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Introduction: The insurance industry has unprecedented growth, and the demand for insurance has outgrown in the recent past due to the prevailing pandemic. The companies have a large base of the data set at their disposal, and companies must appropriately handle these data to come out with valuable solutions. Data mining enables insurance companies to gain an insightful approach to map strategies and gain competitive advantage, thus strengthening the profits that will allow them to identify the effectiveness of back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and support vector machines (SVMs) for the companies considered under study. Data mining techniques are the data-driven extraction techniques of information from large data repositories, thus discovering useful patterns from the voluminous data (Weiss & Indurkya, 1998).

Purpose: The present study is performed to investigate the comparative performance of BPNNs and SVMs for the selected Indian insurance companies.

Methodology: The study is conducted by extracting daily data of Indian insurance companies listed on the CNX 500. The data were then transformed into technical indicators for predictive model building using BPNN and SVMs. The daily data of the selected insurance companies for four years, that is, 1 April 2017 to 21 March 2021, were used for this. The data were further transformed into 90 data sets for different periods by categorising them into biannual, annual, and two-year collective data sets. Additionally, the comparison was made for the models generated with the help of BPNNs and SVMs for the six Indian insurance companies selected under this study.

Findings: The findings of the study exhibited that the predictive performance of the BPNN and SVM models are significantly different from each other for SBI data, General Insurance Corporation of India (GICRE) data, HDFC data, New India Assurance Company Ltd. (NIACL) data, and ICICIPRULI data at a 5% level of significance.

Revisits works considered as foundational to management theory and practice. Argues that Taylor, Fayol and Follett work to legitimize management as a body of knowledge, as a practice, and as a profession ‐ and further, as a utopian resolution of conflicts between workers and managers. Methodology is based on techniques of textual analysis and thus also discusses the contribution of such approaches to management history and the relationship of this analysis of Taylor, Fayol and Follett to contemporary themes in management theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the desired benefits affecting consumer’s attitude and attitude’s consequent influence on behavioral intentions toward pop-up retail, an experiential marketing practice emerging in Taiwan, and to explore the effect of individual differences (consumer innovativeness and materialism) on desired benefits and the moderating effect of cultural values (independent self/interdependent self-construal).

A survey containing modified scales, distributed to college students from various majors in ten Taiwanese universities, produced 902 useable responses. Structural equation modeling was employed to investigate the hypothesized relationships.

Hedonic benefits and a new utilitarian benefits variable (self-enhancement (SE)) influenced Taiwanese consumers’ attitude toward pop-up retail, and attitude affected patronage intentions. Consumer innovativeness and materialism affected desired benefits. Interdependent self-construal moderated the relationship between materialism and the perceived utilitarian benefit of SE.

Respondents from one narrow, but appropriate, demographic group in one non-western society were examined. Comparison across demographic groups and non-western and western societies would reveal the prevalence of SE associated with pop-up retail acceptance.

Pop-up shop design that emphasizes hedonic experience and social status of consumers could lead to successful experiential marketing in Taiwan and perhaps other Chinese societies.

This appears to be the first empirical study in English examining consumer acceptance of pop-up retail in a non-western society. It verifies the importance of the perceived utilitarian benefit (self-enhancement), absent in previous pop-up retail studies, and the impact of individual differences and cultural values on Taiwanese consumer behavior.

In recent years much attention has been paid to proposals reform the law on manufacturers' liability for defective oducts. In particular, the so‐called ‘Brussels Directive’, r the approximation of the laws of the member states of e European Economic Community relating to product bility, has excited great controversy. As early as 1976 e first formal proposals were made for a new strict bility regime and revised proposals were submitted to e Council of Ministers on 1st October 1979. The net sult so far has been nil, as member states have disagreed er certain key proposals in the Directive, and the ommunity Consumer Protection policy has floundered the general lack of political impetus generated by ccessive budgetary and agricultural crisis. Yet almost rreptitiously on the domestic front there have been portant developments which may well have the effect of rendering some parts of the E.E.C. proposals obsolete before they reach the statute book.

