Search results

Labour market constraints constitute prominent obstacles to firm development and economic growth of countries located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of firm characteristics, national locations, and sectoral associations for the perceptions of firms concerning two basic labour market constraints: labour regulations and labour skill shortages.

The empirical analysis is carried out using firm-level data set sourced from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys database. A bivariate probit estimator is used to account for potential correlations between the errors in the two labour market constraints’ equations. The authors implement overall estimations and comparative cross-country and cross-sector analyses, and use alternative estimation models.

The empirical results reveal some important implications of firm characteristics (e.g. firm size, labour compositions) for firm perceptions of labour regulations and labour skill shortages. They also delineate important cross-country and cross-sector variations. The authors also find significant heterogeneity in the factors’ implications for the perceptions of firms belonging to different sectors and located in different MENA countries.

Reforms in labour regulations and investment in human capital are important governmental policy interventions for promoting firm development and economic growth in the MENA region. This paper contributes to the empirical literature by analysing the factors influencing the perceptions of firms located in the MENA region concerning labour regulations and labour skill shortages. It provides policy-makers with information needed in the design of labour policies that attenuate the impacts of labour market constraints and enhance the performance of firms and the long-run economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility that an ontological approach can be applied to formalize the construction regulation constraint knowledge in a computer-interpretable way, for construction quality checking, during construction stage.

The ontological and semantic web technologies are used to model the construction quality constraints knowledge into Axioms/OWL and SWRL rules. Protégé platform is selected to illustrate how the construction quality checking, based on the Axioms/OWL and SWRL rules, is achieved.

The ontology and semantic web technologies can be an alternative way for modeling the construction regulation constraints in a computer-interpretable way, and can be implemented for the regulation-based construction quality checking.

The approach is illustrated only with given specific technical constraints examples, the generality and practicality of the approach need further investigation.

The paper introduces an ontological and semantic approach to model and formalize the construction regulation constraints for construction quality checking, and proves the feasibility by the case studies. The proposed approach enables the regulations can be understood and retrieved semantically by computers, which facilitates the using of regulation codes.

This study aims to synthesize the existing literature with insights gained from interviews conducted with regulatory experts. The objective is to analyse the challenges associated with incorporating cryptocurrencies into regulatory frameworks and to explore constraints in the regulatory institutionalization of cryptocurrencies.

The study methodology consists of two steps. The first step is to identify regulatory constraints in the literature review and in the next step, interviews are conducted with officials of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). The study used a qualitative case study methodology, in which a single case (regulatory constraint) was selected as a unit of analysis.

The findings show that lack of traceability, legal status, lack of governmental control due to decentralization, difficulty enforcing laws, volatility, lack of skills with regulators and difficulty integrating cryptocurrencies into the current financial system are the main obstacles to the introduction of a regulatory framework. Thus, on a broader conceptual level, the findings can be grouped into opportunism, lack of strategic capability and fragmented global laws.

This study could inform global cryptocurrency regulation discussions, sharing a developing country’s views on balancing the government, central banks, the financial sector and public interests. This could guide countries to consider cryptocurrency adoption in similar situations. This could affect the cryptocurrency market, impacting demand, supply and investor trust in Pakistan.

The study has implications for policy making officials. The research aims to offer valuable insights to the SBP and other regulatory authorities, helping them identify potential risks and create an effective regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.

The study has implications for society in knowing about the volatile nature of cryptos and anonymity of their issuers, which poses regulatory constraints. This then implies its harmfullness to its traders and the huge losses that may arise from their trading due to its volatile nature.

This study contributes to the literature on the constraints, responsibilities and consultation framework of cryptocurrency regulations.

This paper aims to examine the determinants of growth rate in Islamic banking using annual time series data.

The author applied several econometrics methods including generalized linear model and survey-based indicators. The author uses the World Bank Enterprise Survey data to supplement the answers.

The results support the view that high oil prices, stable domestic prices, higher educated populace and greater presence of capital resources have positive effects on growth in Islamic banking. The findings, however, revealed that instability adversely affects Islamic banking growth. The author found no clear conclusion on the impact of economic growth, greater presence of Muslim population and presence of sharia in the legal system of the country on growth in Islamic banking. The major constraints impeding Islamic banking growth include regulations, tax rates and skilled labor force.

There is no empirical work that has been done on the determinants of Islamic banking growth by taking into account the following factors: oil price dynamics, sharia compliant, macroeconomic variables, instability and World Bank Enterprise survey. This paper attempts to search for the push and pull factors of Islamic banking growth to fill the gap in determining the Islamic banking growth.

Environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation are the key links to achieve sustainable economic development. This paper tests the impact of Two Control Zone (TCZ) environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation and explains the heterogeneity effect between them from the perspective of regional pollution intensity and R&D investment scale.

