Search results

The study examines the impact of macroeconomic risk and volatility associated with key macroeconomic indicators on financial market uncertainty; and the extent to which governance and institutional structures moderate such relationships.

The study employs data from 33 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for the period between 1996 and 2019. Variable derivation techniques such as the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) for deriving volatility data, and the principal component analysis (PCA) for index construction were employed. The data is examined using the two-step system generalized method of moments (TS-SGMM) technique.

Empirical results suggest that macroeconomic risk and exchange rate volatility heighten financial market uncertainty among economies in the sub-region. Further empirical estimates show that institutional quality and government effectiveness have a negative moderating effect on the nexus between macroeconomic risk, inflation uncertainty, GDP growth, exchange rate, and financial market uncertainty.

The key macroeconomic conditions with the propensity to foment financial market uncertainty are worth monitoring with adequate buffers to mitigate their impacts on the financial market.

Compared to related studies, this study focuses on uncertainty associated with financial markets among emerging economies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) instead of the performance of the financial markets or specific financial market indicators such as the stock market; and the extent to which a host of macroeconomic conditions influence such uncertainty. For instance, Abaidoo and Agyapong (2023) focused on the impact of macroeconomic indicators or conditions on the performance of the financial market and the efficiency of financial institutions respectively instead of the uncertainty or risk associated with the financial market as pursued in the current study. This differing approach is pursued with the goal of proffering appropriate strategies for policy makers towards assuaging the financial market risk (uncertainty) due to macroeconomic dynamics. We further examine how the various fundamental relationships may be moderated by effective governance and institutional quality.

To study the nature of scuffing in boundary lubricated sliding contacts with subsurface plastic deformation, as it occurs in plastic deformation processing.

Low speed oblique plastic impact testing (LOSOPIT) has been conducted on copper specimen with a hard En31 ball in a test rig that has facility to measure the coefficient of friction. Based on the findings of friction coefficient in these experiments, friction power has been estimated and was found to be in the typical range. Scuffing studies were undertaken both by observation of the slid surface of En31 sphere in a ferrographic microscope with camera facility as well as by calculation of the friction power.

The boundary lubricant was found to have profound role in safeguarding the surface from severe deformation and micro‐cracks. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) examination of the craters produced by LOSOPIT has given evidence that using the boundary lubricant resulted in smooth transfer of shear stress from the sphere to the specimen surface through the boundary lubricant layer. Owing to this, the asperities have been found flattened in a smooth manner instead of metal at the surface being scuffed. A limited amount of reduction was found in the coefficient of friction due to the use of boundary lubricant from that in the dry testing.

The model used to estimate the friction power is predominantly governed by the friction coefficient itself rather than either the normal load or the sliding speed. Friction coefficient itself may be contributed by various mechanisms all of which may not equally contribute to scuffing. Study is underway to carefully glean out those components of friction that exactly result in scuffing, and to use more effective criteria for scuffing.

The knowledge and data developed in the paper give a clear explanation of conditions under which scuffing can take place in sliding contacts operating under boundary regime. The most important applications are metalforming and metal cutting. It is relevant to mechanical engineering machinery in which intense contact pressures are expected.

This paper fills the gap of lack of scuffing studies in plastic deformation processing. All earlier studies focused on elastic conditions prevailing at the contact. Since, industry has been witnessing a need to tackle the severe problems related to formed product quality and certain defects hitherto unexplained, this paper gives a new direction to explain the defects in products from scuffing point of view. In this paper, it has been shown that friction power can be a good criterion to represent scuffing intensity in boundary lubrication.

A survey of project scheduling problems since 1973 limited to work done specifically in the project scheduling area (although several techniques developed for assembly line balancing and job‐shop scheduling can be applicable to project scheduling): the survey includes the work done on fundamental problems such as the resource‐constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP); time/cost trade‐off problem (TCTP); and payment scheduling problem (PSP). Also discusses some recent research that integrates RCPSP with either TCTP or PSP, and PSP with TCTP. In spite of their practical relevance, very little work has been done on these combined problems to date. The future of the project scheduling literature appears to be developing in the direction of combining the fundamental problems and developing efficient exact and heuristic methods for the resulting problems.

The chapter depicts the potential place of the spirit of non-violence and the spirit of peace in social affairs and economic circumstances. It deals with the approach of Mahatma Gandhi to non-violence and the approach of Saint Francis of Assisi to noble poverty, simplicity and peace as one of the great inspirations to Gandhi. These two concepts are closely interrelated, as they have analogous aspects in theory and practice. Both of them seem suitable to be used as the main characteristics of dealing with social and ecological problems.

