implementing carbon emissions trading policies and determining carbon unlocking paths.

This study employs empirical analysis using an econometric model that examines the interdependence among environmental degradation, exports, and economic development with energy use. It also provides an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for selected South Asian economies utilizing time-series data. The findings reveal a long-term, stable equilibrium link between energy demand and pollution. There exists a positive relationship between structural factors and pollution. Moreover, this study constructs a model of exports and pollution from an interdependent perspective. The three perspectives are tested: the scale and structure of energy consumption considering the twin constraints of export-trade and pollution, and the scale of pollution in export-trade constraint. These results show that the increase in energy use leads to higher CO2 emissions amidst export volume. However, in the presence of income, the scale of effect lowers a little. The analysis also supports the presence of Kuznets curve for south-Asian economies. The results imply substantial scope for development in the energy use and pollution structure within South Asia's current export trade process. This development can be attained by regulating energy use and enhancing system efficacy without necessitating changes to the scale effect or structural effect.

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a prevalent progressive neurodegenerative condition affecting millions globally. Research has found that individuals with PD have a reduced risk of certain cancers, such as colon, lung, and rectal cancers, but an increased risk of brain cancer. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the development of advanced PD diagnostic methods and for investigating the relationships between risk factors, such as lifestyle due to handedness associated with various types of cancers. Recent ad- vancements in magnetic resonance imaging have enhanced PD diagnosis, reducing misdiagnosis and facilitating more accurate disease progression monitoring. Nevertheless, challenges exist, particularly in the distinction of PD between left-handed and right-handed patients over time. This survey provides an overview of contemporary deep learning-based imag- ing analysis methodologies, encompassing both non-longitudinal and lon- gitudinal contexts. We also explore existing limitations and prospects for refinement to gain deeper insights. These insights are poised to inform the development of personalized treatment strategies for PD patients while elucidating the current disparities between deep learning models and their efficacious implementation in clinical practice.