Subject:
All Disciplines Arts & Humanities Biology & Life Sciences Business & Economics Chemistry & Materials Science Computer Science & Mathematics Engineering Environmental & Earth Sciences Medicine & Pharmacology Physical Sciences Public Health & Healthcare Social Sciences
Sort:
Most Viewed Latest Alphabetical (A-Z) Alphabetical (Z-A)
Filter:
All Topic Review Biography Peer Reviewed Entry Video Entry
Topic Review
Weaponization of Finance
The term weaponization of finance refers to the foreign policy strategy of using incentives (access to capital markets) and penalties (varied types of sanctions) as tools of coercive diplomacy. The term was first coined by political scientists Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan. It became one of the main themes of the Eurasia Group’s Top Risks 2015 report. It is a reference to the new ways in which the United States is using its influence to affect global outcomes. Rather than rely on traditional elements of America’s security advantage – including US-led alliances such as NATO and multi-lateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – Washington is now ‘weaponizing finance’ by limiting access to the US marketplace and US banks as an instrument of its foreign and security policy.
  • 1.9K
  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Risk Factors in Business Valuation
It is widely accepted that risk and uncertainty are integral parts of the property valuation process. Uncertainty in property valuation is derived from the characteristics of property itself. The issue pertaining to risk and uncertainty in property valuations is currently one of the key concerns in global valuation practice to date in addressing the decision of risk and uncertainty in valuation, especially for business purposes or in the current term known as business valuation. The judgment and experience still depend on the expertise of the individual valuers alone.
  • 1.8K
  • 01 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Purchasing Power Parity and Balassa–Samuelson Effects
The Balassa–Samuelson (BS) hypothesis is often criticized for one of its fundamental, but oversimplified assumptions related to Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) holding which can be confirmed for cronss-country tradables’ prices, implying nontraded-sector prices are solely responsible for inducing trend deviations in real exchange rate. The assumption, when empirically tested, does not always hold valid, revealing a price difference in tradables for Asian countries against the world (U.S.), a potential driver of their trend in real exchange rate deviations (appreciation). 
  • 1.8K
  • 14 Jul 2022
Topic Review
Post-Materialism
In sociology, post-materialism is the transformation of individual values from materialist, physical, and economic to new individual values of autonomy and self-expression. The term was popularised by political scientist Ronald Inglehart in his 1977 book The Silent Revolution, in which he discovered that the formative affluence experienced by the post-war generations was leading some of them to take their material security for granted and instead place greater importance on non-material goals such as self-expression, autonomy, freedom of speech, gender equality and environmentalism. Inglehart argued that with increasing prosperity, such post-material values would gradually increase in the publics of advanced industrial societies through the process of intergenerational replacement. Post-materialism is a tool in developing an understanding of modern culture. It can be considered in reference of three distinct concepts of materialism. The first kind of materialism, and the one in reference to which the word post-materialism is used most often, refers to materialism as a value-system relating to the desire for fulfillment of material needs (such as security, sustenance and shelter) and an emphasis on material luxuries in a consumerist society. A second referent is the materialist conception of history held by many socialists, most notably Marx and Engels, as well as their philosophic concept of dialectical materialism. The third definition of materialism concerns the philosophical argument that matter is the only existing reality. The first concept is sociological, the second is both philosophical and sociological, and the third is philosophical. Depending on which of the three above notions of materialism are being discussed, post-materialism can be an ontological postmaterialism, an existentialistic postmaterialism, an ethical postmaterialism, or a political-sociological postmaterialism, which is also the best known.
  • 1.8K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Productivity Improving Technologies
The productivity improving technologies are the technological innovations that have historically increased productivity. Productivity is often measured as the ratio of (aggregate) output to (aggregate) input in the production of goods and services. Productivity is increased by lowering the amount of labor, capital, energy or materials that go into producing any given amount of economic goods and services. Increases in productivity are largely responsible for the increase in per capita living standards.
