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Digital financial inclusion is a need of the recent era in order to flourish the growth of economies as well as businesses and individuals. Thus, varieties of digital technologies are launched to provide ease and leverage to customers’ financial needs. Among the well-known digital technologies, Fintech emerged as a well-known and accepted form of digital technologies. However, the acceptance level is much lower, especially in developing sides of the world like Pakistan where issues related to cyber-security are the major hindrance in the way of digitization and n-tier online payments. However, with a massive youth population, Pakistan also has the opportunity to use Fintech as the major tool for economic and social development. Therefore, this chapter has been written purposely to shed light on the importance, use, and role of Fintech in the growth of developing countries like Pakistan. The purpose is to increase the knowledge of youth about financial technologies especially Fintech so they may embrace their abilities with technological innovation, especially for their financial needs. On the other side, the chapter will also address the lack of research on this emerging trend to diverge the focus of researchers and academicians towards Fintech and its uses, scope, implications, and benefits for developing countries.

Existing models of gift applied to religious charities are either abstract or sometimes very limited in their applicability to understand the reciprocal relationships throughout the interconnected chain of giving and receiving charities. The paper contributes to this debate by asking: How gift economy explains the circulation of charities across interconnected spheres of local governance? And what are the implications of these inter-linkages for social welfare provisions where states are ineffective in the provision of these services? To answer these questions, the study presents the case of Zakat in Islam and Dasvandh in Sikhism in the northwest of Pakistan. In both the cases, charity is an important element of the social welfare provision within local governance structure. The findings suggest that conceptualizations of the religious charities as a triad including God, the rich and the poor are unsuitable gift models for grasping the role of charities in the local governance of social welfare provision.

Business simulation games (BSGs) are gaining popularity in higher education as tools for entrepreneurial education. However, there are challenges in using BSGs for large classes of students in historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs). The challenges include limited resources and digital literacy skills.

The living standards measure (LSM) indicates socioeconomic status by measuring the degree of urbanisation, access to services and possession of assets, such as mobile phones. This research investigated the impact of students' living standards on their intention to use BSGs, as there is limited research.

This study used positivism and added LSM to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. Quantitative data from 224 third-year information system students at an HDI were collected through an online survey. Structured Equation Modelling was used to analyse the data.

Results indicated that performance expectancy and social influence significantly influenced the intention to use BSGs. However, the relationship between effort expectancy and behavioural intention facilitating conditions was not significant. The introduction of LSM as a moderator for the relationships between all variables and behavioural intention also proved to be insignificant.

The result was unexpected, as we posited that a lower LSM would affect students' intention to use BSGs. This was not proven in this study and could be related to students accessing campus resources. However, during times when access to campus is restricted, such as protest action, the result may change for students with lower LSM.

Drawing findings from the river erosion-prone district Bhola in Bangladesh, this study presents the nature and causes of human displacement and the types of resilience livelihood options for reducing risks caused by river erosion. The study used a quantitative research approach, in which a survey was employed. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with 371 heads of households from three unions of three Upazilas (sub-divisions) in the Bhola District. Results showed that 95% of the households were displaced by river erosion, 54% of them were displaced two to four times in the last five years, 30% of the households were displaced to embankments, and 22% were displaced to their relatives’ houses. Nearly 70% of the households reported river erosion as a main cause and 42% referred other disasters. Regarding livelihood options, 47% of the households desired to engage in fishing labour, 44% in day labour, and 33% in independent fishing. During river erosion, 93% of the household members had to engage in income-generating activities, and one-half of them had to change their livelihood options. Finding new livelihood options and resilience strategies to reduce displacement would be an important guideline for disaster managers, policy-makers, and development practitioners.

Nation-states, researchers, and organizations realized the pivotal role of social entrepreneurship in economic development in the recent two decades. The body of knowledge in this domain witnessed consistent research growth but it still lacks a critical review to guide future researchers. This chapter contributes to the body of knowledge by presenting the first bibliometric analysis (using software such as HistCite, VOSviewer, and Biblioshiny). The relevant articles were searched in the Web of Science (WOS) database to ensure the inclusion of high-quality research. Among 910 initially retrieved publications 86 most relevant publications were included in the final dataset. The analysis included various bibliometrics and visualization maps such as the publication trends, most influential articles and journals, most productive countries and organizations, co-citation analysis, and thematic clustering of the research. The findings showed an overall consistent growth in research publications during the last 16 years (2005–2020) with Social entrepreneurship and enterprise: international and innovation perspectives' as the most influential article, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development as the most influential journal, and the United States and the United Kingdom as the most productive countries. The keyword co-occurrence analysis exposed five thematic clusters within the selected dataset indicating a relatively less focus on economic development aspects. Thus, future research should explore how social entrepreneurship, while solving social, cultural, environmental, and community issues, contributes to economic development. The research implications and limitations are discussed in the end.

Is India backing out from its commitment to No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons (NWs)? It was a highly debated issue in newspapers and electronic media in August 2019. What triggered this question? In this chapter, I intend to, after explaining significance of NWs in Indian defence strategy and nuclear doctrine that includes Indian commitment to NFU of NWs, answer the two questions raised in reverse order briefly.

The unstable money demand function over the recent decades may explain the unsatisfactory performance of the exchange rate model. Numerous studies have shown that Divisia money serves as a better variable for a stable money demand function. In this study, Divisia money is used as an alternative money supply in MYR/USD exchange rate determination. This study finds that Divisia money differential, real income differential, relative short-term interest rate and real stock prices affect the MYR/USD exchange rate in the long run. The major implication of this study is that policy-makers could monitor the MYR/USD exchange rate via the money supplies following the principle of Divisia monetary aggregate, which assigns higher weightage to more frequently traded monetary assets.

Automated vehicles are likely to have significant impacts on the transport system such as increased road capacity, more productive/enjoyable time spent travelling in a car, and increased vehicle kilometres travelled. However, there is a great risk that automated driving may negatively impact the environment if adequate policies are not put in place. This chapter examines the effects of driverless vehicles and the types of policies required to attain sustainable implementation of the technology. To understand the effects on a systemic level, and to understand the needs and impacts of policies, the dynamics must be understood. Therefore, a causal loop diagram (CLD) is developed and analysed. One important insight is that the effects of driverless vehicles are mainly on the vehicular level (e.g., the reduced number of accidents per vehicle). These effects can be cancelled out on a systemic level (e.g., due to increased vehicle-kilometre travelled (VKT) that increases total number of accidents). The marginal costs of road transport are central to both freight and passenger transport. Automation will reduce marginal costs and shift the equilibrium in the transport system towards a state with higher VKT. This will lead to greater energy consumption and higher emissions. To attain sustainability goals, there might be a need to balance this reduction of marginal costs by using policy instruments. In the work, CLDs is experienced to be a useful tool to support the collaboration between experts from different fields in the dialogue about policies.