The following part of the chapter describes the life and the credo of Mahatma Gandhi, emphasizing the importance of non-violence, an alternative approach to deal with emerging social difficulties. After it, the chapter presents the life and the philosophy of Saint Francis of Assisi and how Gandhi was inspired by him. It emphasizes the importance of peace, noble poverty, simplicity and their spirit in ecological and social affairs. The chapter then presents non-violence and poverty as spiritual notions and shows intermediary concepts and examples of feasible business models by which they could be applied in economic practices. Non-violence and peace can be the spirit of business strategies, and they have the potential to transform modern economic practices into a more humanistic and sustainable form.

In business, globalization refers to the process of integrating the economies of the world, which results in the emergence of an interdependent business world. Nations are now living in a globalized business world. The globalization process began in the 1980s, developed rapidly in the context of the Washington Consensus of the 1990s, and entered the new millennium with great fanfare. Booming consumerism, rapid economic growth, rising incomes, and massive financial flows and transactions became the order of the day. Hardware-industrial China and software-service India rode the wave. With a high growth rate, prosperity seemed unending.

Then the anticlimax of 2007–2008 and later occurred. Financial crisis emerged from sub-prime crisis, bank failures, sudden credit collapse, market uncertainties, stock market crash, and the disappearance of business confidence. The crises certainly ushered in a “Great Recession,” which through vigorous international efforts stopped falling short of a “Great Depression.” The focus has again turned on China and India who are expected to lead in the recovery.

Where did the world go wrong? Here comes the Gandhian Thought and Philosophy. The paper seeks to explain how “greed” overtook “need,” “speculation” overtook “sensible thinking,” “self-aggrandizement” overtook “trusteeship,” and “consumerism” overtook “modest consumption.” Business everywhere should have been based on trust, transparency, and truth. But this foundation seems to have disappeared. These facts are analyzed, the relevance of Gandhi is brought out, and future perspectives are discussed.

This paper aims to study boundary and interior layer phenomena in coupled multiscale parabolic convection–diffusion interface problems and to present their efficient numerical resolution and analysis.

This study includes cases in which the diffusion parameters are small, distinct and can differ in order of magnitude. The source term is considered to be discontinuous. The asymptotic behavior of the solution is examined. The layer structure is analyzed, leading to the development of a variant of layer-resolving Shishkin mesh. For efficient numerical resolution, two methods are developed by combining additive schemes on a uniform mesh to discretize in time and an upwind difference scheme away from the line of discontinuity and a specific upwind difference scheme along the line of discontinuity, defined on a variant of layer resolving Shishkin mesh, to discretize in space. The analysis of the numerical resolution is discussed using the barrier function approach. Numerical simulations provide a verification of the theory and efficiency of the approach.

The discontinuity in the source term, along with the inclusion of small and distinct diffusion parameters, results in multiple overlapping and interacting boundary and interior layers. The work demonstrates that the present approach is robust in resolving boundary and interior layers. From a computational cost perspective, the numerical resolution presented in the paper is more efficient than conventional approaches.

Efficient numerical resolution and analysis of boundary and interior layer phenomena in coupled multiscale parabolic convection–diffusion interface problems are provided. The discretization of the coupled system in the approach incorporates a distinctive feature, wherein the components of the approximate solution are decoupled at each time level, resulting in tridiagonal linear systems to be solved, in contrast to large banded linear systems with conventional approaches.

By the end of World War II, the world witnessed both military and peaceful uses of nuclear science. A number of countries and different sections of the international community strongly urged to avoid repetition of the devastation witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A world without nuclear weapons was a subject matter of not only pacifists but also of a large section of the world. The 2010 RevCon was held from 3 to 28 May 2010. The final document noted: ‘… the reaffirmation by the nuclear-weapon states of their unequivocal undertaking to accomplish, in accordance with the principle of irreversibility, the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament, to which all States parties are committed under article VI of the Treaty’. The 2010 RevCon also welcomed ‘the new proposals and initiatives from Governments and civil society related to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons’. Indeed, Obama, during his election campaign, spoke on the need for nuclear disarmament. So, should we conclude that global nuclear disarmament would materialize soon? What is the reality? If we take into account signals emitting from the postures and pronouncements of the nuclear weapons countries of the NPT and the influential section of the global civil society, we may find that global nuclear disarmament is somewhere between myth and super myth. A reality check would indicate that global nuclear disarmament would continue to elude us.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

Since its introduction by Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2007), Business Cycle Accounting (BCA) exercises have become widespread. Much attention has been devoted to the results of such exercises and to methodological departures from the baseline methodology. Little attention has been paid to identification issues within these classes of models. In this chapter, the authors investigate whether such issues are of concern in the original methodology and in an extension proposed by Šustek (2011) called Monetary Business Cycle Accounting. The authors resort to two types of identification tests in population. One concerns strict identification as theorized by Komunjer and Ng (2011) while the other deals both with strict and weak identification as in Iskrev (2010). Most importantly, the authors explore the extent to which these weak identification problems affect the main economic takeaways and find that the identification deficiencies are not relevant for the standard BCA model. Finally, the authors compute some statistics of interest to practitioners of the BCA methodology.