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Corrosion is lost profit. A statement constantly made and always relevant. To the layman the food industry presents the most innocent and trouble free of all major industries, regrettably this is not the case. Corrosion is as serious and costly as in the chemical industry attack on steel and concrete are commonplace and many solutions have been tried. One approach which has been found to give excellent cost effective results is the lining of steel and concrete with resin based materials. Development over many years has produced an extensive range of filled and reinforced corrosion and heat resistant resin materials which can be applied to give protection to steel and concrete substrates.

We study organizational vocabularies as complex social structures emerging from the association between organizational participants and words they use to describe and make sense of their experiences at work. Using data that we have collected on the association between managers in a multi-unit international company and words they use to describe their organizational units and the overall company, we examine the relational micro-mechanisms underlying the observed network structure of organizational vocabularies. We find that members of the same subsidiary tend to become more similar in terms of the words they use to describe their units. Members of the same subsidiary, however, do not use the same words to describe the corporate group. Consequently, the structure of organizational vocabularies tends to support consistent local interpretations, but reveals the presence of divergent meanings that organizational participants associate with the superordinate corporate group.

For classification problems of customer relationship management (CRM), the purpose of this paper is to propose a method with interpretability of the classification results that combines multiple decision trees based on a genetic algorithm.

In the proposed method, multiple decision trees are combined in parallel. Subsequently, a genetic algorithm is used to optimize the weight matrix in the combination algorithm.

The method is applied to customer credit rating assessment and customer response behavior pattern recognition. The results demonstrate that compared to a single decision tree, the proposed combination method improves the predictive accuracy and optimizes the classification rules, while maintaining interpretability of the classification results.

The findings of this study contribute to research methodologies in CRM. It specifically focuses on a new method with interpretability by combining multiple decision trees based on genetic algorithms for customer classification.

For Colombia, cocaine is a product that is sold for profit in the United States. Mainstream political economy, let alone the other social sciences, has little to say about the process of extraction of surplus value in the production and distribution of cocaine, in other words, how cocaine is exploited for profit. The paper argues that the conventional framework, which locates profits generated from the cocaine trade in an economic model of crime shields a much deeper reality than simply ‘money laundering’ as a ‘legal problem.’ The central argument is that the cocaine trade in general, and the cocaine economy in particular, are a vital aspect of U.S. imperialism in the Colombian economic system. The paper tackles a critical problem: the place of cocaine in the re-colonization of Colombia – defined as ‘narcocolonialism’ – and the implications of the cocaine trade generally for U.S. imperialism in this context. The paper evaluates selected literature on the Colombian cocaine trade and offers an alternative framework underpinned by a political economy analysis drawn from Marx and Lenin showing that cocaine functions as an ‘imperial commodity’ – a commodity for which there exists a lucrative market and profit-making opportunity. It is also a means of capital accumulation by what could be termed, Colombia's comprador ‘narcobourgeoisie;’ dependent on U.S. imperialism. It is hoped that by analyzing cocaine with a Marxist interpretation and political economy approach, then future developments in understanding drugs in Colombia's complex political economy may be anticipated.

The aim of this paper is to identify why the historically observed equity risk premium is larger than most researchers believe is reasonable. Whilst equity is undoubtedly riskier than government issued securities, the extent of the realised premium on equity has been characterised as a “puzzle”.

This paper measures the equity premium for a number of countries over the past 132 years, and then uses a pooled cross‐section and time‐series analysis to investigate the relationship between the equity premium and inflation.

This paper shows that the equity premium over the past 132 years has been significantly positively related to the rate of inflation and, therefore, has resulted in an equity premium that is substantially higher in the post 1914 period than before. This effect results from the relative performance of bonds and stocks during inflationary periods. The relatively poor performance of bonds during periods of inflation drives much of the equity premium.

Counterfactual simulations in the paper show that the average equity premium post 1914 would have been 4.61 per cent and not 7.34 per cent had the rate of inflation been zero. This is much closer to theoretically derived estimates.

