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A considerable amount of police evaluation research focuses on innovative approaches to reduce crime at places. This is hardly coincidental; policing and place-based scholars have found crime is highly concentrated, and when police focus on these places, they can prevent and reduce crime. The regularity of such findings led Weisburd (2015) to assert the existence of a “law of crime concentration.” Given that bold assertion, the authors test whether the law of crime concentration is generalizable to one of the most common public safety concerns that police handle—traffic crashes.

To determine whether the law of crime concentration applies to traffic crashes, the authors examined crash locations and times in all counties in Utah across four years. Following and expanding on Weisburd's methods, the authors calculate the bandwidth of concentration for these crashes and analyze various types by severity and possible explanations for variations in crash concentrations across the state.

A small proportion of street segments and intersections experience a disproportionately high number of crashes, and the degree of concentration of crashes may be even higher than that of crime. Further, there are variations in the levels of crash concentration across counties and in the severity of injuries resulting from the crashes.

Place-based criminologists and policing scholars have not often explored traffic crashes in their analyses. Yet, traffic problems take up a significant amount of law enforcement time and resources and are often priorities for most law enforcement agencies. Given what the authors know from traffic, policing and crime and place research, targeted approaches at micro traffic crash hot spots can be beneficial for public safety prevention.

This study is the first to explore the application of Weisburd's Law of Crime Concentration to traffic crashes. Given that police spend a significant amount of time and resources on traffic-related problems in their jurisdiction, finding more effective, evidence-based approaches to address this public safety concern should be a high priority for police and researchers alike.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the ownership concentration and cost of equity of firms in Pakistan context. Moreover, this study also investigates how the presence of disclosure quality and governance quality affects the relationship between ownership concentration and the cost of equity of firms.

Data are collected from six non-financial sectors listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange during the period of 2015–2019. This study uses pooled ordinary least square (OLS) method to validate the proposed hypothesis in STATA.

The study found a positive and significant relationship between ownership concentration and cost of equity. The results also show that better disclosure and governance quality negatively moderates the relationship between ownership concentration and cost of equity.

The findings of this study will help firm managers to implement a high level of disclosure and governance quality in firms to reduce agency problems which will further help a firm in reducing the firm's cost of equity. Furthermore, this study is valuable for practitioners regarding thinking about the process of designing ownership structures to protect minority shareholders' rights, especially in emerging markets.

The novelty of this study is having better disclosure quality and more board independence members helps firms with higher ownership concentration in reducing the cost of equity.

This study aims to elaborate on how firms manage research and development (R&D) activities by examining the relationship between ownership concentration and corporate R&D investment, as well as the moderating role of stock options in this relationship.

The study sample comprised 354 Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2019, and the Tobit model and the system GMM test are used to check robustness.

The results reveal that ownership concentration and R&D investment have an inverted U-shaped relationship. In the presence of stock options, this inverted U-shaped relationship is significantly weaker.

The results have important managerial implications for firms that aim to grant stock options and improve the impact of ownership concentration on R&D investment strategies.

This study aims to investigate the effect of galvanic corrosion on the sulfide stress corrosion cracking (SSCC) of X80/Inconel 625 weld overlay by altering the cathode/anode area ratios, Na₂S₂O₃ concentrations and temperatures.

The effects of galvanic corrosion on X80/Inconel 625 weld overlay SSCC were investigated by immersion test, galvanic corrosion current test, electrochemical measurement, four-point bending experiment, hydrogen permeation experiment and scanning electron microscopy.

The anodic dissolution of the fusion boundary was enhanced as the cathode/anode area ratio increased, which is necessary for the SSCC of the X80/Inconel 625 weld overlay. However, severe galvanic corrosion reduced the SSCC susceptibility. The SSCC susceptibility showed a linear increase with Na₂S₂O₃ concentration in the range of 10⁻⁴ ∼ 10⁻² mol/L. However, further increasing the Na₂S₂O₃ concentration to 10⁻¹ mol/L resulted in the disappearance of SSCC. This is likely because sufficient hydrogen was required for SSCC initiation even under severe anodic dissolution conditions, which was further supported by the reduced SSCC susceptivity at elevated temperatures.

Limited studies aim to establish the relationship between the galvanic corrosion and SSCC of welded joints through altering the cathode/anode area ratios, Na₂S₂O₃ concentrations and temperatures. This work will pave the way for understanding the effect of galvanic corrosion on the SSCC of dissimilar weld joints.

The paper aims to study the dissolution of Al, Al‐3.84%Cu, Al‐5.22%Cu and Al‐11%Cu alloys in different concentrations of NaCl (10‐5‐10‐1 M).

The approach is to use open circuit potential (OCP) and potentiostatic polarization measurements.

Results obtained showed that, as the Cu content was increased in the Al‐Cu alloys, a steady state potential was rapidly reached. Addition of different concentrations of CuCl₂ to 0.5 M NaCl demonstrated that by increasing the concentration of CuCl₂ up to 2 ppm a greater increase in the OCP towards more anodic value occurred from the moment of immersion. Further increases in the concentration of CuCl₂, up to 600 ppm, exhibited the same behavior.

The results of the study reveal that cathodic current was controlled by the oxygen in solution, while the anodic current increased with increased Cu content in the alloy.

This study aims to explore the moderating impact of governance structure, that is, board characteristics including board size, board independence, board committees and ownership structure like ownership concentration, on the underpricing of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) initial public offerings (IPOs) in the context of an emerging economy such as India.

Using a sample size of 403 SME IPOs listed on Bombay Stock Exchange SME platform and National Stock Exchange EMERGE, this study uses moderated hierarchical regression analysis to investigate these relationships.

