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This paper examines the relationship between flexicurity and employment inflows in the EU28 countries over the 2007–2019 period. Flexicurity is defined as the mix of flexible contractual arrangements, social security systems, active labor market policies and lifelong learning strategies.

Using two-way fixed effects two-stage least squares, we estimate the employment inflows as a function of an equal-weighted flexicurity composite indicator and other labor market, economic and business environment characteristics. To ensure the robustness of results, in additional specifications, we test the sensitivity of the flexicurity’s coefficient to: (1) the change of instruments; (2) the removal of different non-core variables and (3) the consideration of recessionary periods European regions. In addition, we estimate regressions with separate flexicurity components and with differently constructed flexicurity indices.

In all the estimations, increased flexicurity efforts are positively related to employment inflows. Increased flexicurity efforts benefit Eastern European countries more than the Northern and Anglo-Saxon groups. Not only a synergistic policy action that uses an equal combination of the four pillars of flexicurity has a positive impact on the employment inflow rate. Strategies that give more weight to the formation of skills seem to favor the labor market reinsertion most.

To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study in the flexicurity–employment inflows literature since it: (1) follows all the European Union countries over more than a decade; (2) brings some tentative findings on the socio-cultural moderation of flexicurity’s impact on employment inflows and (3) explores different country-level flexicurity indices.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how sentiment affects economic activity in Brazil.

Based on a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, this study examines in detail the short-term and long-term asymmetric impacts between the variables during the period from January 2007 to December 2020.

There are three main results of this study. First, sentiment is an important factor for economic activity in Brazil, and its effect possibly occurs through the channels of consumption and investment, which are the two main components of economic growth. Second, sentiment affects economic activity in different ways in the short and the long term: in Brazil, although in the short-term, immediate shocks of sentiment may be confusing, the negative shocks from previous periods have a negative impact on economic activity. Third, the effect of shocks of optimism and pessimism on economic activity is asymmetric, and in the long run, only shocks of optimism have a significant and positive impact.

The relationship between sentiment and economic activity is still a controversial issue in the literature and this study seeks to advance its understanding in Brazil.

Children are beginning to socialize as consumers earlier than ever, highlighting the importance of their saving behavior as an effective form of consumer protection. The paper explored the influence of parents, peers, attitudes, knowledge, past behavior, allowance and self-efficacy on saving intention.

With the aim to explore a range of determinants of adolescent saving and to specify the potential mechanisms through which different determinants operate, we adopted a multitheoretical approach based on theories of planned behavior, consumer and financial socialization, and self-efficacy. The paper investigates the formation of the saving intentions on a sample of 1,476 children 10–15 years old in Croatia.

The results indicate strong importance of parental influence and self-efficacy, implying that saving intention among tweens requires a supportive family structure as well as beliefs in the tweens themselves that they are able to save money and face difficulties.

This paper investigates the very nature of saving intention formation at a crucial developmental stage; it investigates the interplay of mechanisms through which determinants of savings operate at that developmental stage; and it explores the age-variance of the mechanism and the interplay of relevant variables, shedding light on the nature of the mechanism of development.

Firms in emerging economies are generally at a disadvantage in terms of resources, which may limit their digital transformation. The Chinese government has designed and promulgated a series of wind power policies from the perspectives of support and regulation. The former provides scarce resources for enterprises and thus alleviating financial constraints. While the latter increases the demands for advanced technologies, thereby triggering resource bricolages. This study aims to clarify the impact of industrial policy on the digital transformation of the Chinese wind power industry, and the role of financing constraint and resource bricolage in the above relationship.

Based on the data of listed companies in the Chinese wind power industry from 2006 to 2021, this study clarifies the impact and mechanism of industrial policy on firm digital transformation with fixed effect regression models.

Empirical results indicate that both supportive and regulatory policies are the cornerstone of the digital transformation of the Chinese wind power industry. Financial constraint and resource bricolage, respectively, mediate the impact of supportive and regulatory policies. However, the mix of supportive and regulatory policies inhibits digital transformation. Moreover, industrial policies are more effective for the digital transformation of state-owned enterprises, as well as enterprises in economically underdeveloped regions.

This study investigates the path of government intervention driving firm digital transformation from the resource-related perspective (i.e. financial constraint and resource bricolage), and its analytical framework can be extended based on other theories. The combined effects of cross-sectoral policies (e.g. wind power policy and digital infrastructure policy) can be further assessed. The marginal net benefit of government intervention can be calculated to determine whether it is worthwhile.

