Technological and Economic Development of Economy

COVID-19 impact on labour market in EU countries – differences in men and women employment rate tendencies

2024-05-29T15:34:21+03:00

This paper aims to identify the differences in the employment rate dynamics in economy sections, considering gender, in the European Union countries in 2020, compared to the 2008–2019 period. Two methods were used. The first method compares forecasts from models describing employment changes in the pre-pandemic periods with information concerning the actual employment rate in 2020, using three indices measuring the significance of the observed discrepancies. The second method uses dynamic cluster analysis for the 2008–2020 period, and evaluates the changes in composition of groups that occured in 2020. The proposed methods were applied separately to the data concerning the employment of females and males (employment rates) in the EU countries, always divided into economy sections and section groups (A, B-E, F, G-I, J, K, L, M and N, O-Q, R). The application of the “Triple 2 Rule” helped to identify the changes in the previous employment trends (“Interventions”). The evaluation of changes in the dynamics of the employment rate in total and in section groups and according to gender in the EU countries in 2020 – compared to the forecasts from the 2013–2019 trends – revealed that the EU labour market responded differently to the COVID-19 pandemic situation.

First published online 14 March 2024

Social responsibility of green microfinance institutions: A tool for promoting women’s economic empowerment in China

2024-05-29T15:34:21+03:00

Economic freedom has central importance among the nations, however, Chinese economic freedom index declining continuously, leading to the several issues. Particularly, economic freedom is low among the Chinese female population. The world average of economic freedom index in 2022 based on 175 countries is 60 index points, but the Chinese index is 48. To address this issue, this study introduced green microfinance institutions based on Mayoux’s Feminist Empowerment Theory. The objective of this study is to examine the role of green microfinance institutions in women economic freedom in China. A survey questionnaire is used to collect data from female clients of microfinance institutions. 315 respondents responded to the survey and data analysis is carried out by using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results of the study identified that, green microfinance institution’s services such as credit and insurance can facilitate green micro enterprises. The promotion of green micro enterprises causes to increase women economic security, leading to the economic freedom. Additionally, green microfinance policy is a critical factor to promote the positive relationship between green microfinance institution’s services and women economic freedom. Findings of this are helpful for the practitioners to increase women economic freedom in China by providing various services of green microfinance institutions.

First published online 18 March 2024

Can the green credit policy promote green innovation in enterprises? Empirical evidence from China

2024-05-29T15:34:21+03:00

The green credit policy (GCP) is an institutional framework aimed at guiding enterprises towards green transformation and promoting high-quality development, which serves as a crucial tool for supporting the establishment of a green technology innovation system. In this study, utilizing the green credit guidelines as a quasi-natural experiment and constructed a continuous difference-in-difference (DID) model, examines the impact of GCP impact on enterprise green innovation and its internal mechanisms by analyzing data from Chinese A-share listed companies between 2006 and 2021. Our findings indicate that the GCP had a significant impact on enterprise green innovation, inhibiting companies from in-dependently developing green innovation while promoting joint green innovation with other institutions; These results were robust and consistent, even after conducting several sensitiv-ity analyses; This mechanism indicate that the commercial credit plays an important regulatory role in the process of GCP affecting green innovation of enterprises and the financing constraints act as an intermediary factor in the process of GCP affecting green innovation. Based on our research, we offer policy recommendations aimed at improving the GCP and fostering a market-oriented green technology innovation system.

First published online 14 March 2024

Impact of heterogeneous local government competition and green technology innovation on economic low-carbon transition: new insights from China

2024-05-29T15:34:21+03:00

Low-carbon transformation of the economy is the inevitable orientation of socialism with Chinese characteristics to high-quality development in the new era, while the Chinese decentralized development model determines that the competition of local governments in China is an important factor influencing the green technological innovation on low-carbon transformation of the economy. How to achieve coordinated economic growth and ecological environment has become a prob-lem for local governments. Data from a Chinese provincial panel covering the years 2007–2019 is used to investigate the effects of heterogeneous local government competition (Comp), namely, economic, ecological and service competitions on economic low-carbon transition, and moderating effects of heterogeneous government competition and green technology innovation (GTECH) on the low-carbon economic transition (LCT). The results reveal that there are substantial disparities in the consequences of heterogeneous government competition on low-carbon economic transition (LCT). Among them, economic competition significantly dampens economic low-carbon transition (LCT), and ecological competition and service competition significantly boost economic low-carbon transi-tion (LCT). After performing robustness checks, these results continue to be strongly convincing. The study of moderating effects shows that economic competition can dampen the positive influence of green technology innovation (GTECH) to the economic low-carbon transition (LCT). However, ecological competition and service competition facilitate the promoting effect of green technology innovation on economic low-carbon transition (LCT).

