Topic Review
Private Equity Growth Capital Council
The American Investment Council (AIC), formerly the Private Equity Growth Capital Council (PEGCC), is a lobbying, advocacy, and research organization based in Washington, D.C., that was launched by a consortium of private equity firms in February 2007. It focuses on defending and promoting the private equity and growth capital investment industry to lawmakers and the public at large. Its members include some of the world's largest private equity firms.
  • 1.0K
  • 05 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Internet Taxes
In 1996, several U.S. states and municipalities began to see Internet services as a potential source of tax revenue. The 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act halted the expansion of direct taxation of the Internet, grandfathering existing taxes in ten states. In the United States alone, some 30,000 taxing jurisdictions could otherwise have laid claim to taxes on a piece of the Internet. The law, however, did not affect sales taxes applied to online purchases. These continue to be taxed at varying rates depending on the jurisdiction, in the same way that phone and mail orders are taxed.
  • 1.0K
  • 26 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Innovation Capacity in Developing Countries
Innovation is an intrinsic capacity of humankind, enabling the adaptation to changes and managing probable solutions to problems regarding its welfare or its surroundings. It constitutes a key driver of sustainable growth. Moreover, innovation capacity is among the dynamic capacities leading to achieving a competitive and sustainable advantage. Hence, by adopting innovative and R&D practices, a country might enhance its growth and competitiveness, particularly for a developing country. In addition, it encompasses diverse perspectives, e.g., organizational capacity, public capacity, regional capacity, national capacity, among others. Therefore, many public and private organizations have focused their efforts on identifying and quantifying the variables that determine the innovation capacity of a country. Various mechanisms have been proposed to assess this capacity, such as the national innovation capacity, Global Innovation Index (GII), Global Competitive Index (GCI) , or European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). These mechanisms aim at providing an objective measurement of the performance of a country regarding innovation capacity or innovation as a means to competitiveness. Each one of these presents a particular set of determinants, methods, and interpretations to assess innovation.
  • 1.0K
  • 05 Jul 2022
Topic Review
Maternal Placenta Consumption in Mammals
Placentophagia is a common mammalian behavior, and the first scientific study of the potential effects of human maternal placentophagia on lactation was in 1917. More recently, in the 1970s, human placentophagia was reported in North America with a trend toward increased consumption. There are different hypotheses about the women and nonhuman mammals’ motivation towards placentophagia, but few have been subject to hypotheses testing. In women, the controversy continues; on the one hand, researchers attribute benefits like increased breast milk, weight gain in newborns, decreased postpartum depression and fatigue, and improved mothers’ mood. In contrast, bacterial or viral infections, hormonal, or trace elements that could become toxic for both the mother and baby are reported as possible health risks. Other reports argue a lack of scientific rigor to support the self-reported benefits of placentophagia. Also, the way the placenta is prepared (raw, cooked, dehydrated, processed, or encapsulated) alters its components, and thus the desired effects.
  • 1.0K
  • 07 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Sustainable Farming Practices in Europe
Modern practices of industrial farming, such as mineral fertilization, caused a widespread degradation of agricultural land and water bodies in Europe. Different farm management strategies exist to reduce the impact of mineral fertilization while preserving soil productivity. The specific focus is on widely adopted and empirically explored measures, such as organic farming, manure treatment technologies and manure fertilization, as well as soil and water conservation methods. Farmers' environmental and economic attitudes in addition to their sources of information have a strong effect on the adoption of organic farming, although there is a lack of evidence of their impact on adopting manure treatment and conservation measures. Similarly, farmers' age and education are found to systemically influence organic farming adoption, but not adoption of other reviewed technologies. While other factors, such as farm physical characteristics or technological attributes, may be important determinants of adoption, it is hard to recognize definite patterns of their impact across technologies given a shortage of empirical evidence.
  • 1.0K
  • 08 Dec 2020
Topic Review
WTP for canned crushed tomatoes
The paper investigated whether information about the health benefit produced by lycopene could influence consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for canned crushed tomatoes enriched with lycopene. An additional aim was to determine whether the main socio-demographic variable - such as sex, age, income - and selected attitudinal factors affect WTP. A non-hypothetical experimental auction was carried on with five repeated rounds. Results show a relevant impact of information on WTP in the case of lycopene-enriched products, whereas no difference in bids emerges for the conventional product. Previous knowledge seems to have a modest influence on WTP, but it shows a significant interaction with the information shock provided during the experiment: the effect of the latter is more pronounced when previous knowledge is low. In addition, age, sex, food technology neophobia, trust in science, and implicit attitudes towards food technology significantly affect participants’ WTP.
