Investment to reduce flood risk for social and economic wellbeing requires quantitative evidence to guide decisions. Direct and indirect flood damages at individual household and business building levels were assessed in this study using multivariate analysis with three groups of flood damage attributes, i.e., flood characteristics, socioeconomic conditions, and building types. A total of 172 and 45 respondents from residential and commercial buildings were gathered through door-to-door interviews at areas in Peninsular Malaysia that were pre-identified to have frequently flooded. Two main findings can be drawn from this study. First, flood damage is greatly contributed by high-income households and businesses, despite them being less exposed to floods than low-income earners. This supports the current use of mean economic damage in engineering-based flood intervention analysis. Second, indirect damages increase with the increase in family size, indicating the importance of strengthening preparedness and social support to those with great social responsibility. Overall, the study highlights the importance of holistic flood management accounting for both direct and indirect losses.
International trade of plastic waste promotes the global plastic circular economy and improves resource efficiency, but exacerbates the ubiquitous plastic pollution. Understanding the drivers behind the evolution of the global plastic waste trade network (GPWTN) is pivotal for developing new international instruments to end plastic pollution and fostering clean solid-waste trade. Employing social network analysis (SNA) and quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) model, this study structures the GPWTN using bilateral trade data, revealing shifts from highly centralized to cross-layered networks and relevant drivers. It is suggested that Malaysia and Turkey has become the new key recipients of the GPWTN, replacing China, accompanied by the launch of new environmental regulations in some countries. Transportation cost is the most critical factor for the formation of the GPWTN, followed by gaps in resource demand, bio-based resource availability, and transportation accessibility. Trading partners in closer proximity, especially those with contiguous borders, are more likely to trade in waste plastics, while coastal countries play an important role in these partnerships. Economies with more abundant biomaterials, higher incomes, and greater environmental burdens are more likely to be exporters, while economies with scarcer resources and more compelling demands are more likely to import plastic waste. Countries involved in the trade in plastic waste, as either importers or exporters, receive varying degrees of economic benefits but bear potential environmental impacts. Therefore, global plastic pollution control and trade prosperity necessitates necessitate coordinated endeavors from nations and intergovernmental bodies for a mutually advantageous denouement.
Enterprises across the globe are facing increasing pressure to effectively utilize resources and reduce costs through green supply chain practices. Emerging technology, such as blockchain technology which enables green practices, has become a contemporary industrial paradigm. However, enterprises need to build green intellectual capital to implement blockchain technology, which can be key to realizing green supply chain practices. This research examines the impact of green intellectual capital (GIC) on blockchain technology and its role in implementing green manufacturing to achieve sustainability. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was utilized for assessing the proposed hypotheses, and cross-sectional data was accumulated from manufacturing firms. As per the results, GIC, which includes green human capital, green structural capital, and green relational capital has a crucial role in the implementation of blockchain technology. The outcomes also indicated that the adoption of blockchain technology significantly influences green manufacturing. Moreover, green manufacturing (GM) has a substantial role in improving business sustainability. This empirical research provides a deeper understanding of how GIC and blockchain technology contribute to the implementation of GM. This research also provides guidelines that managers, policymakers, and producers can use to facilitate the incorporation of GM practice into business activities.
This study develops a set of measures to address the interrelationship among circular waste-based bioeconomy (CWBE) attributes, including those of government strategy, digital collaboration, supply chain integration, smart operations, and a green supply chain, to build a circular bioeconomy that feeds fish waste back into the economy. CWBE development is a potential solution to the problem of waste reuse in the fish supply chain; however, this potential remains untapped, and prior studies have failed to provide the criteria to guide its practices. Such an analytical framework requires qualitative assessment, which is subject to uncertainty due to the linguistic preferences of decision makers. Hence, this study adopts the fuzzy Delphi method to obtain a valid set of attributes. A fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation was applied to address the attribute relationships and determine the driving criteria of CWBE development. The results showed that government strategies play a causal role in CWBE development and drive digital collaboration, smart operations, and supply chain integration. The findings also indicated that smart manufacturing technology, organizational policies, market enhancement, supply chain analytics, and operational innovation are drivers of waste integration from fisheries into the circular economy through waste-based bioeconomy processes.
