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The aim of this article is to assess the macroeconomic consequences of some specific aspects of financialization (i.e. share buy-back) using a hybrid post-Keynesian model of growth and distribution based on Kaldorian and Kaleckian characteristics.

The study follows a post-Keynesian approach and deals with financialization issues by implementing several numerical simulations.

The numerical simulations reveal the negative real impacts of massive share repurchases on the rate of accumulation because they immediately siphon off revenues directly intended for investment projects. Moreover, the negative effect of share buy-backs is reinforced especially when firms' investment decisions are more sensitive to a variation in retained earnings. Next, this macro-model also reproduces several well-known figures of the Kaleckian tradition and the paradox of costs.

The present article can be considered as a starting point for further theoretical extensions and requires empirical validation.

The Kaldor-Kalecki macro-model could be useful for policymakers who are interested in containing some of the negative excesses of financialization.

The purpose of this study is to discover what attributes of casino buffet restaurants are the most important for customers’ willingness to pay (WTP).

Choice-based conjoint analysis was used in this study to test seven attributes: food, price/value, real price, service, atmosphere, the number of reviews and user-generated star ratings. Sawtooth Software was used to do the conjoint analysis, and a series of significance t-tests were run to determine the significance of each attribute on WTP with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

Based on a survey of 483 respondents who had visited a buffet at a casino within the last two years, this study found that food is ranked as the most significant attribute of a casino buffet restaurant, followed by real price and service quality.

Theoretically, this work is the first to the authors’ knowledge to apply the antecedents of behavioral intention to willingness-to-pay for niche restaurants. Practically, the results of this study will help casino buffet operators as they re-open after COVID-19. Future studies could collect data in the post-pandemic environment and examine WTP at casino buffets in different geographic locations.

It has been suggested that homicides in Jamaica are partly driven by conflicts among criminals over funds coming from international lottery scams; most of these funds are channeled into the country via remittances. This study aims to determine the empirical relationship between remittances and homicides in Jamaica over the period 1985–2019.

The authors apply an error correction modelling framework while accounting for indicators of changes in socioeconomic conditions.

There are two. First, the authors find from impulse response analysis of the long-run dynamics that an increase in remittances is associated with an increase in homicides, and vice versa. Second, the authors find that there is bidirectional Granger causality between remittances and homicides in the short run.

Two important implications are that policies should be strengthened to channel remittances to productive and legal investment opportunities and that greater efforts may be needed to stem the flow of funds coming from international lottery scamming and other illegal activities.

This is the first study that examines the dynamic relationship between remittances and homicides in Jamaica from a robust statistical perspective.

Public debt forecasts represent a key policy issue. Many methodologies have been employed to predict debt sustainability, including dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models, the stock flow consistent method, the structural vector autoregressive model and, more recently, the neuro-fuzzy method. Despite their widespread application in the empirical literature, all of these approaches exhibit shortcomings that limit their utility. The present research adopts a different approach to public debt forecasts, that is, the random forest, an ensemble of machine learning.

Using quarterly observations over the period 2000–2021, the present research tests the reliability of the random forest technique for forecasting the Italian public debt.

The results show the large predictive power of this method to forecast debt-to-GDP fluctuations, with no need to model the underlying structure of the economy.

Compared to other methodologies, the random forest method has a predictive capacity that is granted by the algorithm itself. The use of repeated learning, training and validation stages provides well-defined parameters that are not conditional to strong theoretical restrictions This allows to overcome the shortcomings arising from the traditional techniques which are generally adopted in the empirical literature to forecast public debt.

Countries worldwide aim to improve their comparative advantages by efficiently using scarce resources for economic growth and development. While many studies have been conducted to measure intellectual capital at the firm's level, measuring it at the national level has been under-examined. In addition, while the important role of national intellectual capital in economic growth has been theoretically recognized in literature, this important link has largely been ignored in empirical analyses.

This study uses the newly developed index of national intellectual capital from Vo and Tran's (2022) study to examine its effects on national economic growth in the long run. The dynamic common correlated effects technique and the pooled mean group estimation are used on the sample of 23 economies in the Asia–Pacific region from 2000 to 2020.

