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The purpose of this paper is to provide scientific guidance for the integration of industrialization and information (TIOII). In recent years, TIOII has promoted the development of intelligent manufacturing in China. However, many enterprises blindly invest in TIOII, which affects their normal production and operation.

This study establishes an efficiency evaluation model for TIOII. In this paper, entropy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) constraint cone and cross-efficiency are added based on traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, and entropy AHP–cross-efficiency DEA model is proposed. Then, statistical analysis is carried out on the integration efficiency of enterprises in Guangzhou using cross-sectional data, and the traditional DEA model and entropy AHP–cross-efficiency DEA model are used to analyze the integration efficiency of enterprises.

The data show that the efficiency of enterprise integration is at a medium level in Guangzhou. The efficiency of enterprise integration has no significant relationship with enterprise size and production type but has a low negative correlation with the development level of enterprise integration. In addition, the improved DEA model can better reflect the real integration efficiency of enterprises and obtain complete ranking results.

By adding the entropy AHP constraint cone and cross-efficiency, the traditional DEA model is improved. The improved DEA model can better reflect the real efficiency of TIOII and obtain complete ranking results.

This study aims to evaluate the efficiency of the three telecommunications companies in Saudi Arabia: Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Mobily and Zain over the period of 2010–2019. This evaluation is a step toward improving the performance of the Saudi telecommunications sector.

Three multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques were used to calculate technical efficiency. These techniques include the traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA), window DEA and analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The three inputs used were total assets, operating expenses and capital expenditures, whereas the two outputs were sales revenue and total stockholders’ equity.

STC was ranked first using the three techniques, followed by Zain, and then Mobily. According to the DEA window analysis, these three companies were all efficient only in 2012. The efficiency was high in the initial years, 2010–2013, when it was above 0.90, and it dropped below 0.90 in the subsequent years, 2014–2019. In addition, the efficiency of STC remained high, with an average of 0.990. However, the average efficiencies of Zain and Mobily during this period were 0.807 and 0.804, respectively.

This is the first study to use the three MCDM techniques to evaluate the performance of telecommunications providers. The results show that window DEA is better than the other two techniques at evaluating performance over time, as it has a higher discrimination power than either the traditional DEA or AHP.

The purpose of this paper is to settle the methodological debate on the decomposition of value added in gross exports, proposing a standard, exposing the drawbacks of the alternatives and quantifying the differences.

This paper systematizes the analytical framework and assesses and quantifies the various methodologies and its main differences.

The decomposition method of Borin and Mancini (2023), using a source-based approach and an exporting country perspective, should be considered as the standard for decomposing the value added in gross exports. This study finds that alternative approaches and perspectives are methodologically inferior, and that tailored perspectives do not provide an increase in accuracy that compensates their drawbacks.

This paper’s contribution is fourfold: it rejects the alleged equivalence between approaches and perspectives, defending the superiority of a particular method, approach and perspective; it gives quantitative examples of the differences between them; it proves that the drawbacks of tailored perspectives do not compensate their alleged accuracy (as they do not result in big quantitative differences with the standard perspective); and it argues that no valid standard decomposition can forego the calculation of value added exported, which requires the expression of exports in terms of final demand.

The main goal of this paper is to examine the evolution of Latin American productive integration in terms of the regional value added incorporated in intra-regional exports of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. In addition, the study traces the trade and productive integration trajectories for each of these countries from 1995 to 2015.

Based on the use of OECD’s global ICIO input-output tables, this paper applies the methodological framework by Wang et al. (2018) for the analysis of trade flows at the bilateral level, which allows breaking down the value of gross exports of each sector-country, depending on the origin of the value added contained in exports, as well as their use.

The estimates show very low shares of value added from regional partners in the intra-regional exports of the countries studied. Conversely, the weight of the value added incorporated in these exports by countries outside the region has increased in tandem with China’s expanding involvement in Latin America. This development, along with the downward trend in domestic value added incorporated in exports, indicates a lack of a regional integration process of any depth.

This article addresses an economic problem of conventional importance from a global value chain perspective using a novel methodology based on the use of global input–output tables.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

This study aims to present a modified interleaved boost converter (MIBC) topology for improving the reliability and efficiency of power electronic systems.

The MIBC topology was implemented with two parallel converters, operated with a −180 degree phase shift. Using this methodology, ripples are reduced. The state-space model was analysed with a two-switch MIBC for different modes of operation. The simulation was carried out and validated using a hardware prototype.

The performance of the proposed MIBC shows better output voltage, current and power than the interleaved boost converter (IBC) for the solar PV array. The output power of the proposed converter is 1.353 times higher than that of existing converters, such as boost converter (BC) and IBC. The output power of the four-phase IBC is 30 kW, whereas that of the proposed two-phase MIBC is 40.59 kW. The efficiency of MIBC was better than that of IBC (87.01%). By incorporating interleaved techniques, the total inductor current is reduced by 29.60% compared with the existing converter.

The proposed MIBC can be used in a grid-connected system with an inverter circuit for DC-to-AC conversion, electric vehicle speed control, power factor correction circuit, high-efficiency converters and battery chargers.