The market for the halal food and beverage industry sector has experienced rapid growth in recent years, which indicate excellent investment opportunities. This paper examine the effect of Technical Efficiency (TE) on firm value in 5 selected influential countries in halal food and beverage sector based on Global Islamic Economy Report 2020. Two steps estimation was used to run the data, using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) model to determine the company's TE and panel data to test the effect of TE through firm value. The results show that Indonesia has the highest score for TE (62%), followed by Pakistan (59%), South Africa (57%), Malaysia (55%), and Singapore (52%), which means, in general, there is inefficiency in allocating resources over 38% up to 48% and needs to be improved by halal food and beverage companies in. Regarding panel data, all countries sample except Pakistan highlight that TE significantly affect company value. It indicates that the crucial part of managing efficiency can be a sign in stock market performance. The result shows that company managers should set efficiency strategies to their business process for creating sustainability and increase their value in the capital market. As for investors, this TE can be used as an indicator before choosing company stocks; if the company is efficient, then it is worthy of being one of the portfolio assets. Form the government side, the finding can help them to set appropriate policy setting to boost halal food and beverages industry such as giving subsidy or incentive to increase the efficiency ability of halal food and beverage companies and identify the industry's strength by comparing the result of TE between 5 countries.
This study explores the determinants of the export performance of Indonesia's low-, medium-, and high-technology manufacturing industries by focusing on the role of raw-material imports and technical efficiency. Micro firm-level data from 2010-2015 were utilized for the analysis in this study. The stochastic frontier analysis was employed to measure technical inefficiency and to determine its effect on export performance. Our findings indicate that in all categories of industry technical efficiency, raw materials imports, foreign direct investment (FDI), location, firm size, labour productivity, and concentration of industries were significant determinants of export performance. While high efficiency increases exports in low- and medium-technology firms, exports decrease in firms with high efficiency accompanied by high imports, FDI, size, and labour productivity. Furthermore, in high-technology industries, efficiency reduces exports and again increases them when mediated by a concentration of industries and location. The empirical strategy also supports the positive effect of imports on export performance in both industries, which also aligns with decreased exports in firms with high imports accompanied by high FDI, efficiency, labour productivity, the concentration of industries, and size. To this end, the study has implications for low-, medium-, and high-technology manufacturing that are mainly concerned with increasing exports.
Climate change poses significant challenges, making low-carbon development an essential global trend. In this context, building a green brand has become a critical strategy for companies to enhance consumer loyalty and maintain competitiveness. This study explores how the digital economy shapes sports brand loyalty, focusing on a dataset of Chinese A-share listed companies from Shanghai and Shenzhen, spanning 2011 to 2020. The findings suggest that the digital economy can significantly foster sports brand loyalty. In this process, the digital transformation of enterprises plays a mediating role. This effect is more pronounced in southern regions, non-resource cities and regions actively implementing the Broadband China strategy. This highlights the important role of regional and policy factors in amplifying the impact of digitalization. The study highlights that digital transformation not only improves operational efficiency, but also caters to consumers and their preference for innovative and sustainable practices, further cementing brand loyalty. By exploring the specific role of the digital economy for the business of sport, this study provides important insights into the use of digital tools to build green and loyal brands, offers practical insights for companies seeking to combine sustainability with digital strategies, and emphasizes the need to adapt approaches regionally. Embodying the transformative potential of the digital economy to address climate challenges, support low-carbon development and strengthen brand loyalty in the sports sector, this research contributes to the understanding of how businesses can thrive in an era of rapid environmental change.
