Search results

This study aims to show the complexities of engagement between students - Venezuelan and Brazilian - and their teachers. This qualitative ethnographic study documents the everyday pedagogies and practices that take place in elementary schools with high levels of refugee and immigrant children. While Brazilian law ensures the basic right to public education, forbidding discrimination based on nationality or immigration status (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação, 1996), the barriers remain. Through the frameworks of multicultural (USA) and intercultural (Brazil) education, this paper shows how Brazilian teachers and students of Venezuelan and Brazilian backgrounds engage, learn from one another and build welcoming spaces, but also how stereotypes are reinforced inside classrooms and schools.

This qualitative study uses ethnography to understand how recent Venezuelan migratory flow influences Brazilian and Venezuelan children’s educational experiences in elementary education. Participants were Venezuelan (N = 57) and Brazilian (N = 76) children in two elementary schools in the city of Boa Vista. Data sources for the study are school observations in four elementary classrooms (1st and 2nd grade) and semi-structured interviews with caregivers, teachers, administrators and other educators. This paper also collected children’s drawings and writings and documents like curricula, strategic planning, guidelines, policies, grades, reports and any other textual or photographic material made available at the city level.

In the field of education, there is a critical need for understanding children’s education experiences. This paper focuses on the experiences of teachers and students in two elementary schools in Brazil. This paper focus on two findings: first that teachers promote the learning of Portuguese to show care toward their Venezuelan students. Second, children in the classroom show solidarity with one another and resist some of the more rigid Portuguese-only practices enacted by teachers. This work uses the frameworks of intercultural (more commonly used in Brazil) and multicultural education to inform the analysis.

In this study, this paper puts these frameworks of interculturalism, multiculturalism, language use and solidarity into conversation to understand the dynamics of two elementary classrooms in the city of Boa Vista, Brazil. While this paper shows the shortcomings of a seemingly multicultural and multilanguage classroom, it also shows how children actively resist the rigidity of teaching and learning in elementary schooling.

This study is a response both to the increasing South–South migration trend in Latin America and its consequences on public education systems. Through multicultural and intercultural lenses, this research highlighted the complexity of interactions within multicultural classrooms by delving into a two-year ethnographic study conducted in Boa Vista, Brazil, focusing on Venezuelan and Brazilian children in two local elementary schools. This paper focused on two main observations this paper refers to as “Teaching Portuguese as a Way of Caring” and “Children's Solidarity Work.” Teachers primarily centered their instruction on teaching Portuguese to migrant children, believing it to lead to quicker integration in the classroom and beyond – thus as a way of caring for their migrant students.

This study examines the linear and non-linear effects of enterprise risk management (ERM) and corporate governance (CG) on insurers’ risk-taking behaviour.

The study employed panel data of 63 insurers from South Africa over the period 2015 and 2019. The study used the generalised method of moments (GMM) to determine the direct relationship, while the dynamic panel threshold technique was utilised to discover whether there is non-linearity in the relationship and the threshold level at which ERM and CG stimulate insurance risk-taking.

The result from the GMM elicits a positive relationship between ERM and risk-taking, implying that insurers with a robust ERM system are more likely to pursue higher risks. The empirical evidence also suggests that board size and board independence improve insurers’ risk-taking. Contrarily, gender diversity shows an inverse relationship with risk-taking. The dynamic panel threshold regression confirms non-linearities between ERM, CG and risk-taking. The empirical evidence indicates a U-shaped relationship between ERM and risk-taking, implying that a robust ERM system increases insurers’ risk-taking and vice-versa. Further, board size and independence reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship, suggesting that larger boards and a higher proportion of independent directors exhibit lower risk-taking. However, gender diversity presents a negative relationship, demonstrating a strong impact at higher threshold levels. This tells that the presence of females on the board reduces insurers’ risk-taking preferences.

Due to the risk-bearing nature of the insurance business, it is required that they ensure a robust ERM system for prudent risk-taking decisions. This demands strict adherence to ERM principles and allocating sufficient resources for effective implementation. Also, there is a need for strong CG structures that pay more attention to diversity when selecting board members due to their influence in ensuring improved risk-taking choices.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into the under-researched role of ERM and CG in insurers’ risk-taking behaviour. The study further extends the literature by providing evidence on the non-linearity and threshold levels at which ERM and CG influence insurers’ risk-taking choices. The findings are unique and contribute to the growing body of literature documenting the need for strong ERM and CG systems in insurance companies.

Firms are the primary producers of innovations, and understanding how these agents acquire, update and manage the knowledge of their employees is central to understanding economic growth. However, in developing economies, technology adaptation plays a critical role in innovation compared to knowledge creation. Thus, this research investigates the role of human capital in innovation at the firm level in the case of a small developing economy, which ranks highly on several human capital dimensions but shows declining levels of investment in advanced human capital development in its manufacturing sector.

This research examines the relationship between innovation and human capital at the firm level in a small peripheral economy. The human capital theory is applied to a firm context to understand variations in innovative behavior depending on the size of manufacturing companies. The effect of several human capital dimensions on product innovation is estimated by applying binomial logistic regression models with firm and time-fixed effects.

This article contributes to innovation economics and public policy by highlighting that not all dimensions of human capital operate similarly for all companies in the context of developing economies. In such settings, technology adaptation plays a critical role in innovation. While employees' human capital endowments significantly impact small firms in that context, firm-level practices such as internal training are crucial for large companies. Consequently, policymakers should consider that firms' human capital endowments impact their innovative behavior differently to avoid one-size-fits-all policy design approaches in this regard.