The work presented in this paper is a modified version of IBC. This modified MIBC was modelled using the state-space approach. Furthermore, the state-space model of a two-phase MIBC was implemented using a Simulink model, and the same was validated using a hardware setup.

The objective of this chapter is to discuss how different techniques in Regional Science and Peace Science and the emerging techniques in Management Science can be used in analysing Disaster Management and Global pandemic with special reference to developing countries. It is necessary for me to first discuss the subjects of Disaster Management, Regional Science, Peace Science and Management Science. The objective of this chapter is to emphasise that the studies of Disaster Management should be more integrated with socioeconomic and geographical factors. The greatest disaster facing the world is the possibility of war, particularly nuclear war, and the preparation of the means of destruction through military spending.

This paper aims to conduct an empirical study to investigate whether an industry’s position affects the transmission of information and economic shocks.

This paper conducts an empirical study of inventory performance based on a large panel of 71 industries in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors over a 10-year period (2007–2016).

It is found that the position of a focal industry in the supply chain network moderates the impacts of macroeconomic uncertainty shocks and shocks from supplier/customer industries on the focal industry’s inventory. On the one hand, more central industries are more sensitive to macroeconomic uncertainty shocks as well as spillover shocks from their supplier and customer industries. On the other hand, uncertainty shocks from more central industries have higher impact on their partner industries than those from less central industries.

A manager needs to take into account the network positions of suppliers/customers in supply network when making inventory decisions. For example, when sharing information with partners, the network position of a partner affects how important its information is.

The key novelty of this paper is the introduction of network structure that represents the supplier–customer relationships in the entire economy, and the modeling of uncertainty shocks transmitted through the supply chain network.

Although handloom is a significant source of livelihood for millions of people in India, it performs poorly compared to other sectors of the economy, which may be the root of technical inefficiency. Until now, to measure technical efficiency, no studies have been carried out; therefore, the purpose of this study is to estimate the technical efficiency in the handloom micro-enterprises in India.

This study includes 427 handloom micro-entrepreneurs from the Indian state of Assam. Using bootstrap truncated regression, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to calculate the technical efficiency and identify the factors responsible for inefficiency.

The findings of this study reveal that handloom enterprises are 75% pure technically efficient, suggesting room for input reduction. The bootstrap truncated regression results show that education, prior experience, modern technology, ICT, bank loan, training, gender and location significantly influence the technical efficiency of handloom enterprises.

Despite recent advances in the DEA method, this study used a traditional form of DEA. This study used only one output and a limited set of inputs. Better results could have been obtained by expanding the number of inputs and output. Finally, the data for this study has been obtained from a very narrow geographic area. The production practices of the handloom enterprises in other parts of the region and other states might vary considerably.

Technical efficiency measurement has management implications for businesses because it allows entrepreneurs to determine how much less input is required to produce the same output. A meticulous analysis can pinpoint the causes of inefficiency.

This paper aims to make two significant contributions to the extant literature. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no published document has analyzed the technical efficiency of handloom micro-enterprises anywhere in the world. The authors fill this void by systematically analyzing the technical efficiency of the handloom industry in Assam.

The purpose of this study is to measure the technical efficiency of 20 Algerian insurance companies from 2016 to 2020, by using slacks-based measure (slacks-based measure [SBM] data envelopment analysis [DEA]) model. This research aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of this companies' efficiency, taking into account both the desirable and undesirable outputs.

The study uses a nonoriented, SBM model with the assumption of constant returns to scale to estimate the technical efficiency of commercial insurance companies over a five-year period. The inputs used are labor expense, agent expense and investments, while the outputs included are gross premiums and investment income as desirable outputs and gross claims as undesirable output.

Among 20 insurance companies evaluated, only 5 companies consistently achieved technical efficiency during the study period (Caisse Nationale de Mutualité Agricole [CNMA], MACIR, CARDIF, MUTUALISTE and AGLIC); so they represent the best practices in the Algerian insurance sector, with overall average of the technical efficiency is 81%. However, the reference sets analysis showed that CNMA and AGLIC had high robustness. Also, the results demonstrate the impact of ignoring the undesirable outputs on the accuracy of the assessment.

The sample of the study consists of the active insurance companies in Algeria, based on the Annual Insurance Reports of Algeria; there are 20 companies as shown in the table. The data are taken from the annual reports of insurance companies during the 2020 period, issued by the Algerian Ministry of Finance.

The challenge for insurance company is how to find a balance between reducing claims paid and simultaneously improving the quality of insurance services. In fact, it is observed that studies evaluating their efficiency ignore claims in the analysis process. Therefore, the study highlights the importance of considering undesirable outputs within the DEA framework; this allows for a more accurate assessment of the company's performance and helps in improvement. Furthermore, although the insurance sector plays a crucial role, it has not received enough research attention compared to other financial sectors, especially in Arab and developing countries.

The literature on efficiency assessment in the insurance companies shows a lack of addressing undesirable outputs (such as claims) within the DEA framework; so this study aims at bridging this research gap. Also, the study provides an overview of the efficiency of Algerian insurance companies.