Search results

By examining the impact of the day of the week during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic recession, it is possible to provide insights into market behaviour during volatile times that can be furnished to investors and policymakers for informed decisions.

This study investigates the day-of-the-week effect on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), with particular emphasis on the variations in this effect during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis.

The study applies the Exponential Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model, allowing for the evaluation of asymmetric responses to positive and negative shocks. The data span from January 2006 to December 2022 and are segmented into different periods: the entire sample, war and post-war periods, the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis period, each reflecting distinct market conditions.

The study uncovers a significant day-of-the-week effect on the CSE. Mondays and Tuesdays typically show a negative effect, while Thursdays and Fridays display a positive impact. However, this pattern shifts notably during the COVID-19 pandemic, with all weekdays exhibiting significant positive impact, and varies further across different waves of the pandemic. The economic crisis period also shows unique weekday effects, particularly before and after an important political event.

In this chapter, the author dwells on the effects of documenting and the failure to document, border lives and deaths. Despite their apparent differences, both practices function as forms of erasure. While the Australian government has historically been keen to document the number of asylum seeker arrivals in this country, it has shown no interest in the numbers and names of those who have died in attempting to arrive here. In contrast, those who manage to cross the border, are subject to intense classificatory and numbering regimes. The latter manifests in bureaucratic control and excessive intervention, while the former reveals governmental denial of complicity in these deaths by not acknowledging them. Both practices share a refusal to encounter the other on ethical terms, reflecting the politics of numbers (Andreas & Greenhill, 2010) at and within the border. This also reveals a paradox, between being represented and not being represented. In the lacuna of details about border deaths, human rights organisations, researchers and advocacy groups have sought both to honour these deaths and to ensure that the scale of border violence is marked by statistical records on the numbers of border deaths. While it might seem that being ‘counted’ – or in Butler’s (2003, p. 41) terms – ‘represented’ is better than not being counted/represented at all, representation is never straightforward (Szörényi, 2009b, p. 185): being counted is often barely a form of representation, with such ‘numbering’ practices contributing to the effacement, rather than the recognition of refugees’ humanity.

A relocalization movement, often referred to as neolocalism, is a foot with the aim of rekindling local and regional bonds between people and communities by intentionally and comprehensively crafting senses of place through various promotional strategies. Local-scale businesses often contribute to neolocal efforts through the integration of “place” with their brand development and marketing schemes. Together such efforts converge to form local consumption spaces that foster both economic vibrancy and social cohesion within and across communities. While sometimes recognized as a secondary benefit, environmental stewardship has yet to be fully developed as a neolocal construct and consistent trait of local consumption spaces. In this chapter, an extensive review of the intersection between the environmentalism, neolocalism, and eco-entrepreneurship literature is used to conceptually frame the notion of eco-consumption spaces. The insights generated lead to a proposed research agenda that includes recommendations pertaining to both empirical settings and methodological strategies.

This chapter provides a decolonial critique of Kenya’s encampment and asylum policy. By using a decolonial framework, the chapter examines how asylum, a supposedly humanitarian gesture, has become a political tool of deterrence, dehumanisation and detention in this country. In examining the camp through a decolonial lens, the author advances an Afrocentric perspective and foregrounds that asylum policy across the African continent, which is largely focussed on keeping asylum seekers on this continent, should be understood against the context of colonial relations in Africa. The author contrasts Kenya’s refugee camp with Australia’s offshore detention camp. Central to the author’s critique is Australia’s outsourcing of its offshore detention camps to Papua New Guinea and Nauru which epitomises a neo-colonial engagement with these post-colonies. Inspired by the author’s personal experience as a former refugee, this chapter also challenges refugee literature which is dominated by voices either without lived experience of the camp or produce work that is inadequately attentive to such knowledge.