First published online 14 March 2024

Forecasting the real average retirement benefit in the United States using OWA operators

2024-05-29T15:34:22+03:00

The issue of pensions has become increasingly topical. This paper presents the ordered weighted averaging real average pension (OWARAP) operator. The OWARAP operator is based on the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator and calculates the future average retirement benefit taking into account price changes. Moreover, this work extends the OWARAP operator by using order-inducing variables, generalized means, and probabilities. This paper ends by analyzing the applicability of the OWARAP operator and its extensions in forecasting the real average Social Security benefits for retired workers in each state of the United States (U.S.). The results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach in retirement decision making.

First published online 30 April 2024

Navigating the digital landscape: situation and risk assessment of digital solutions in forwarding companies

2024-05-29T18:25:59+03:00

This research emphasises the transformative power of digital solutions in Lithuanian forwarding companies, addressing the necessity for a systematic risk assessment to optimise processes and mitigate associated risks. The survey indicates an increasing adoption of digital solutions, with around two-thirds of companies already utilising them. A case study employing the AHP method identifies three key digital solutions: invoice automation, waybill digitisation and blockchain. A combined solution called a “document flow and management system”, showed significant potential for time and cost savings. Three risks – synchronising participants, employee resistance, and a lack of specialists – are identified as having the highest overall assessment and were selected for further analysis while implementing the prioritised digital solution. The expert evaluation identifies employee resistance as the most probable risk, posing potential significant losses in the initial post-implementation phase. Although issues with synchronising participants could yield similar losses, experts view this risk as less probable than employee resistance. After the AHP analysis, it was decided to evaluate the current information and document flow process, in other words, to optimise the process. The optimisation results show that freight forwarding companies could reduce document management time by up to 59%.

Fostering green transition in Central and Eastern Europe: carbon dioxide emissions, industrialization, financial development, and electricity nexus

2024-05-29T18:25:59+03:00

Climate change presents a substantial impediment for the global community and prompts policymakers worldwide to prioritize environmental goals when defining national development strategies. Prioritizing these goals is particularly challenging for governments of developing economies still relying on fossil fuels, foreign capital, and industry contribution to GDP. This study examines the relationships between carbon dioxide emissions, industry value added, financial development, and electricity generation in 15 Central and Eastern European countries from 1995 to 2021. To achieve this objective, we examined stationarity and cointegration and employed a vector error correction model to investigate causalities between the variables, along with a variance decomposition analysis. Our findings suggest that the short-run unidirectional causalities exist from industry value-added to carbon dioxide emissions and from carbon dioxide emissions to financial development and electricity generation. Long-term causality exists between carbon dioxide emissions and industry value added. The findings shed light on the challenges and opportunities these countries face in transitioning to climate neutrality and meeting the decarbonization targets. Within this context, the findings underscore the significance of crafting customized strategies for these economies to navigate the complex landscape of climate change while promoting sustainable industrial, electricity and financial sector development.

Large-scale emergency supplier selection considering limited rational behaviors of decision makers and ranking robustness

2024-05-30T18:26:02+03:00

Selecting emergency suppliers from a wide range of candidates based on their performance under each criterion can be regarded as a multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) problem. Existing MCDM models to solve the emergency supplier selection problem ignored situations where large-scale suppliers exist, the influence of criteria weights on the robustness of ranking results, and the influence of psychology of regret aversion and disappointment aversion on decision results. To make up for these deficiencies, this paper proposes an MCDM model to solve emergency supplier selection problem with large-scale alternatives. Firstly, to avoid the influence of criteria weights on ranking of alternatives, the Robustness, Correlation, and Standard Deviation (ROCOSD) method is introduced to determine objective weights of criteria based on three objectives. Secondly, the τ-balanced clustering method is applied to cluster large-scale alternatives into balanced clusters. Next, considering the psychology of regret aversion and disappointment aversion of decision makers, a two-stage method is proposed to rank alternatives, which identifies the optimal alternative within each cluster and forms a new cluster consisting of these optimal alternatives in the first stage, and selects the optimal alternative from the new-formed cluster in the second stage. A numerical case is given to validate the proposed model.

Investigating the effects of COVID-19 on tourism in the G7 countries

2024-06-03T18:26:04+03:00

Natural and human-made crises can significantly impact the development of countries’ tourism industries. The susceptibility of countries to these crises depends on their policies, planning, and management in facing diverse challenges. This article aims to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry in G7 countries by comparing rankings and positions on indices in 2016 and 2020. Data collected from the RANking COMparison (RANCOM), Proximity Indexed Value (PIV), and Double Normalization Compromise Ranking of Alternatives from Distance to Ideal Solution (DNCRADIS) models have been utilized for data analysis. The research findings indicate noticeable differences in using different models, as the rankings and positions of G7 countries for the years 2016 and 2020, except for two countries, the United States and France, have been different. The research results demonstrate that the COVID-19 crisis had significant impacts on the tourism industries of G7 countries. Countries like the United States, France, and the United Kingdom appear as leading nations in the tourism industry, while Japan and Canada faced challenges, and Germany and Italy experienced changes in their positions. Based on these results, officials and planners in the tourism industry of G7 countries can make appropriate decisions for the development and improvement of tourism under similar crisis conditions. Moreover, these findings can serve as a valuable guide for other countries in managing similar crises in the tourism industry.