  • 1.0K
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Resilient and Sustainable Group Decision
Group decision-making should contribute to resilience and sustainability and, particularly, the achievement of the objectives in view of future risks. Further, transparency in and participation in the decision process are needed to limit problems in the implementation phase of the decision. The literature survey here presented suggests some of the key attributes for supporting sustainable and resilient group decisions. To this aim, a focused systematic review was conducted to study the existing group decision-making methods in the literature and how the concepts of sustainability and resilience have been employed.
  • 1.0K
  • 13 Nov 2020
Topic Review
External Costs of Inland Transport
Sustainable transport, such as using inland waterway transport (IWT), represents a major pillar of the European Green Deal to reduce global warming. To evaluate the different inland transport modes (road, rail, IWT), it is crucial to know the external costs of these modes.
  • 1.0K
  • 27 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Impact of Virtual Reality on Tourism
As an advanced technology, virtual reality (VR) could contribute substantially to the tourism industry, but differently than existing technologies. In fact, VR creates artificial environments like the real world, which are thus immersive virtual environments that are also more realistic. These features might foster attraction and engagement from additional tourists and improve their perceptions of different destinations (e.g., theme parks, cultural heritage centers, or museums).
  • 992
  • 30 Oct 2023
Topic Review
Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization
A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced /iːbɪtˈdɑː/, /əˈbɪtdɑː/, or /ˈɛbɪtdɑː/) is an accounting measure calculated using a company's earnings, before interest expenses, taxes, depreciation, and amortization are subtracted, as a proxy for a company's current operating profitability (i.e., how much profit it makes with its present assets and its operations on the products it produces and sells, as well as providing a proxy for cash flow). Though often shown on an income statement, it is not considered part of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) by the SEC.
  • 985
  • 27 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Eurasian Development Bank
The Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) is a regional development bank established by the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2006. It has six member states located in both Asia and Europe, primarily in the former territory of the Soviet Union, including Armenia, Belarus , Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Other states and international organisations are able to become members by signing up to the bank's founding agreement.
  • 973
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
4 Times Square
4 Times Square, also formerly known as the Condé Nast Building, is a skyscraper in Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, New York City . Located on Broadway between West 42nd and 43rd Streets, the structure was finished in January 2000 as part of a larger project to redevelop 42nd Street. The architects were Fox & Fowle, who also designed the Reuters Building as part of the larger project. The 809-foot (246.5 m), 52-story building is the 28th tallest building in New York City and the 59th tallest in the United States. Owned by the Durst Organization, the building contains 1,600,000 square feet (150,000 m2) of floor space.
  • 961
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Social Networks among University Youth
This article addresses the design and validation of an updated questionnaire that makes it possible to understand the use patterns and attitudes of university youth on social networks. The authors utilized a panel of 20 judges who were social media experts and a sample of 640 university students. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) explained 66.523% of the total variance. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), carried out to verify the dimensional structure of the instrument, reflected the appropriate parameters. The reliability study showed a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.864. These data corroborated the development of a robust and reliable questionnaire. The resulting instrument did not contain items alluding to specific social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn), but rather students’ usage patterns of them. The exclusion of items that referred to particular social networks during the research demonstrated a convergence in behavior on social media regardless of the nuances of each platform. This fact suggested that the platform was of secondary importance in the context of a new paradigm in which the type of use (viewing, posting, participating, or interacting) took precedence over the name of the network itself.
  • 951
  • 29 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Material Passport
A material passport is a document consisting of all the materials that are included in a product or construction. It consist of a set of data describing defined characteristics of materials in products, which give them value for recovery, recycling and re-use. The core idea behind the concept is that a material passport will contribute to a more "circular economy", in which materials are being recovered, recycled and/or re-used in an open traded material market. The concept of the 'material passport’ is currently being developed by multiple parties in mainly European countries. A possible second-hand material market or material-bank could become a reality in the future. Similar concepts are being developed by several parties. Other names for the material passport are: circularity passport, cradle-to-cradle passport, product passport.
  • 937
  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Measuring Online Sensory Consumer Experience
Customers often consider that the information and visualizations of the product do not align with reality and entail a degree of uncertainty. To reduce the perceived risk of buying online, consumers strive to experience diverse components of e-commerce websites, predominantly sensory communication (e.g., high-quality pictures).