This study proposes a novel hybrid computational approach that integrates the artificial dragonfly algorithm (ADA) with the Hopfield neural network (HNN) to achieve an optimal representation of the Exact Boolean kSatisfiability (EBkSAT) logical rule. The primary objective is to investigate the effectiveness and robustness of the ADA algorithm in expediting the training phase of the HNN to attain an optimized EBkSAT logic representation. To assess the performance of the proposed hybrid computational model, a specific Exact Boolean kSatisfiability problem is constructed, and simulated data sets are generated. The evaluation metrics employed include the global minimum ratio (GmR), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and network computational time (CT) for EBkSAT representation. Comparative analyses are conducted between the results obtained from the proposed model and existing models in the literature. The findings demonstrate that the proposed hybrid model, ADA-HNN-EBkSAT, surpasses existing models in terms of accuracy and computational time. This suggests that the ADA algorithm exhibits effective compatibility with the HNN for achieving an optimal representation of the EBkSAT logical rule. These outcomes carry significant implications for addressing intricate optimization problems across diverse domains, including computer science, engineering, and business.
Using a sample of adolescents from schools in Otago, New Zealand, associations between food outlets around schools and dietary quality were investigated. Food outlet environment data were derived using GIS data. Multivariate regression analysis results showed that outlet density, in an 800m buffer around schools, of cafes and restaurants, supermarkets and takeaways was associated with higher Diet Quality Index scores in boys, and distance to nearest outlet for convenience stores, cafes and restaurants and supermarkets with lower scores for girls. Effect sizes were small, suggesting that the food environment around schools plays a minor role in adolescent diet quality.
This study evaluates the impact of public export promotion programs (EPPs) among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. Three indicators, level of awareness, frequency of use, and perception of usefulness, were examined according to a firm's export status. The global evaluation suggests that exporters are more frequent users of EPPs and perceive them to be more useful than non-exporters. Nonetheless, both groups demonstrate higher levels of awareness, are frequent users, and perceive the programs relating to export info/knowledge are more usefulness than programs relating to financial assistance. Further analysis also reveals that the frequency of use and the perception of usefulness for most programs are positively related to export experience, but not to export turnover. This study offers insights into the effectiveness of export programs for encouraging export initiation and expansion in an emerging economy.
Among the issues of medical exchanges, medicaments are more often encountered than medical issues, based on ancient Chinese literatures, early in the Han-Jin Dynasties, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei had exchanges with China, also in Sui-Tang Dynasties. In the Song-Yuan Dynasties, ancient Singapore and the Philippines also incorporated in exchanges of medicament and goods. In the Ming-Qing dynasties, these 6 Asian countries had even more close contact with China, especially in trades and medical exchanges among the masses, carried out in a large scale thus, promoting the advent and development of TCM in Asiana Regions.
Stock market, is one of the most important financial market which has a close relationship with a country's economy, due to which it is often called the barometer of the economy. Over the past 25 years, the stock markets have been affected by different global economic shocks. Various researchers have analyzed different aspects of these effects one by one, however, this study is an assessment of stock market interrelationship of emeriging Asian economies which include most of the East Asian, and Southeast Asian emerging economies with special focus on China for past decades during which different crisis occurred. We used Morgan Stanley capital international (MSCI) daily indices data for each stock market and compared Chinese stock market with the stock markets of India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. We analyzed the data through the individual wavelet power spectrum, cross-wavelet transform and wavelet coherence, to determine the correlation and volatility among the selected stock markets. These model have the power to analyze co-movements among these countries with respect to both frequency and time spaces. Our findings show that there are co-movement patterns of higher frequencies during the crises periods of 1997, 2008 and 2015. The dependency strength among the considered economies is noted to increase in the crisis periods, which implies increased short- and long-term benefits for the investors. From a financial point of view, it has been determined that the co-movement strength among the emerging economies of Asia may have an effect on the VaR (Value at Risk) levels of a multi-country portfolio. Furthermore, the stock market of China shows a high correlation with the other six Asian stock emerging markets in both high and low-frequency spectrums. The association of the south and east Asian stock market with Chinese stock markets show the interconnection of these economies with the economy of China since past two decades. These findings are useful for investors, portfolio managers and the policymaker around the globe.