The findings highlighted that board independence, board committees and ownership concentration negatively influence underpricing measured using market-adjusted excess returns. While analysing the moderating relationship, this study finds that ownership concentration positively moderates the relationship between board independence and underpricing, as well as the relationship between board committees and IPO underpricing.

This study is limited to a single country only. Although perfectly suitable for our research inquiry, it is imperative to check the validity of the findings by extending it to other emerging countries with similar socio-economic characteristics. Furthermore, this study tested the hypotheses concerning three board characteristics only. Hence, it could be extended to explore additional governance characteristics for a more comprehensive understanding.

This study provides a foundation for managers to adopt a fine-grained approach to effectively design the board structure ahead of an IPO event. Additionally, the findings may assist policymakers in formulating various policies and guide regulators in regulating the limit on ownership held by various shareholders to prevent their opportunism. The results of this study may further advise potential investors interested in SME IPO firms to critically consider the ownership concentration as a driving factor when scrutinizing their investment portfolios.

This study is unique as it advances the debate on the importance of a governance characteristic, that is, ownership concentration, as a moderating variable in the underexplored context of IPO underpricing of small- and medium-sized firms in India.

An important Islamic imperative is prevention of concentration of wealth among a few so that wealth circulates widely to enhance shared prosperity. In contemporary economic discourse, inequality and concentration of wealth have emerged as among key causes of instability and crisis. Unfortunately, although Islamic finance has emerged as a Shari’ah-compliant industry, it does not seem to be connected with the Islamic concern about inequality and concentration of wealth. This paper aims to explore the issues of inequality and concentration of wealth in the context of Islamic finance.

This paper addresses a number of queries: Are Islamic banks, as the dominant component of the industry, helping to improve inequality and concentration of wealth and thus offer a better framework to deal with instability and crisis? Is the ownership structure of Islamic banks conducive to meeting the Islamic imperative regarding inequality and concentration of wealth? Using secondary data, this research illuminates the pertinent issues in light of the experience of Bahrain as one of the hubs of Islamic banking and finance.

The paper finds that the ownership pattern of Islamic banks in Bahrain lends credence to the entrenched, not-so-unexpected concentration of wealth.

This study is based on data of one country. Further studies on other countries will help illuminate the relevant patterns and issues.

Inequality and concentration of wealth are among central economic issues in contemporary economic discourse. Because of the significant impact of such inequality and concentration, societies need to be more aware of these impacts and devise ways to address it.

Inequality and concentration of wealth have fundamental social implications, as the issues of poverty, deprivation, exploitation, etc. are inseparable from concentration of wealth (accompanied by concentration of power), and widening wealth gap can cause or induce major socio-political upheaval.

Although inequality and concentration of wealth are robust fields of inquiry, this might be the first work addressing the issue of concentration of wealth in the context of Islamic finance in general and Islamic banking in particular.

Investigates the influence of market concentration, market diversification and internationalization strategies on the performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Using a sample of 450 large, medium and small MNEs, and three alternative definitions of market concentration and market diversification, results indicate that market diversification strategy produces better performance results for MNEs than market concentration strategy. In addition, MNEs using market concentration‐low internationalization strategy performed better than those using market concentration‐high internationalization strategy, and MNEs using market diversification‐low internationalization strategy performed better than those using market diversification‐high internationalization strategy. Discusses implications of the study′s findings for improved MNE performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of a firm’s customer base concentration on its loan contract terms and how this effect varies with the strength of its customer relationship.

This study is an archival research based on a sample of US public firms that have loan contract data between 1990 and 2008. Major customer sales data are used to construct customer concentration and customer relationship measures. A debt contract model is employed to relate loan spread and other contract terms to customer concentration and relationship.

This study finds that firms with more concentrated customer bases have higher loan spread and shorter loan maturity and are more likely to issue secured loans. These negative effects disappear when the supplier firm maintains strong relationship with its customers.

Additional forward-looking measure of customer relationship could benefit future research.

A firm’s customer base characteristics can have significant impacts on the terms of its loan contracts. Findings from this study support the notion that customer relationship is an important intangible asset that is informative to stakeholders of the firm.

This study proposes a new measure of customer relationship based on the past repeated relationships between a firm and its major customers. It shows that customer characteristics may affect firms’ contracts with creditors: customer base concentration increases credit risk whereas strong customer relationship improves credit quality.

When hydrogen evolution reaction occurs on a metal surface, on the one hand, the generated hydrogen atom may penetrate into the metal that causes the hydrogen embrittlement failure of materials; on the other hand, the hydrogen generation may increase the local pressure in the coating and cause coating blistering. The purpose of this study is to study the effect of NaCl concentration and pH on hydrogen evolution reaction of X60 steel.

A cathodic polarization curve 257E-2V vs OCP and EIS was obtained by conventional three-electrode system in different NaCl concentrations, 257E3.5 and pH. Second, various parameters such as hydrogen evolution, over-potential current–density polarization resistance and capacitance of double electric layer were obtained based on fitting of the experimental data. Finally, the reaction mechanism was determined by Tafel curves.

It was concluded that in different NaCl concentrations, diffusion layer induced by concentration polarization affects the diffusion process of H+ ions, which makes over-potential increase. Under great effect of concentration polarization, the reaction is different in acid and alkaline environments, and the dielectric layer shows the characteristic of meta-alkaline adsorption, which makes difference in mechanism.

This research not only has theoretical significance but also gains utilization prospect. Ultimately, this research could be applied to clear hydrogen evolution process and protect long-distance pipeline against delamination.