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This F.I.D. restricted conference was, from the point of view of the U.D.C., almost too ambitious in its programme, considering that meetings of the Council and of the experts on building classification were held concurrently throughout the week. Inevitably, the more general topics, such as classification rules (section 1) and notation principles (section 2), received rather scant attention, but the results from many of the U.D.C. special Sub‐committee meetings showed that they had laid an excellent basis for greatly improved work and more rapid development in the future.

Recently, blockchain technology (BT) has resolved healthcare data management challenges. It helps healthcare providers automate medical records and mining to aid in data sharing and making more accurate diagnoses. This paper attempts to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for successfully implementing BT in healthcare.

The paper is methodologically structured in four phases. The first phase leads to identifying success factors by reviewing the extant literature. In the second phase, expert opinions were solicited to authenticate the critical success factors required to implement BT in the healthcare sector. Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method was employed to find the cause-and-effect relationship among the third phase’s critical success factors. In phase 4, the authors resort to validating the final results and findings.

Based on the analysis, 21 CSFs were identified and grouped under six dimensions. After applying the DEMATEL technique, nine factors belong to the causal group, and the remaining 12 factors fall under the effect group. The top three influencing factors of blockchain technology implementation in the healthcare ecosystem are data transparency, track and traceability and government support, whereas; implementation cost was the least influential.

This study provides a roadmap and may facilitate healthcare professionals to overcome contemporary challenges with the help of BT.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of terrorist attacks on the volatility and returns of the stock market in Tunisia.

The employed sample comprises 1250 trading day from the Tunisian stock index (Tunindex) and stock closing prices of 64 firms listed on the Tunisian stock market (TSM) from January 2011 to October 2015. The research opts for the general autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) and exponential generalized conditional heteroscedasticity (EGARCH) models framework in addition to the event study method to further assess the effect of terrorism on the Tunisian equity market.

The baseline results document a substantive impact of terrorism on the returns and volatility of the TSM index. In more details, the findings of the event study method show negative significant effects on mean abnormal returns with different magnitudes over the events dates. The outcomes propose that terrorism profoundly altered the behavior of the stock market and must receive sufficient attention in order to protect the financial market in Tunisia.

Very few evidence is found on the financial effects of terrorism over transition to democracy cases. This paper determines the salient reaction of the stock market to terrorism during democratic transition. The findings of this study shall have relevant implications for stock market participants and policymakers.

Nigeria has been ravaged by terrorist activities which has made the country unsafe for Nigerians and foreign investors. The motivation of this study arises from the dearth of research applying quantitative empirics to the determinants of terrorism in a specific country. To achieve this goal, vector autoregressive (VAR) model was applied using data from Global Terrorism Database (GTD), International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) data, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data, and Transparency International. Stata 13 software was used for estimation. The results show that ethnic violence, absence of good governance, presence of corruption, and rises in military expenditure are part of the causes of terrorism in Nigeria. It is, therefore, recommended that internal security should be maintained to minimize the occurrence of ethnic violence and ethnoreligious biases (sentiments) in the discussion of issues concerning Nigeria. Also, politicians should stop the proliferation of arms, as this will cease the violent reactions before and after elections. Finding lasting solutions to corruption using constitutional means will improve the quality of governance, which will improve the welfare state of the people and reduce restiveness.

Worldwide, the number of deaths from terrorism is rising at an alarming rate. Needless to mention, terrorism has a huge negative impact on the economy, mainly affecting price, output, employment, trade balance, poverty, inequality, military expenditure, budget pattern of the governments, sociopolitical environment, and several others. Calculation of the impact of terrorism on economic variables is undoubtedly important as primarily it portrays the vividness of the activity. This chapter concentrates on the impact of economic variables on terrorism because it is believed that knowledge of such an impact is necessary for initiating policies for reducing terrorism. This chapter finds that, especially in India, increase in the level of human development, which otherwise is believed to reduce the terrorist activities of a country, increases the number of casualties due to terrorist activities primarily because of uneven social and economic development.