This study emphasizes the necessity of government intervention in the digital transformation of enterprises in emerging economies. The governments should align the policy targets, clarify policy recipients and modify policy process of different categories of industrial policies to optimize the effectiveness of policy mix. Given that the effectiveness of government intervention varies among different categories of enterprises, the competent agencies should design and promulgate differentiated industrial policies based on the heterogeneity of firms to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of industrial policies.

This is one of the earliest explorations of industrial policies’ effect on the digital transformation of the renewable energy sector in emerging economies, providing new evidence for institutional theory. Meanwhile, this study introduces financial constraint and resource bricolage into the research framework and attempts to uncover the mechanism of industrial policy driving the digital transformation of enterprises in emerging economies. Besides, to expand the understanding of the complex industrial policy system, this study assesses the effectiveness of the industrial policy mix.

There are various uncertain and nonlinear problems in hydraulic legged robot systems, including parameter uncertainty, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances. This study aims to eliminate uncertainties and improve the foot trajectory tracking control performance of hydraulic legged robots, a high-performance foot trajectory tracking control method based on fixed-time disturbance observers for hydraulic legged robots is proposed.

First, the robot leg mechanical system model and hydraulic system model of the hydraulic legged robot are established. Subsequently, two fixed-time disturbance observers are designed to address the unmatched lumped uncertainty and match lumped uncertainty in the system. Finally, the lumped uncertainties are compensated in the controller design, and the designed motion controller also achieves fixed-time stability.

Through simulation and experiments, it can be found that the proposed tracking control method based on fixed-time observers has better tracking control performance. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method have been verified.

Both the disturbance observers and the controller achieve fixed-time stability, effectively improving the performance of foot trajectory tracking control for hydraulic legged robots.

This study aims to investigate the day-of-the-week (DoW) effect in globally listed private equity (LPE) markets using daily data covering the period 2004–2021.

To investigate the existence of the DoW effect in globally LPE markets, ordinary least squares regression, generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) regression and robust regressions are used. In addition, robustness audits are conducted by subdividing the sampling period into two sub-periods: pre-financial and post-financial crisis.

Limited statistically significant evidence is found for the DoW effect. By taking time-varying volatility into account, a statistically significant DoW effect can be observed, indicating that the DoW effect is driven by time-varying volatility. Economic significance is captured through visual inspection of average daily returns, which illustrate that Monday returns are lower than the other weekdays.

The results have important implications on whether to adopt a DoW strategy for investors in LPE. The findings show that higher returns on selected days of the week for certain indices are possible.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper provides the first study to examine the DoW effect for globally LPE markets by using LPX indices and contributes valuable insights on this growing asset class.

One of the low-cost minerals that can be used as reinforcing filler in polymer industry is pumice powder. Pumice is a highly porous volcanic glass formed during explosive eruptions. This pumice has received significant interest because of its large surface area with various polar groups and can be processed easily.

This study is carried out to investigate the effect of partial replacement of silica (as traditional filler) by naturally occurring pumice powder to improve the thermal and mechanical properties of nitrile butadiene rubber cured with electron beam radiation (doses from 25 to 150 kGy).

The results indicated that the addition of pumice powder increase the tensile strength at lower doses up to 75 kGy (especially at concentration of 5 phr). Besides, an improvement in the thermal stability was attained with the addition of pumice powder.

Pumice powder is volcanic-based alumina and silica which is mainly composed of SiO₂. It has porous structure which is formed by dissolved gases precipitated during the cooling as the lava hurtles through air. Due to its porous structure, it has low density and high thermal insulation. It also has high temperature and chemical resistance, for these reasons it became preferable material to be used as filler in the plastic and rubber industry.

Despite recent efforts to link religion with job satisfaction, the current state of research lacks the knowledge of why there may be a positive relationship between the two variables. This study tries to fill this gap by testing the notion that Christians are more likely to exhibit a higher level of distributive justice perception, which leads to a higher level of job satisfaction. The study also tries to identify Christianity as the moderator in the relationship between distributive justice and job satisfaction.

This study uses secondary data. The study analyzes 13,289 employees in 27 countries in the 2010 European Social Survey, which contains information on the levels of distributive justice perceptions and job satisfaction, as well as the religious affiliations of the respondents. The country fixed effect regression analysis was conducted.

The analyses first reveal that Protestants, compared to non-Protestants, exhibit a higher level of distributive justice perception, which leads to a higher level of job satisfaction. The analyses also demonstrate that the positive relationship between distributive justice perception and job satisfaction is weaker for Protestants than non-Protestants. These relationships, however, were not evident for people affiliated with other denominations of Christianity.

