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In this paper, we evaluated the impact of the US “Chip Act” on the participation of the Chinese electronics industry in the global value chain based on the dynamic CGE model. This is a meaningful attempt to use the GTAP-VA model to analyze the electronics industry in China.

We employ a Dynamic GTAP-VA Model to quantitatively evaluate the economic repercussions of the “Chip Act” on the Chinese electronic industries' GVC participation from 2023 to 2040.

The findings depict a discernible contraction in China’s electronic sector by 2040, marked by a −2.95% change in output, a −3.50% alteration in exports and a 0.45% increment in imports. Concurrently, the U.S., EU and certain Asian economies exhibit expansions within the electronic sector, indicating a GVC realignment. The “Chip Act” implementation precipitates a significant divergence in GVC participation across different countries and industries, notably impacting the electronics sector.

Through a meticulous temporal analysis, this manuscript unveils the nuanced economic shifts within the GVC, substantially bridging the empirical void in existing literature. This narrative accentuates the profound implications of policy regulations on global trade dynamics, contributing to the discourse on international economic policy and industry evolution.

We evaluated the impact of the US “Chip Act” on the participation of the Chinese electronics industry in the global value chain based on the dynamic CGE model. This is a meaningful attempt to use the GTAP-VA model to analyze the electronics industry in China.

The interaction between policy regulations and global value chain (GVC) dynamics is pivotal in understanding the contemporary global trade framework, especially within technology-driven sectors. The US “Chips Act” represents a significant regulatory milestone with potential ramifications on the Chinese electronic industries' engagement in the GVC.

The significance of this paper is that it quantifies for the first time the impact of the US Chip Act on the GVC participation index of East Asian countries in the context of US-China decoupling. With careful consideration of strategic aspects, this paper substantially fills the empirical gap in the existing literature by presenting subtle economic changes within GVCs, highlighting the profound implications of policy regulation on global trade dynamics.

This study investigates the efficiency of value relevance and faithful representation when stock market price derivates from its firm value to the investigated IT companies listed in FTSE Taiwan 50. The empirical investigation reveals one financial indicators: Return on equity (ROE) has explanatory ability among seven financial indicators, earnings per share (EPS), book value (BV), dividend yield (Div.), price–earnings ratio (P/E), ROE, return on assets (ROA), and return on operating asset (ROOA) to both sampled companies, United Microelectronics Corporation, UMC, (2303) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, TSMC, (2330). Furthermore, the empirical results indicate that the higher order moments, skewness and kurtosis, of price deviation do not provide a reliable prediction or explanatory power for stock price trends.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.

The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.

The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.

The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.

Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.

There are several lead-free solder alloys available in the industry. Over the years, the most favorable solder composition of tin-silver-copper (Sn-Ag-Cu [SAC]) has been vastly used and accepted for joining the electronic components. It is strongly believed that the silver (Ag) content has a significant impact on the solder mechanical behavior and thus solder thermal reliability performance. This paper aims to assess the mechanical response, i.e. creep response, of the SAC solder alloys with various Ag contents.

A three-dimensional nonlinear finite element simulation is used to investigate the thermal cyclic behavior of several SAC solder alloys with various silver percentages, including 1%, 2%, 3% and 4%. The mechanical properties of the unleaded interconnects with various Ag amounts are collected from reliable literature resources and used in the analysis accordingly. Furthermore, the solder creep behavior is examined using the two famous creep laws, namely, Garofalo’s and Anand’s models.

The nonlinear computational analysis results showed that the silver content has a great influence on the solder behavior as well as on thermal fatigue life expectancy. Specifically, solders with relatively high Ag content are expected to have lower plastic deformations and strains and thus better fatigue performance due to their higher strengths and failure resistance characteristics. However, such solders would have contrary fatigue performance in drop and shock environments and the low-Ag content solders are presumed to perform significantly better because of their higher ductility.

Generally, this research recommends the use of SAC solder interconnects of high silver contents, e.g. 3% and 4%, for designing electronic assemblies continuously exposed to thermal loadings and solders with relatively low Ag-content, i.e. 1% and 2%, for electronic packages under impact and shock loadings.

Unlike traditional industries, the e-cigarette is an epoch-making innovative product originating in China and occupying an absolute competitive advantage in the international market. The traditional A-U model describes the laws and characteristics of technological innovation in developed countries. In contrast, the inverse A-U model depicts the process of “secondary innovation” in late-developing countries through digestion and absorption. This paper aims to find out that if the e-cigarette, as a “first innovation” industry in a late-developing country, conform to the A-U model or conform to the “inverse A-U model”.

This paper takes the patent data of e-cigarettes from 2004 to 2021 as the research object, and uses Python’s Jieba segment words to divide product innovation and process innovation, and then uses statistical analysis methods to conduct empirical analyses on these data.

Thus, an improved A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry is proposed. In this model, product innovation in the e-cigarette industry appeared earlier than process innovation, but the synchronous development of product and process innovation is not lagging. The improved A-U model in the e-cigarette industry is not only different from the traditional A-U model but also does not conform to the inverse A-U model.

It is conducive to expanding and clarifying the theoretical contribution and applicable boundaries of the A-U model and has sparked thinking and exploration of the A-U model in e-cigarettes and emerging industries.

On this basis, suggestions on the development path and countermeasures of the e-cigarette industry are put forward.