Recently. recommender systems have become a very crucial application in the online market and e-commerce as users are often astounded by choices and preferences and they need help finding what the best they are looking for. Recommender systems have proven to overcome information overload issues in the retrieval of information, but still suffer from persistent problems related to cold-start and data sparsity. On the flip side, sentiment analysis technique has been known in translating text and expressing user preferences. It is often used to help online businesses to observe customers' feedbacks on their products as well as try to understand customer needs and preferences. However, the current solution for embedding traditional sentiment analysis in recommender solutions seems to have limitations when involving multiple domains. Therefore, an issue called domain sensitivity should be addressed. In this paper, a sentiment-based model with contextual information for recommender system was proposed. A novel solution for domain sensitivity was proposed by applying a contextual information sentiment-based model for recommender systems. In evaluating the contributions of contextual information in sentiment-based recommendations, experiments were divided into standard rating model, standard sentiment model and contextual information model. Results showed that the proposed contextual information sentiment-based model illustrates better performance as compared to the traditional collaborative filtering approach.
Four formal rounds of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations took place in 2010. They involved over 200 officials from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Peru, Vietnam and Malaysia. Future negotiations officially are set to include three issues with public health and medicines policy implications for Australia and our region: ways to approach regulatory coherence and transparency; how to benefit multinational and small-medium enterprises; and multilateral investor-state dispute settlement. US-based multinational pharmaceutical companies are lobbying for TPPA provisions like those in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, which reduce government cost-effectiveness regulatory control of pharmaceuticals, threatening equitable access to medicines. They also advocate increased TPPA intellectual monopoly privilege protection, which will further limit the development of Australian generic medicine enterprises and restrict patient access to cheap, bioequivalent prescription drugs. Of particular concern is that proposed TPPA multilateral investor-state dispute settlement procedures would allow US corporations (as well as those of other TPPA nations) to obtain damages against Australian governments through international arbitral proceedings if their investments are impeded by Australian public health and environment protection legislation.
Understanding the core competencies of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students is vital for designing ESP curricula and refining methodologies. This study sought to comprehensively assess the core competencies of Business English students in Chinese higher vocational colleges (HVCs). A questionnaire survey was conducted among 394 Business English students from five HVCs. The survey evaluated core competencies across gender and academic grades using a model comprisinging four primary dimensions and twelve sub-modules. The results revealed significant disparities in core competency development among Business English students, particularly across gender and academic grades within the specified competence indicator dimensions. These findings highlight the need to enhance in the core competencies of these students, indicating current deficienciess in their development. The identified disparities and areas for improvement in core competencies provide valuable insights for educators and institutions to customize teaching methodologies and improve curriculum design, better addressing the needs of Business English students in HVCs.
The World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) set global minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property, substantially increasing and expanding intellectual-property rights, and generated clear gains for the pharmaceutical industry and the developed world. The question of whether TRIPS generates gains for developing countries, in the form of increased exports, is addressed in this paper through consideration of the importance of pharmaceuticals in health-care trade, outlining the essential requirements, implications, and issues related to TRIPS, and TRIPS-plus, in which increased restrictions are imposed as part of bilateral free-trade agreements. TRIPS has not generated substantial gains for developing countries, but has further increased pharmaceutical trade in developed countries. The unequal trade between developed and developing countries (ie, exporting and importing high-value patented drugs, respectively) raises the issue of access to medicines, which is exacerbated by TRIPS-plus provisions, although many countries have not even enacted provision for TRIPS flexibilities. Therefore this paper focuses on options that are available to the health community for negotiation to their advantage under TRIPS, and within the presence of TRIPS-plus.