  • 1.8K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Informal Sector Employment and Economic Growth
Originating in the context of third-world countries, the informal sector constitutes a dominant part of the economy and is identified as an untapped reservoir of opportunities in terms of employment and the entrepreneurial capabilities of developing countries; it is often called the subordinate zone of the overall economy that can play a significant role in the growth and socio-economic development of countries across the world. The informal sector accounts for almost half of the economic activities in developing countries. These activities were initially backed by the core assumptions of the classical theory that the informal economy would wither away after achieving persistent growth. However, the new view of the informal economy features it as contemporary growth that should proceed as a result of the changed economic context of countries. The prevalent feature of the informal economy around the globe provides support to the new view of informality, mentioned as a dichotomist’s approach, which indicates that the informal economy will not wither away; rather, it will be contested in an arrangement of interdependent coexistence with distinctively different conditions, notably in terms of employment arrangements.
  • 1.7K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Urban Fragility
Urban fragility is one of the big challenges for the late-modern city coping with the growing external pressures (from the environment) and internal tensions (within the social system), typically referable to the socio-cultural and political-economic climate, definitely characterising the current "Age of Changes". A broad institutional context is involved in that undertaking, and many studies and reports show how fragility is linked above all to the growing complexity of the cities. The ever-increasing population, extension, density and cultural mixite, as well as the fast “filtering up and down” processes, are some symptoms of the combination of two fundamental drivers. Firstly, the exponential technological progress—mostly concerning the geographical and digital accessibility—has been encouraging far more people to claim a better socio-economic status, which urban location, by definition, is symbol of. Secondly, the progressive human/environmental unfairness of economy over the planet and the related increase in insecurity, push the transfer of large masses of the population towards the richer countries of the developed geo-economic areas, and in particular towards the larger, more heterogeneous, complex and vibrant cities. This new climate involves the accountability of the neoliberal model allowing a limited number of subjects to concentrate the largest part of the liquidity created as a result of the progressive “financial abstraction” of the real wealth over the era of post-globalization, that is the age of the contemporary archipelago-economies. The development of the city has always gone together with the spread and reinforcement of the financial institutions more able to give a monetary shape to the flows of wealth, thus indirectly increasing the part of the surplus of social product intended to the social overhead capital; the latter is at the same time cause and effect of the concentration of wealth and people, activities and tensions, conflicts and hopes (in one word, of value) in urban shapes. On the urban-scale, in turn, such processes have been occurring creating and populating denser and denser built areas at the expenses of other ones (decaying historic centers or peripheral neighborhoods) progressively neglected and jeopardized. The coexistence of such different value density degrees increases the fragility of the city as a whole; the most visible and permanent tracks of these inequalities reflect in the urban shape and namely in its economic form that is the urban capital value shape, displayed by the real estate market price map. Some remarks about the concept of fragility in the field of territorial studies can help to better understand how the urban eco-social system deals with it. The perspective of the “real estate-scape”, in fact, assumes the social and urban fragility issue, since one of the main focuses of the urban renovation planning process in its broad lines. The colloquial meaning of “fragility” closely relates to its physical definition concerning the tendency of a solid material to break abruptly, without any yielding deformation, which has previously occurred. In the urban studies some insights need to be done to understand a conceptual significance of fragility, considering its original causes and those effects typically concerning the current drift of the urban phenomenon. Since the above early definition does not take into account the driving forces of the urban fragility and their most perceptible effects, a further and more extensive meaning of it can be derived from material sciences, thus highlighting the deep and constitutive causes of it. Fragility is “the property that characterizes how rapidly the dynamics of a material slow down as it is cooled toward the glass transition: materials with a higher fragility have a relatively narrow glass transition temperature range, while those with low fragility have a relatively broad glass transition temperature range”. By metaphorizing such definition, and referring to the relationship between the socio-economic situation of a city and the real estate capital asset value, an urban system can be considered more fragile when the “socio-economic cooling” (i.e., a decrease in rights and incomes) gives rise to sudden, pathological and irreversible fall of the real estate market prices; on the contrary, an urban system seems to be more resilient when such effects are slower and easily metabolized, and can also be reversed when an opposite cause occurs. Furthermore, “physically, fragility may be related to the presence of dynamical heterogeneity in glasses, as well as to the breakdown of the usual Stokes–Einstein relationship between viscosity and diffusion”.