The size of the equity premium has implications for investors' asset allocation decision. The importance of inflation suggests that in a low inflation environment, the expected equity premium will be considerably lower than the historically realised equity premium.

This paper establishes a clear link between the rate of inflation and the equity premium.

In order to provide an updated view on the drivers of German stock returns, the authors evaluate the relative performance of nine competing neoclassical asset pricing models in the German stock market between November 1991 and December 2021.

The authors conduct asymptotically valid tests of model comparison when the extent of model mispricing is gauged by the squared Sharpe ratio improvement measure of Barillas et al. (2020).

The study finds that the Fama and French six-factor model with both traditional and updated value factors emerges as the dominant model.

The authors shed new light on the drivers of German stock returns through an updated and extended period of analysis, wider range of potential models and utilization of valid asymptotic tests of model comparison when models are nonnested (Barillas et al., 2020).

Outlines previous research on international investment portfolios and presents a study of diversification and hedging on money market, bond and equity funds from UK, US and Japanese investors’ points of view. Explains the methodology, uses 1995‐1998 data to calculate returns and discusses the results. Suggests that foreign bonds and equities reduce exchange rate risk more effectively than money market instruments, although some of that risk is not diversifiable. Compares the benefits of diversification and hedging for investors in the three countries at different levels of risk and concludes that optimum asset allocation depends on the fund market characteristics, risk preferences and investor perspective.

This study explores the relationship between financial literacy and quality of life (QoL). The study further examines the mediating effect of fintech adoption and the moderating effect of leisure on the relationship between financial literacy and QoL.

Using convenience sampling, 345 respondents participated in a cross-sectional survey. To test the moderated mediation hypotheses, the PROCESS macro was used.

The results reveal the mediating effect of fintech adoption on the relationship between financial literacy and QoL, highlighting the importance of digital literacy in an increasingly digitalized society. Moreover, leisure moderates the mediating relationship. Individuals with high leisure are more likely to perceive the uncertainties and risks associated with new technology optimistically – an observation supported by existing literature on the relationships among leisure, perceived freedom, and internal locus of control.

Financial literacy must incorporate digital literacy in order to utilize innovative technology for more efficient financial management. Additionally, having a sense of control over life outcomes can lead to well-being.

Previous research on fintech adoption is mostly related to financial inclusion for the unbanked population in underprivileged rural areas. Here, fintech usage by the general public is the focus. The study also reveals the significance of leisure, as those who have high financial literacy are more likely to adopt fintech when they have more freedom in their lives, which leads to higher QoL.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2021-0633.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a pattern of interlocking directorates is emerging following reforms in Mexican corporations, and who, if any, are the powerful actors in this network. Drawing on the Bourdieusian notion of social capital, the paper also analyses theoretically the interlocking directorates, networks and powerful actors, and their influences on and potential implications for corporate governance mechanisms.

The data used in the study consisted of 1,442 internal and external board members of the population of 126 Mexican corporations trading on the Mexican Stock Market as of January 2011. Use of social network analysis (SNA) demonstrates individuals’ links with corporations and allows the production of spatial maps to visualise the network structure of interlocking boards.

Using the measures of SNA developed by Freeman (1979 and Bonacich (1972), the authors identify the most powerful and influential directors in the network structure of board members in Mexico. Board members with the greatest number of connections occupy central positions in the network. The authors also find a catalogue of corporate governance scandals. The inclusion of independent directors seems to have had no influence in ensuring better corporate governance.

Mapping out the directors’ links might offer excellent opportunities for policy makers to see how many companies a single director represents, how they share boards, and the implications for minority shareholders of sharing boards, and to understand the workloads of directors in carrying out the monitoring tasks expected of them.

This paper makes an important contribution by employing SNA to illustrate interlocking directorates and the positions of powerful and influential actors. Examining networks of directors from a “social capital” point of view also provides an understanding of why the role of independent directors remains toothless in family-dominated corporations.