Findings from this study confirm the positive and significant contribution of the national intellectual capital to economic growth in the region. The authors also find that, as a feedback effect, economic growth will also enhance and improve the accumulation of national intellectual capital.

The findings of this paper provide valuable evidence and implications for policymakers in managing and improving national intellectual capital in the Asia–Pacific region.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to examine the impact of national intellectual capital on economic growth in the long run in the Asia–Pacific economies.

The measurement of regional competitiveness is becoming essential for policymakers to address territorial disparities, while considering the issue of correlations among indicators. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to measure regional competitiveness using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) by considering different distance measures and two levels of analysis to provide a comparative and comprehensive measurement of regional competitiveness in Europe.

The authors apply TOPSIS based on three different distance measures (the Manhattan, the Euclidean and the Mahalanobis distance measures) to the regions of the EU Regional Competitiveness Index (RCI) 2019, which is taken as the frame of reference.

The authors replicate the RCI by using TOPSIS with a less preferred choice of distance measure, indicating TOPSIS as a valuable method for policymakers in the analysis of regional competitiveness. The authors argue in favour of the Mahalanobis distance measure as the best of the three, as it considers correlations among macro-economic indicators.

This study aims to make three contributions. Firstly, by replicating the RCI by means of TOPSIS with a less preferred choice of distance measure, the paper provides a benchmark for future research on regional competitiveness. Secondly, by suggesting the use of TOPSIS with the use of the Mahalanobis distance measure, the authors show how to measure regional competitiveness by taking into account correlations among pillars. Thirdly, the authors argue in favour of considering clusters of regions when measuring regional competitiveness.

Passive investing has established itself as the dominant force in the world of professionally managed assets, surpassing the concept of index funds. Its meteoric rise is fueled by investors’ preference for its dual benefits of strong diversification and low cost. A comprehensive study of the economic model, addressed areas and market structure has not yet been conducted, despite the existence of numerous studies on more specific topics. To address this gap, this paper examines 943 articles on passive investing published between 1998 and 2022 in SCOPUS and Web of Science.

The study utilizes the most pertinent tools for conducting a systematic review by the PRISMA framework. This article is the result of SLR and extensive bibliometric analysis. Contextualized systematic literature review is used to screen and select bibliographic data, which is then subjected to a variety of bibliometric analyses. The study provides a bibliometric overview of works on passive investment research that are indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. Bibliometrix, VoS Viewer and Cite Space are the tools used to conduct content and network analysis, to ascertain the present state of research, as well as its focus and direction.

Our exhaustive analysis yields important findings. One, the previous decade has witnessed a substantial increase in the number of publications and citations; in particular, the inter-disciplinary and international scope of related research has expanded; Second, the top three clusters on “active versus passive funds,” “price discovery and market structures” and “exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as an alternative” account for more than fifty percent of the domain’s knowledge; Third, “Leveraged ETFs (LETFs)” and “environmental, social and governance (ESG)” are the two emerging themes in the passive investing research. Fourth, despite its many benefits, passive investing is not suitable for everyone. To get the most out of what passive investing has to offer, investors, intermediaries and regulators must all exercise sufficient caution. Our study makes a substantial contribution to the field by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the existing literature, highlighting key findings and implications, as well as future research directions.

While the study contributes significantly to the field of knowledge, it has several limitations that must be considered when interpreting its findings and implications. With our emphasis on academic journals, the study analyzed only peer-reviewed journal articles, excluding conference papers, reports and technical articles. While we are confident that our approach resulted in a comprehensive and representative database, our reliance on Elsevier Scopus and Web of Science may have resulted in us overlooking relevant work accessible only through other databases. Additionally, specific bibliometric properties may not be time-stable, and certain common distribution patterns of the passive investing literature may still be developing.

With this study, it has been possible to observe and chart the high growth trajectory of passive investing research globally, especially post-US subprime crisis. Despite the widespread adoption of passive investing as an investment strategy, it is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Market conditions change constantly, and it frequently requires an informed eye to determine when and how much to shift away from active investments and toward passive ones. Currency ETFs enable investors to implement a carry trade strategy in their portfolios; however, as a word of caution, currency stability and liquidity can play a significant role in international ETFs. Similarly, LETFs may be better suited for dynamic strategies and offer less value to a long-term investor. Lastly, the importance of investor education cannot be underestimated in the name of the highly diversified portfolio when using passive alternatives, for which necessary efforts are required by regulators and investors alike.