Prior research on the relationship between human capital and innovation in developing economies was based on a cross-sectional approach. This research's unique panel dataset covering 11-year triennial innovation surveys enabled a modeling strategy that controls for time-invariant unobservable firm characteristics. Three aspects of firms' human capital have been analyzed human capital endowments, internal training and human resource management (HRM) practices for the first time longitudinally in a developing economy, enabling to contrast of empirical findings with policy design.

This study utilizes cultural values from the World Values Survey (WVS) to investigate the cultural hypothesis regarding economic growth. Following Granato et al.'s (1996) theory, this paper describes a systematic method for developing analytical models that clarify the effect of cultural values on economic growth by using seemingly unrelated regression (SUR).

The results are sustained through regression analysis using ordinary least squares (OLS) and SUR. The sample size covers all WVS countries from the third wave in 1994 to the seventh wave in 2021, due to the limited sample size in the first and second surveys, which is insufficient for estimation.

Results highlight culture as a crucial factor for economic growth. Although the study found a positive effect of autonomy, life satisfaction, and post-materialism on economic growth, trust has been found to have a negative impact.

Although the literature has theoretically proven the impact of cultural values on economic growth, there is a significant disparity in the empirical studies, owing to a lack of applied studies. This study deepens the cultural analysis compared to earlier empirical investigations. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to assess the combined effect of the selected four cultural values on economic growth during 1994 and 2021. Furthermore, SUR analysis allows for the estimation of the variables' effects throughout the five waves.

As little is known about the productivity levels of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engaging with universities and the relative changes in productivity of SMEs subsequent to these collaborations, the paper examines the following questions: (1) Does the relative productivity of SMEs engaging in university collaboration differ from those that do not? (2) Are subsequent changes in firm productivity following university collaboration related to their initial levels of productivity?

The paper utilises data on 254 SMEs from the Longitudinal Small Business Survey and uses two statistical techniques: First, bivariate tests of difference were used to inspect the relationships between productivity levels and whether the firm collaborated with a university to introduce its innovation. Second, ordinary least squares regressions were used to test whether the future productivity of SMEs that collaborated with universities was related to their initial productivity levels.

The analysis reveals that SME–university collaboration is unrelated to starting productivity. Furthermore, the analysis suggests a nonlinear relationship exists between the starting productivity of SMEs and their subsequent productivity following a university collaboration. Therefore, higher levels of subsequent productivity are observed among those SMEs where starting productivity was either relatively low or high, suggesting that collaborations have a transformative effect on SMEs with relatively lower initial levels of productivity and a maintenance effect for SMEs with relatively higher levels of initial productivity.

Given the fact that the extant literature also suggests that, overall, university collaboration is beneficial, policymakers should strive to encourage greater levels of collaboration involving SMEs. In light of the evidence that SME–university collaborations can transform less productive firms, it appears unjustified for practitioners and policymakers to only consider stronger-performing firms to be included in such programmes.

The study contributes new theoretical and practical knowledge to the understanding of the role of firm productivity in predicting the proclivity of firms to collaborate with universities. Furthermore, as few studies have examined the impact of these collaborations on the subsequent productivity of firms that collaborate with universities, this paper fills an existing gap in the literature.

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.

The study seeks evidence on the asymmetric effects of broad money growth on inflation in the short run and long run, in the context of emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs).

Using a panel dataset of 122 EMDEs (by distinguishing between inflation-targeting and non-inflation-targeting EMDEs), we employ the nonlinear counterpart of the autoregressive distributed lag framework, which provides evidence of asymmetric dynamics between money growth and inflation in EMDEs.

In consonance with the quantity theory of money, we find a long-run relationship between money growth and inflationary outcomes. We also find that the response of inflation is higher to a tightening episode in the monetary policy stance than to a loosening episode. The study also provides evidence that adopting the inflation targeting framework in EMDEs has led to a significant reduction in the inflation rates along with ensuring a higher magnitude of transmission from money supply growth to inflationary outcomes.

To the best of our knowledge, the present study is one of the first attempts to evaluate the differential impact of broad money growth on inflationary outcomes, using a panel dataset of EMDEs. As a result of inherent differences in the financial structures of EMDEs vis-à-vis advanced nations, there is an imperative need to assess the dynamics of pass-through from money supply to inflation to gain an understanding of the mechanism of monetary transmission in these economies.

Our study aims to evaluate the impact of infrastructure and public investment on private investment in machinery and equipment in Brazil from 1947 to 2017. The contribution of our article to the existing literature lies in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the presence or absence of the crowding effect in the Brazilian economy by leveraging an extensive historical database. Our central argument posits that the recent decline in private capital accumulation over the last few decades can be attributed to shifts in economic policies – moving from a developmentalist orientation to nondevelopmental guidance since the early 1990s, which is reflected in the diminished levels of public investment and infrastructure since the 1980s.

We conducted a series of econometric regressions utilizing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model as our chosen econometric methodology.

Employing two different variables to measure public investment and infrastructure, our results – robust across various specifications – have substantiated the existence of a crowding-in effect in Brazil over the examined period. Thus, we have empirical evidence indicating that the state has influenced private capital accumulation in the Brazilian economy over the past decades.

Our article contributes to the existing literature by offering a more comprehensive understanding of the crowding effect in the Brazilian economy, utilizing an extensive historical database.