This paper takes TCZ policy as an environmental regulation policy and collects the patent data related to coal desulfurization cleaner production technology innovation in prefecture-level cities from 1994 to 2002 in China. This paper also tests the relationship between TCZ environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation based on difference in difference (DID) model. Take regional R&D investment scale and pollution intensity as category variables and analyze the heterogeneity effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation based on difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) model.

TCZ environmental regulation policy effectively promotes China's cleaner production technology innovation, but it is more conducive to cleaner production technology innovation in heavy pollution areas. With the increasing of R&D investment scale, the positive effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation is stronger.

On the basis of this study, the authors should further explore the regulatory factors of the relationship between TCZ environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation and further expand the research object, so as to make the research conclusions more practical and instructive.

This paper tests the impact of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation based on the prefecture city level data and DID model, and it handles the endogenous problem caused by the missing variables and provides the accurate conclusions. Moreover, this paper examines the heterogeneity effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production innovation from regional R&D investment scale and pollution intensity two hands and expands the existing theoretical research.

Due to greater returns to high skill and desirable amenities, high-skilled workers are increasingly agglomerating in metropolitan areas and form path dependence. This chapter explores whether the land supply policy of China constraining big cities' urban construction land quota strengthens the spatial divergence of human capital. Using city-level land supply data, population census data, and land transaction micro data, we find that the higher the degree of a city's land supply lagging behind land demand, the greater the enlargement effect of the initial share of population with college degrees on the increase in share of population with college degrees. Further research reveals that the main mechanism causing this phenomenon is the rapidly rising housing prices hindering low-skill labor flows to big cities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate efforts to manage institutional complexity in a state-owned enterprise, the roles of explicated values in these efforts and how these values interact with each other and other influential management controls.

Exploratory case study in StateEnt, a state-owned enterprise that faces institutional complexity. The analysis is based on interviews, observations and documents and concepts from the management control literature and institutional logics are applied.

Findings from this study suggest that a structural differentiation have separated two logics in different departments and two of the explicated values have become symbols of these logics taking on various roles in negotiations. Tension between the departments is heightened because the departments legitimize logic enactment through mobilizing different socio-technical dyads of management control. The division of responsibility between these departments still ensures that they need to collaborate and make compromises. The study also finds that exogenously imposed constraints have a significant influence on organizational activities, which is further strengthened due to internally developed management controls embedded in the same logic.

The study contributes with deeper understanding of values as control, and how these interact with other control forms to influence organizational activity. Herein, the importance of regulatory controls in state-owned enterprises is also highlighted. A limitation of this study is the limited size of the organization under investigation.

The explicit emphasis on values as a control in studies on management control issues in institutionally complex environments is underemphasized in the literature.

The exportability of Singapore’s industrial‐development model to other Asian environments has been one of the hallmarks of the city‐state’s regionalization program, together with the state‐led, market‐driven intervention that has underscored the citystate’s development strategies. The paper presents an empirical analysis on the portability of this transborder industrialization strategy, and contributes new insights to the discourse on state‐enterprise networks in promulgating transnational entrepreneurial ventures. Empirical evidence from on‐site surveys and interviews in Indonesia, China, Vietnam and India will be presented. Our study concludes that, while the calculated, schematised efforts have been remarkable, this attempt at re‐engineering economic space beyond the city‐state has not fully accounted for the intricacies of either economic, or socio‐political, realities in the host environments.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the market correlation changes in Chinese stock market and how the market correlation affects stock returns.

The authors first examine the relationship between the market correlation and the market return. Then, the authors run formal multiple regressions to see whether correlation risk is priced in security returns.

The authors find that market correlation increases when the market index falls down. Though market correlation risk is partly influenced by macroeconomic shocks, volatility risk, liquidity risk and higher moment risk, market correlation contains unique information that measures the benefit investors gain from diversification strategies. The market correlation risk is negatively priced. This conclusion remains valid even if the authors have considered the influence of other risk factors and the impact of conditional information.

Subjected to the limited history of the Chinese stock market, the authors cannot use more accurate and specific empirical methodology to fulfill the empirical research. And this renders further study.

This research provides empirical evidence in a new data sample and it sheds lights on correlation strategies for institutional investors in China.

Green entrepreneurship is gaining more attention as the interest in sustainability is growing. This is mainly because consumer awareness is rising and thus many regulations have been implied and several research are proving positive relationship from the use of green entrepreneurship. Using enterprise data for the Republic of Albania (ALB), this study examines the effects of green entrepreneurship on firm performance. Our findings when we investigate the determinants of firm performance, the green entrepreneurship, certification, innovation activities, foreign ownership, and monitoring energy appear to have a positive impact on firm performance, while the effect of direct export is negative.