Protestant employees are likely to maintain a higher level of distributive justice perception, and distributive justice perception matters less in shaping their job satisfaction. As a result, organizations may want to focus more on the other aspects of organizational justice, such as procedural and interactional justices in managing protestant employees, if maintaining job satisfaction level is a concern. With many “Christian-based” companies operating and being supported in today’s economy, the findings in this study can be useful to these organizations that are more likely to attract and have Christians as their employees.

The current study provides evidence that employees’ religious affiliation (i.e. Protestantism in this case) can be a predictor of job satisfaction through the mediation of distributive justice perception. It also offers a basis for future studies on employee morale (e.g. job satisfaction and justice perceptions) to consider religious factors. Finally, the findings also identify Protestant affiliation as a moderator in the distributive justice–job satisfaction relationship.

Bisphosphonate (BP) medications can be applied to prohibit the damage of bone density and the remedy of bone illnesses such as osteoporosis. As the metal chelating of phosphonate groups are nearby large with six O atoms possessing the high negative charge, these compounds are active toward producing the chelated complexes through drug design method. BP agents have attracted much attention for the clinical treatment of some skeletal diseases depicted by enhancing of osteoclast-mediated bone resorption.

In this work, it has been accomplished the CAM-B3LYP/6–311+G(d, p)/LANL2DZ to estimate the susceptibility of SWCNT for adsorbing alendronate, ibandronate, neridronate and pamidronate chelated to two metal cations of 2Mg²⁺, 2Ca²⁺, 2Sr²⁺ through nuclear magnetic resonance and thermodynamic parameters. Therefore, the data has explained that the feasibility of using SWCNT and BP agents becomes the norm in metal chelating of drug delivery system which has been selected through alendronate → 2X, ibandronate → 2X, neridronate → 2X and pamidronate → 2X (X = Mg²⁺/Ca²⁺/Sr²⁺) complexes.

The thermodynamic results have exhibited that the substitution of 2Ca²⁺ cation by 2Sr²⁺ cation in the structure of bioactive glasses can be efficient for treating vertebral complex fractures. However, it has been observed the most fluctuation in the Gibbs free energy for BPs → 2Sr²⁺ at 300 K. Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulation has resulted by increasing the dielectric constant in the aqueous medium can enhance the stability and efficiency of BP drugs for preventing the loss of bone density and treating the osteoporosis.

According to this research, by incorporation of chelated 2Mg²⁺, 2Ca²⁺ and 2Sr²⁺ cations to BP drugs adsorbed onto (5, 5) armchair SWCNT, the network compaction would increase owing to the larger atomic radius of Sr²⁺ cation rather than Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺, respectively.

The Internet of Things (IoT), as one of the new digital technologies, has created wide applications in various industries, and one of the most influential industries of this technology is the transportation industry. By integrating the IoT with the transportation industry, there will be dramatic changes in the industry, and it will provide many entrepreneurial opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop new businesses. Opportunity identification is at the heart of the entrepreneurial process, and entrepreneurs identify innovative goods or services to enter a new market by identifying, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities. Despite the desire of transportation managers to invest in the IoT and the increase in research in this area, limited research has focused on IoT-based entrepreneurial opportunities in the transportation industry. Therefore, the present study aims to identify IoT-based entrepreneurial opportunities in the transportation industry and examine their importance.

To achieve the research objective, the authors applied a mixed approach. First, adapting the lens of the industry value chain theory, a comprehensive literature review, besides a qualitative approach including semi-structured interviews with experts and thematic analysis, was conducted to identify the entrepreneurial opportunities. The identified opportunities were confirmed in the second stage using a quantitative survey method, including the Student t-test and factor analysis. Finally, the identified opportunities were weighted and ranked using the best worst method (BWM).

Entrepreneurial opportunities are classified into five main categories, including “smart vehicles”, “business partners/smart transportation supply side”, “supporting services”, “infrastructures”, and “smart transport management and control”. The infrastructures group of opportunities ranked the highest amongst the identified groups.

This study adds to the digital entrepreneurship opportunity recognition literature by addressing opportunities in a smart industry propelled by digital technologies, including developing new products or new applications of the available technologies. Additionally, inspired by the industry value chain theory, this article develops a framework including various digital entrepreneurial opportunity networks which are necessary to add value to any industry and, thus, could be applied by entrepreneurs to recognize opportunities for new intermediaries to enter other digital-based industries. Finally, the present study identifies the IoT-based entrepreneurial opportunities in the smart transportation industry and prioritizes them, providing practical insights regarding the creation of entrepreneurial ecosystems in the field of smart transportation for entrepreneurs and policymakers.