  • 932
  • 15 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Retail Price Index
In the United Kingdom, the Retail Prices Index or Retail Price Index (RPI) is a measure of inflation published monthly by the Office for National Statistics. It measures the change in the cost of a representative sample of retail goods and services. As the RPI was held not to meet international statistical standards, since 2013 the Office for National Statistics no longer classifies it as a "national statistic", emphasising the Consumer Price Index instead. However, as of 2018 the UK Treasury still uses the RPI measure of inflation for various index-linked tax rises.
  • 931
  • 27 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Mobile Application System for Eco-Accounting
Nowadays, eco-accounting is widely used in sustainable consumption and production. In order to incentivise consumers’ sustainable consumption and enhance their environmental awareness, a novel mobile based eco-accounting infrastructure has been developed by this research. It applies the eco-credit values to incentivise the consumer’s recycling activities and utilises the eco-cost values to record the consumer’s footprint obtained through consumption. The infrastructure consists of four modules: the consumer’s eco-account, eco-shopping, eco-recycling and eco-incentives. In order to implement the mobile eco-accounting infrastructure, multiple mobile technologies have been applied to develop the novel functions of the mobile app, including a new QR encryption algorithm, embedded Google maps, advanced Internet-based services and multi-language support.
  • 913
  • 09 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Modeling of Business Intelligence Systems using Potential Determinants and Theories
Race towards industry 4.0 increases the hyper competition and puts pressure on organizations to integrate the advanced technologies. Business intelligence system (BIS) is one of the top prioritized technologies that attracted the significant attention of policy-makers and industry experts due to its ability to provide more informed and intelligent knowledge for decision-making processes. It is evident by literature that organizations and industries are prone to integrate the BIS at large scale, but more than 70% BIS projects fail to give the expected results. Hence, it is pertinent to explore the significant determinants that influence the BIS adoption and acceptance in organizations. Although previous literature did not have any comprehensive review relevant to the individual, technological, organizational, and environmental determinants. Therefore, the current study tries to narrow this gap by a systematic literature review (SLR) of 84 studies that were published during the period of 2011–2020. A total of 93 determinants are identified based on content analysis by using text mining techniques of Yoshikoder and human coding skills. The identified determinants are ranked according to their frequency of use. A theoretical framework has been developed with potential determinants and theories. The study results will enrich the recent BIS literature and improve the understanding of practitioners’ decision-making processes to leverage maximum value from the adoption of BIS.
  • 904
  • 28 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, in which ordinary people decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget. Participatory budgeting allows citizens to identify, discuss, and prioritize public spending projects, and gives them the power to make real decisions about how money is spent. PB processes are typically designed to involve those left out of traditional methods of public engagement, such as low-income residents, non-citizens, and youth. A comprehensive case study of eight municipalities in Brazil analyzing the successes and failures of participatory budgeting has suggested that it often results in more equitable public spending, greater government transparency and accountability, increased levels of public participation (especially by marginalized or poorer residents), and democratic and citizenship learning. The frameworks of PB differentiate variously throughout the globe in terms of scale, procedure, and objective. PB, in its conception, is often contextualized to suit a region's particular conditions and needs. Thus, the magnitudes of PB vary depending on whether it is carried out at a municipal, regional, or provincial level. In many cases, PB has been legally enforced and regulated; however, some are internally arranged and promoted. Since the original invention in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1988, PB has manifested itself in a myriad of designs, with variations in methodology, form, and technology. PB stands as one of several democratic innovations such as British Columbia's Citizens' Assembly, encompassing the ideals of a participatory democracy. Today, PB has been implemented in nearly 1,500 municipalities and institutions around the world.
  • 902
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Monetary Policy Committee
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is a committee of the Bank of England, which meets for three and a half days, eight times a year, to decide the official interest rate in the United Kingdom (the Bank of England Base Rate). It is also responsible for directing other aspects of the government's monetary policy framework, such as quantitative easing and forward guidance. The Committee comprises nine members, including the Governor (from 2013 Mark Carney), and is responsible primarily for keeping the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation close to a target set by the government (2% per year as of 2016). Its secondary aim – to support growth and employment – was reinforced in March 2013. Announced on 6 May 1997, only five days after that year's General Election, and officially given operational responsibility for setting interest rates in the Bank of England Act 1998, the Committee was designed to be independent of political interference and thus to add credibility to interest rate decisions. Each member has one vote, for which they are held to account: full minutes of each meeting are published alongside the Committee's monetary policy decisions, and members are regularly called before the Treasury Select Committee, as well as speaking to wider audiences at events during the year.
  • 900
  • 19 Oct 2022
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