  • 1.7K
  • 14 Jul 2020
Topic Review
Entropy and Banks' Income Diversification
We collected data pertaining to Chinese listed commercial banks from 2008 to 2016 and found that the competition between banks is becoming increasingly fierce. Commercial banks have actively carried out diversification strategies for greater returns, and the financial reports show that profits are increasingly coming from the non-interest income benefits of diversification strategies. However, diversification comes with risk. We built a panel threshold model and investigated the effect of income diversification on a bank’s profitability and risk. Diversification was first measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman index (HHI), and the results show that there is a nonlinear relationship between diversification and profitability or risk does exist. We introduced an interesting index based on the entropy to test the robustness of our model and found that a threshold effect exists in both our models, which is statistically significant. We believe the combination of the entropy index (ENTI) and the HHI enables more efficient study of the relationship between diversification and profitability or risk more efficiently. Bankers and their customers have increasingly been interested in income diversification, and they value risk as well. We suggest that banks of different sizes should adopt the corresponding diversification strategy to achieve sustainable development.
  • 1.6K
  • 02 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Renewable Energy Status in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan has a well-developed hydrocarbon industry backed with abundant domestic resources. Oil and gas have played a crucial role in the economic revival of the country since independence was regained back in 1991. The legal foundation of the transition to carbon-zero energy generation was laid in the 1990s with a number of acts mentioning the importance of the shift. The government has an ambitious plan to improve the situation, though an action plan with targeted renewables share in production and consumption is still to be prepared.
  • 1.6K
  • 24 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Bike Boom
The term "bike boom" or "bicycle craze" refers to any of several specific historic periods marked by increased bicycle enthusiasm, popularity, and sales. Prominent examples include 1819 and 1868, as well as the decades of the 1890s and 1970s — the latter especially in North America — and the 2010s in the United Kingdom.
  • 1.6K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Smart Tourism Ecosystem
For the sustainable tourism experience, a smart tourism ecosystem is created so that personalized, context awareness, as well as real-time monitoring, can be ensured.
  • 1.6K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Globalization of the Football Transfer Market
The football transfer market has been affected by the increased freedom of movement, trade and communications between different countries since the 1990s. This globalization of the transfer market has impacted the way in which football clubs trade with one another and the relationship between players and their clubs. When professional leagues were first founded, there were significant restrictions preventing footballers from joining whomever they liked. These limitations were put in place by both the clubs these players were tied to, and the leagues in which they played. International labor movement regulations and the difficulties of scouting less developed nations also hindered the development of a liberalized transfer market.
  • 1.6K
  • 11 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process, or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product or process. The verb to design expresses the process of developing a design. In some cases, the direct construction of an object without an explicit prior plan (such as in craftwork, some engineering, coding, and graphic design) may also be considered to be a design activity. The design usually has to satisfy certain goals and constraints, may take into account aesthetic, functional, economic, or socio-political considerations, and is expected to interact with a certain environment. Major examples of designs include architectural blueprints, engineering drawings, business processes, circuit diagrams, and sewing patterns. The person who produces a design is called a designer, which is a term generally used for people who work professionally in one of the various design areas—usually specifying which area is being dealt with (such as a textile designer, fashion designer, product designer, concept designer, web designer or interior designer), but also others such as architects and engineers. A designer's sequence of activities is called a design process, possibly using design methods. The process of creating a design can be brief (a quick sketch) or lengthy and complicated, involving considerable research, negotiation, reflection, modeling, interactive adjustment and re-design.
  • 1.6K
  • 07 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Industrie 4.0 in China
Industrie 4.0 has stirred turbulences in China since its birth in 2011. The struggles of the Chinese manufacturing enterprises towards realizing and adapting Industrie 4.0 in their production processes have given people many new perceptions. The 3rd Industrial Revolution was the biggest beneficiary of globalization. The first ten years of Industrie 4.0 also benefitted from globalization as its influence got widespread throughout the world. Globalization originated from the need to optimize the allocation of global resources and the formation of industrial value chains under the impetus of the international division of labor. Globalization is facing more and more challenges in the international economic development. 