Discuss in detail the uses which might legitimately be made of the following passage by the writer of a profound study of economic life and thought in France at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. In answering the question make full use of your knowledge of (a) historical criticism; (b) French economic and general history.

This paper explores the relevance of Adam Smith’s invisible hand and the remainder of his legacy for public management. The paper’s central claim is that, by approaching Adam Smith and his legacy, public managers can assist themselves to do what they should do - examine their latent assumptions. The first of three challenges in approaching Adam Smith’s ideas is to get Smith right, because he has been widely misunderstood. The second is to question Smith’s account of conceptual space; it is desirable to go beyond him. The third challenge is to explore in specific terms the potential for public management of an understanding of Smith and his legacy

We encourage you to always indicate the source of your information on orders which you place as a result of an advertisement or other mention in RSR. The extra effort involved helps everyone concerned; certainly it helps the journal itself, which receives more in the way of financial support if it proves a good place to advertise, but it also helps each publisher or other organization because, by knowing where to most effectively place advertising, they thereby need to do less of it. In the end, however, libraries and librarians are the ultimate beneficiaries, insofar as periodicals are allowed to preserve lower subscription rates because of the amount of paid advertising they receive, and insofar as publishers and others are enabled to charge less for their products by knowing how and where to advertise them most economically. Recognition of your responsibility in this chain of communication is vitally important, for it directly affects the cost of goods and services which you pay for.

The University of Michigan owns one of the largest collections of ancient papyri. In 1991 a project was initiated to explore image capture of papyri in the Michigan collection with the use of electronic media (scanners), and to create a detailed online catalog with information relevant for all those involved in the study and research of the ancient Mediterranean world. In the summer of 1994, the Michigan papyrus collection underwent an extensive period of testing alternative media for image capture, as well as better, faster, and more efficient hardware and software. The collection created its own home page on the World Wide Web and made available sample images as a means of soliciting comments from the experts in the field of papyrology. The papyrus collection at Duke University has also launched a project similar to that envisioned by Michigan in 1991; and that project is now approaching completion. Further developments in the past two years have brought together the five largest papyrus collections in the United States to form a consortium known as the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS), which operates under the guidance of the American Society of Papyrologists (ASP).

In a world in which “England's green and pleasant land” sets the standard for garden excellence, gardeners in much of the United States will struggle in vain to adapt the British style to their own volatile climates. American regional gardening literature offers a new vision to help gardeners throughout the United States select plants suited to their climates (especially native plants) and use techniques to prevent losses to cold, heat, humidity, or drought. The resulting gardens may not always resemble the traditional English her baceous border, but their beauty and vigor will enhance the often monotonous American suburban landscape.

Introduction On 15 May 1891 Pope Leo XIII issued what has become known as “the Great Social Encyclical”, Rerum Novarum: De Conditione Opificum; or, “Revolutionary Change: On the Condition of the Working Classes”. Forty years thereafter, Pope Pius XI issued the second GSE, Quadragesimo Anno: On the Restoration of the Social Order (15 May 1931); and, in a string of papal pronouncements (allocutions, encyclical epistles and letters, etc.) and related Vatican documents ranging from Pius XII's brief Sertum laetitiae (1 Nov. 1939) and Radio Address of Pentacost 1941 celebrating the 50th anniversary of RN, e.g. via John XXIII's Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris (1961; 1963), …, John Paul II's Laborem Exercens: On Human Work and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: On Social Concern (1981; 1987), official “Social Catholicism” has continued to address itself to the so‐called “social question” over this near‐century. It is thus with some anticipation, and the prediction of a prominent US ordinary, that we await a major social encyclical letter on the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, perhaps with the opening words and title, Centesimo Anno: On the Social Question Today.