The inexorable trend to passive investing creates numerous issues for fund management, including fee and revenue pressure, which forces traditional managers to seek new revenue streams, such as illiquid and private assets, which also implies increased portfolio risk. Additionally, the increased transparency and efficiency associated with the ETF market indicates that managers must rethink the entire value chain, beginning with technology and the way investments interact. Passive investments have triggered changes in market structure that are still not fully understood or factored in. Active management and a range of valuation opinions on whether a price is “too low” or “too high” provide much-needed depth to a market as it attempts to strike a delicate balance between demand and supply forces, ensuring liquidity at all price points.

I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this paper and that no part of this manuscript has been published or submitted for publication.

This paper aims to explore the impact of corporate financialization (CF) on green innovation (GI) and further disclose the moderating role of CEO’s individual characteristics in such relationship from the perspective of corporate governance.

This paper uses empirical research methods to study the impact of CF on GI based on the evidence from China capital market.

The findings indicate that: CF has a significant inhibiting effect on GI; female CEOs weaken the inhibiting effect of CF on GI compared to male CEOs; and CEO’s financial background positively moderates the inhibiting effect of CF on GI.

This paper, first, supplements the research literature on the economic consequences of CF and influencing factors of GI in non-financial firms. Then, it opens up the internal impact mechanism of CF on GI, which is moderated by the individual characteristics of corporate CEOs. Finally, it provides important reference for how to suppress CF of non-financial firms, cultivate CEOs that meet the needs of corporate development and promote GI development of enterprises through empirical evidence from China.

While the extant literature has explored issues related to the access, usage and availability of financial services, the ability of households to withstand financial adversities, particularly those living under economically vulnerable conditions, requires further attention. The paper presents a gendered analysis of financial resilience behaviour in South Africa.

Using a nationally representative sample of 4,880 households, this paper constructs a financial resilience behaviour index (FRBI) covering savings, credit, insurance, and retirement planning behaviours. The gendered effect of demographic characteristics on financial resilience is examined using the ordinary least square and seemingly unrelated regression techniques.

The results show that low levels of financial resilience were present across the sample with insurance observed to be the greatest driver of financial resilience, followed by retirement planning, savings and credit respectively. Furthermore, the analysis highlights that a gender gap in financial resilience exists as men are characterized with higher financial resilience behaviour compared to women. The results also suggest that employed women and women with higher levels of education are associated with greater financial resilience.

Based on these results, improving access to higher education and employment opportunities for women will enhance their financial resilience and contribute towards addressing SDG (5) on gender equality.

As far as the authors are aware, this paper presents the first empirical analysis of the gender gaps in socio-demographic characteristics that explain financial resilience in South Africa.

This study aims to present the perspectives of heterodox economics and Islamic economics on environmental economics, as an alternative to mainstream economics, which takes economic growth as its main objective and argues that environmental problems will largely disappear when economic growth is achieved.

In this study, there was no intention to conduct a detailed analysis of heterodox economic models and Islamic economics. Instead, the approaches to the “environment,” which can be considered as an urgent need of the planet, were evaluated, and the inadequate proposals of the mainstream economics’ environmental approach were theoretically criticized and heterodox economics and Islamic economics were proposed as an alternative model.

Heterodox and Islamic economics offer alternative models of development prioritizing social and ecological justice to address environmental problems, which is in contrast to mainstream economics’ narrow focus on market mechanisms and individual rationality. Thus, engaging in more dialogue in the context of the environment is inevitable for both schools, considering the vast geography inhabited by Muslims and the proposed heterodox economic policies, and moreover, these approaches are modeled for the first time.

This article presents a synthesis of Islamic economics and heterodox thinking in contrast to mainstream economic policy, highlighting their similarities and differences and providing a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities and potential solutions of environmental problems. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this approach has not been previously explored, making it an original contribution to the literature.