  • 1.6K
  • 19 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Ethical Marketing and Brand Loyalty
The attainment of brand loyalty is based on programs related to the corporate marketing. Typically, brand loyalty is reflected in how customers evaluate the company’s outlook towards the product evaluation and consumer-brand relations. A company’s ethical marketing practices affect the daily routine of consumer activity. Every company’s ethical marketing practices are closely related to the purchase of products or services, regardless of whether it is conscious of consumer purchasing power strengths and weaknesses. The importance of ethics in the advancement of business sustainability, and general marketing issues (including product safety, price tags and advertising) has duly been recognized by corporate managers and vendors. As an outcome, an economic behavior, whether ethical or non-ethical, is inherently linked with a company’s overall reputation and assessment, and stresses the fundamental factors in keeping the company competitive on the market. Ethical marketing practice plays a significant role in improving consumer-firm ties, product assessment, and brand loyalty. 
  • 1.5K
  • 05 Jul 2021
Topic Review
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
According to Schwab, the word, “revolution”, refers to a radical change, and revolutions occur in the world when new technologies and novel ways of perceiving the world come about, with changes in the economic systems and the social structures of the world. As was noted before, the 4IR is defined as: “Revolution that is blurring the lines between the physical, the digital, and the biological worlds. Massive advances in artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, 3D printing, quantum computing, genetic engineering, and various other technologies”. One of the easiest ways of understanding the 4IR is to start gathering knowledge about the First Industrial Revolution, the Second Industrial Revolution, and then the Third Industrial Revolution.
  • 1.5K
  • 06 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Tourism in Economic Growth
Tourism is vital to the success of many economies worldwide and has been a widely researched area for many years. Unfortunately, an insufficient number of studies have been conducted on this subject in the context of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, this research investigates the role of tourism in promoting economic growth in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by using annual time series data from 2003 to 2019. 
  • 1.5K
  • 24 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Currency War of 2009–11
The Currency War of 2009–2011 was an episode of competitive devaluation which became prominent in the financial press in September 2010. Competitive devaluation involves states competing with each other to achieve a relatively low valuation for their own currency, so as to assist their domestic industry. With the financial crises of 2008 the export sectors of many emerging economies have experienced declining orders, and from 2009 several states began or increased their levels of intervention to push down their currencies. Both private sector analysts and politicians including Tim Geithner have suggested the phrase currency war overstates the extent of hostility, but the term has been widely used by the media since Brazil's finance ministers Guido Mantega September 2010 announcement that a "currency war" had broken out. Other commentators including world statesmen such as Manmohan Singh and Guido Mantega suggested a currency war was indeed underway and that the leading participants are China and the US, though since 2009 many other states have been taking measures to either devalue or at least check the appreciation of their currencies. The US does not acknowledge that it is practicing competitive devaluation and its official policy is to let the dollar float freely. While the US has taken no direct action to devalue its currency, there is close to universal consensus among analysts that its quantitative easing programmes exert downwards pressure on the dollar. According to many analysts the currency war had largely fizzled out by mid-2011, though others including Mantega disagreed. As of March 2012, outbreaks of rhetoric were still occurring, with additional measures being adopted by countries like Brazil to control the appreciation of their currency. Yet by June, there were signs that currency misalignment had been levelling out in China and across the world, with even Mantega relaxing some of Brazils anti-appreciation controls. Alarms were raised concerning a possible second 21st currency war in January 2013, this time with the most apparent tension being between Japan and the Euro-zone.
  • 1.5K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Resources Cycle
Resources cycle means volatility in the resources sector over a period of time based on metrics such as value or production volume. Resource cycles present considerable heterogeneity with differing time lines but generally run from a low point (production, demand or value) through a period of increase, before returning to a comparable low point. Since the turn of the century this concept has driven discourse and research into housing markets, investment opportunities and socioeconomic change in resource towns of a country as the impacts of mining driven change become increasingly pronounced.
  • 1.5K
  • 23 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Globalization and Female Employment
Globalization can be viewed as a world integration leading to an exchange of ideas in different cultural, economic, political, technical, and social spheres across countries. Globalization’s impact on the receiving country’s economic and employment outcomes is an established phenomenon. However, globally only about 55 percent of women participate in the labor force compared to 80 percent for men. These gender disparities serve as an important focal point for research related to female employment, as it has a significant positive association with overall socio-economic outcomes.
  • 1.5K
  • 27 Apr 2022
  • Page
  • of
  • 17
Featured Entry Collections
>>

Featured Books

>>
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
Encyclopedia of COVID-19
Encyclopedia of Fungi
Encyclopedia of Digital Society, Industry 5.0 and Smart City
ScholarVision Creations
Feedback