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This chapter examines the relative influence of parents (vertical channel) and friends (horizontal channel) when deciding between employment in the public or private sector. Using a novel database and applying network analysis, the influence of peers is first measured. Next, the peer effect is compared with the impact of parental background on individual preferences. For the private sector, findings indicate that the influence (marginal effect) of friends is greater than that of parents. The opposite is observed for the public sector. However, in the case of public sector employment, the overall effect of the horizontal channel may surpass the vertical channel, as individuals typically have two parents but may have many friends. Additionally, it is found that both parents and friends exert a greater influence on women than on men.

The rise of interactive fitness games in the post-epidemic era has resulted in the need to establish a quality evaluation index system. This study aims to develop such a system and provide a reference for enhancing the quality of interactive fitness games.

To achieve this, interviews and questionnaires were conducted to identify the factors that influence the quality of interactive fitness games. The Kano model and SII (Satisfaction Increment Index)-Dissatisfaction Decrement Index (DDI) two-dimensional quadrant analysis were then used to explore differences in quality judgment between males and females, as well as their priorities for improving interactive fitness games.

The study revealed that males and females have different quality judgments for “rich and diverse content,” “motivational value,” “sensitive motion recognition detection” and “portability.” However, both genders share similar views on the other quality factors. In addition, the study identified differences in the priority of improvement between men and women. “Very interesting,” “effective fitness achievement,” “motivating fitness maintenance,” “sensitive motion recognition detection,” “portability” and “educational value” were found to be of higher priority for men than women.

These findings provide a valuable theoretical reference for developers and designers of interactive fitness games seeking to enhance the user experience.

Interest-free promotions are a prevalent strategy employed by credit card lenders to attract new customers, yet the research exploring their effects on both consumers and lenders remains relatively sparse. Selecting an optimal promotion strategy is intricate, involving the determination of an interest-free period duration and promotion-availability window, all within the context of market dynamics and complex consumer behaviour. The purpose of this study is to develop an agent-based model to assist with determining optimal promotion strategies.

In this paper, we introduce a novel agent-based model that facilitates the exploration of various credit card promotions under diverse market scenarios.

Our experiments reveal that, in the absence of competitor promotions, lender profit is maximised by an interest-free duration of approximately 12 months, while market share is maximised by offering the longest duration possible. In the context of concurrent interest-free promotions, we identify that the optimal lender strategy entails offering a more competitive interest-free period and a rapid response to competing promotional offers. Notably, a delay of three months in responding to a rival promotion corresponds to a 2.4% relative decline in income.

Our model consists of multiple lender and consumer agents that interact through a novel set of mechanisms based on well-studied consumer behaviours. Distinct from previous works, our model adopts a realistic billing cycle with a focus on interest charged to revolving accounts and supports a range of lender promotion strategies. It is calibrated to historical benchmarks and validated against both stylised facts and time-series data, ensuring a realistic reflection of market behaviour, which has been neglected in prior studies.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the literature around regulatory compliance and market manipulation in capital markets through the use of bibliometrics and propose future research directions. Under the domain of capital markets, this theme is a niche area of research where greater academic investigations are required. Most of the research is fragmented and limited to a few conventional aspects only. To address this gap, this study engages in a large-scale systematic literature review approach to collect and analyze the research corpus in the post-2000 era.

The big data corpus comprising research articles has been extracted from the scientific Scopus database and analyzed using the VoSviewer application. The literature around the subject has been presented using bibliometrics to give useful insights on the most popular research work and articles, top contributing journals, authors, institutions and countries leading to identification of gaps and potential research areas.

Based on the review, this study concludes that, even in an era of global market integration and disruptive technological advancements, many important aspects of this subject remain significantly underexplored. Over the past two decades, research has lagged behind the evolution of capital market crime and market regulations. Finally, based on the findings, the study suggests important future research directions as well as a few research questions. This includes market manipulation, market regulations and new-age technologies, all of which could be very useful to researchers in this field and generate key inputs for stock market regulators.

The limitation of this research is that it is based on Scopus database so the possibility of omission of some literature cannot be completely ruled out. More advanced machine learning techniques could be applied to decode the finer aspects of the studies undertaken so far.

Increased integration among global markets, fast-paced technological disruptions and complexity of financial crimes in stock markets have put immense pressure on market regulators. As economies and equity markets evolve, good research investigations can aid in a better understanding of market manipulation and regulatory compliance. The proposed research directions will be very useful to researchers in this field as well as generate key inputs for stock market regulators to deal with market misbehavior.

This study has adopted a period-wise broad-based scientific approach to identify some of the most pertinent gaps in the subject and has proposed practical areas of study to strengthen the literature in the said field.