Based on the e-cigarette industry, this paper takes patents as the research object and provides the method of dividing product innovation and process innovation, and proposes an A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry on this basis. By comparing the traditional A-U model with the inverse A-U model in latecomer countries, the background and causes of e-cigarette A-U model heterogeneity are analyzed from different stages and overall morphology. Based on this, the heterogeneity characteristics of e-cigarette innovation are summarized and sorted out.

This case was researched using publicly available sources, including Mercury Systems financial filings and press releases, news stories about the seasoned equity offering, financial information from Bloomberg and industry information from IBISWorld Industry Reports and articles related to seasoned/secondary equity offerings, intangible asset valuation and the use of revolving lines of credit. Quotes are taken from Mercury financial reports and press releases and express the (optimistic) opinions of company executives.

Mercury Systems, a technology company in the aerospace and defense industry, announced a six million share seasoned stock offering in June 2019. This resulted in a 6% stock price decrease. A stock price decrease is a typical event when a firm announces the issuance of new common shares, but with Mercury Systems, there were concerns about how much money the firm needed to fund its strategy of growth through acquisitions. If internally generated funds were not sufficient, should the firm issue debt or have another seasoned equity issue? Students will look at the objectives and success of the most recent seasoned equity issue, determine future funds needs and how the firm should finance these needs.

This case is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students in corporate finance electives. Typically, topics such as seasoned equity offerings are not covered in introductory courses, so this is recommended for finance electives. Even in advanced finance courses, sometimes there is insufficient time to cover seasoned equity offerings.

The world has witnessed three major individual revolutions until now. We are in the fourth industrial revolution, and there are technological breakthroughs that have not been seen before. Responding fast to changing consumer expectations in a competitive climate brought on by globalization has become a global reality, requiring enterprises to alter their manufacturing systems. The incorporation of machines that can interact and make decisions into production has altered the manufacturing processes. The application of the Industry 4.0 revolution to manufacturing processes has paved the way for the development of smart factories. Production may be made 24 hours a day in these factories where productivity grows with applications such as the internet of things (IoT), cyber-physical systems, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. All applications utilized in smart factories boost productivity and reduce costs and human error rates. Countries should undergo change in order to adapt to the competitive climate established by Industry 4.0, in which the entire world lives. Many industrialized countries have taken significant strides in this direction, including this process into their national policies. Turkey's ability to adapt to Industry 4.0 technologies in a digitalized competitive environment, as well as swiftly grow smart factory applications in altering production processes, is critical to its global economic standing.

The purpose of this paper is to present an up-to-date survey on the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique with co-operative strategy, a fast-evolving fifth-generation (5 G) technology. NOMA is used for serving many mobile users, both in power and code domains. This paper considers the power-domain NOMA, which is now discussed as NOMA.

The first part of the paper discusses NOMA-based cooperative relay systems using different relay strategies over different channel models. In various research works, the analytical expressions of many performance metrics were derived, measured and simulated for better performance of the NOMA systems. In the second part, a brief introduction to diversity techniques is discussed. The multiple input and multiple output system merged with cooperative NOMA technology, and its future challenges were also presented in this part. In the third part, the paper surveys some new conceptions such as cognitive radio, index modulation multiple access, space-shift keying and reconfigurable intelligent surface that can be combined with NOMA systems for better performance.

The paper presents a brief survey of diverse research projects being carried out in the field of NOMA. The paper also surveyed two different relaying strategies that were implemented in cooperative NOMA over different channels and compared several performance parameters that were evaluated and derived in these implementations.

The paper provides a scope for recognizable future work and presents a brief idea of the new techniques that can be united with NOMA for better performance in wireless systems.

Pb-free solders have been developed to replace the standard Sn–Pb eutectic solder since the prohibition on Pb used in solders. The Sn–Ag–Cu series of lead-free solders is the most extensively used in the electronics industry. The Ag₃Sn, which forms during isothermal ageing, can significantly degrade solder joint reliability. Sn–Ag–Cu solder’s high price further hindered its use in the electronics industry. This paper aims to investigate different copper percentages into Sn–xCu solder alloy to improve its microstructure and strength performance.

The solder alloys used in this work were Sn–xCu, where x = 0.0, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0 Wt.%, which was soldered onto electroless nickel immersion gold (ENIG) substrate using carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas laser. Then these samples were subjected to isothermal aging for 0, 200, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 h. The Sn–xCu solder alloy was fabricated through a powder metallurgy process.

Microstructure characterization showed that Cu addition resulted in fine and rounded shape of Cu–Sn–Ni particles. Shear strength of Sn–xCu solder joints was increased with increasing Cu content, but at aging duration of 1,000 h, it dropped slightly. It is believed that the strength improved due to the increment of diffusion rate during isothermal aging.

In a Cu–Sn solder, the recommended amount is 1.0 Wt.% of Cu. In extensive aging procedures, it was discovered that Sn1.0Cu solder improved the reliability of solder joints. The findings indicated that the innovative solder alloys might satisfy the needs of high-reliability applications.

The study shows that the right amount of Cu enhances the solidification of Sn–Cu solder, increasing the shear force of the Cu–Sn solder joint. The Sn1.0Cu exhibits a ductile fracture on the top microstructure, improving the joint’s average shear strength.

The construction industry has a fragmented nature which accounts for the highest degree of decentralisation of information. The exchange of information can be made possible and easier by the application of smart computing into the construction process. This creates an opportunity to enhance productivity and communication among stakeholders of the industry. This chapter, therefore, explores the concept of smart contracts, its drivers, challenges and critical success factors for implementing smart computing into construction in the effort to work towards an industry that is functional and sustainable at the same time.