The postindustrial economy did not take the place of previous types of economy. More than that, by definition, it hasn't become “post”-industrial in point of fact: relations with regard to the production of tangible goods define the imperative of industrialism, yet with a modern science and technology stage of development. The present-day production becomes increasingly automated, leading to the absence of demand for psychophysiological properties of man and labor in general. At the same time, highly qualified personnel who are able to control complex information management systems come to the fore. New types of energy and manmade materials appear; socioeconomic human living environment becomes more complicated. These processes are an objective phenomenon. However, the technological revolution is manifested differently in the “central” and “peripheral” countries. In the Russian Federation, formation of the innovational takes place in the conditions of integration of the resource model and opposition of the institutes that fund it. The crisis stimulates the conceptual search and does not deny the scientifically based classics.

Trade war among the nations dates back mainly to the nineteenth century. Some of the trade wars may be cited as (i) The First and Second Opium War Empire between 1839 and 1842; (ii) The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, 1930 signed by US President Herbert Hoover; (iii) Chicken wars in the early 1960s; (iv) The US–Japan automobile trade war in the 1980s; (v) 1985 Pasta War between America under the Regan Administration of United States and Europe; (vi) The Banana wars. However, trade becomes more intense in the present century with the increase of the economic trade instruments. Under the Obama Administration, currency war and tariff war both became strong between the United States and China with intense effect over the globe. After the Obama regime, came Donald John Trump with a number of controversial (aggressive) trade protectionism plans saying thereby “China’s accession to the World Trade Organization has enabled the greatest jobs theft in history” and “Trillions of our dollars and millions of our jobs flowed overseas as a result.” Even during the COVID-19 period in the 2020s, threats and counter-threats have been on the ascend. It is in this backdrop the present chapter mainly traces the history of trade wars in the twenty-first century, touching upon the nineteenth and twentieth century trade battles.

One of the noteworthy developments in the world economy is the cryptocurrency in general and the bitcoin in particular. Although several types of cryptocurrency are in operation in the current digital economy, the most prevalent is the bitcoin, which was launched formally in 2009 by an individual or group known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The value of bitcoin has increased to such an extend that it reached 19.7 billion US dollars by January 2, 2018 (Statista, 2018). As the bitcoin price touches a new high day by day, various terrorist organizations are using this cryptocurrency to anonymously finance their grotesque terrorist activities around the world by bypassing the surveillance mechanism of the banking system of the respective countries. Against this backdrop, this chapter aims to understand the mechanism of cryptocurrencies in general and the bitcoin in particular. Finally, it also endeavors to identify the trend of the bitcoin economy and its impact on nefarious activities in general and terrorism financing in particular. It has been revealed from the study that cryptocurrency economy has become so popular across the world that it has created an alternative virtual economy devoid of regulations from a specific country or a group of countries. By using vector error correction model (VECM), it had been observed that there exists a statistically significant long-run association between terrorist incidences and bitcoin transaction/circulation in the panel of 12 countries for 2010–2016. However, there is a huge concern over its way of operation and its unholy nexus with terrorism financing.

In addition to their effects on economic growth, prolonged terrorist activities can reduce government revenue. Apart from the destruction of physical infrastructure and human capital, terrorism also has lagged-effect on investment, which ultimately dampens the fiscal position and further affects the economic growth. This chapter is devoted to the discussion on the interaction between terrorism, growth, and fiscal variables in Nigeria using real per capita income, government revenue, government expenditure and defense expenditure. The findings show that terrorism is associated with low economic growth which has the potency to reduce government expenditure. It was also observed that government expenditure can be improved by fostering government revenue. In view of this, apart from domestic efforts, interventions of international communities are further needed to reduce the drastic effects of terrorism, especially in meeting and improving expenditure on growth-enhancing sectors.

Of late, the ongoing trade war between the two most powerful economies of the world – United States and China – has placed both the countries on a horrid front, breaking the world’s most important bilateral relationship of the twenty-first century. Their failure to reach a concrete agreement on mutual benefit on matters related to growing hefty amount of China’s current account surplus of balance of payments (BoP) and endangering United States to create jobs on its side, China’s use of illegal and unfair methods to acquire rights on intellectual property and US technology at an effectively discounted price; and also the concern that China by hook or by crook seeks to weaken the US economy has made matters worse. It is in this context the chapter analyzes the trade tensions between them and the context under which it came to the fore and with what outcomes. The analysis recommends interventions of the global leaders to mitigate the issues for the betterment of the world economy.