Factors influencing follow-on public offering of shipping companies from investor perspective – a hybrid multiple-criteria decision-making approach

2024-06-07T13:49:44+03:00

The shipping industry transports nearly 80% of the goods worldwide and requires large funding. The shipping industry shifted from debt to equity as the source of funding in the last decade. Because most shipping companies already had their initial public offering before 2013, these companies tend to engage in follow-on equity offerings (FPO). However, the challenge faced by the shipping companies is the lack of knowledge on successful FPO. The purpose of this study is to identify the most influential factors affecting shipping companies’ FPO from the investor perspective. This research applies a hybrid multiple-criteria decision-making model integrating the fuzzy-Delphi method and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory, processing survey responses covering four dimensions and 16 criteria from 33 investment experts. The results show that financial indicator is the primary cause affecting offering condition, technical indicators. An increase in earnings per share would help the financial performance of the shipping companies to appear most attractive to investors.

The impact of digital disinformation on quality of life: a fuzzy model assessment

2024-06-05T18:26:07+03:00

Quality of Life (QoL) is a multifaceted concept encompassing economic, social, environmental, psychological, and physical dimensions of an individual’s life, including personal living conditions, happiness, well-being, and life satisfaction. As a vital criterion for sustainable development and active social policy in countries, QoL has been significantly influenced by the dynamic technological evolution of social media. However, the comprehensive impact of social media, including its role in disseminating disinformation – a major social and socio-economic concern – on QoL remains underexplored. This research aims to develop a novel fuzzy model to assess the level of disinformation on digital platforms and its correlation with the population’s QoL. Employing a mathematical approach rooted in expert evaluation, this study leverages intellectual knowledge analysis and fuzzy set theory. Grounded in data from real respondents and knowledge-based models, this study pioneers an information model to evaluate inhabitants’ QoL, incorporating factors such as financial concerns, perception of disinformation, and its influence on digital platforms. The fuzzy estimation model, verified with data from 3,036 respondents, quantitatively assesses citizens’ QoL. An illustrative application of the model demonstrates its effectiveness. The findings are particularly valuable for policymakers, experts in economic and innovative development, aiding the creation of regulatory and monitoring mechanisms to foster sustainable economic growth and devise effective development strategies.

On which socioeconomic groups do reverse mortgages have the greatest impact? Evidence from Spain

2024-06-05T12:26:16+03:00

Reverse mortgage is one of the products (perhaps the main one) that is good to obtain additional income by using the habitual residence as collateral. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the effects that reverse mortgage contracting has on household finances over the lifetime of a family according to the socioeconomic group to which it belongs in Spain. Four indicators are employed to measure the immediate and long-term effects. We use a stochastic model with a double source of randomness, survival and entry into dependency, and apply it to the three socioeconomic groups obtained with cluster methodology from the 2017 Spanish Household Financial Survey data. We conclude that the effects are very different depending on the group: regarding only the effects of hiring a reverse mortgage on the income of the family, widowed women aged between 81 and 85 years, with low income and expenses as well as little net wealth, and a habitual residence that represents half of her net wealth (Cluster 1) are the most benefited; considering that the highest impact indicators are on the probability of illiquidity and on the value of lack of liquidity, the use of reverse mortgages benefits more the families in Cluster 3 (high income and expenses and really high net wealth, head of household aged between 76 and 80 years) and less the families in Cluster 2 (medium income, net wealth and expenses, head of household aged between 65 and 75 years).

First published online 17 April 2024

A state-of-the-art review of the BWM method and future research agenda

2024-06-05T18:26:07+03:00

The superiority of BWM over other weighting methods for obtaining the weight values of the attributes is that it achieves high-confidence results with a reasonable number of pairwise comparisons. Although the best-worst method (BWM) is a well-known multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method that has been successfully utilized in almost all scientific areas to solve challenging real-life problems, no research has comprehensively examined the state-of-the-art in this regard. The present study depicts a detailed overview of publications concerned with BWM during the period 2015–2022. Based on the information obtained from the Scopus database, this work presents a big picture of current research on BWM. In other words, this paper analyzes the existing literature about BWM and identifies thematic contexts, application areas, emerging trends, and remaining research gaps to shed light on future research agendas aligning with those gaps. Further, the most recent BWM research is analyzed in the top ten scientific areas, from engineering to materials science. “Engineering”, “computer science”, and “business, management, and accounting” are the hottest fields of BWM research. China is the most active country regarding “engineering” and “computer science”, whereas India is the leader in “business, management, and accounting”. The study also reveals that there are still many research gaps in BWM research. The big picture taken in this study will not only showcase the current situation of BWM research but will also positively impact the direction and quality of new research.