Search results

Since the last decade, debates regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of the forms of transfer, i.e. in the form of in-kind or cash transfers, have been gaining momentum. This paper aims to explore the preferences revealed by the beneficiaries, the role of contextual conditions in moulding these preferences, factors associated with the transfer scheme that defines the preferences and the rationale behind such responses.

The study conducted involves primary data collected from an Indian state, Odisha. 308 beneficiaries of the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) were interviewed concerning specific objectives in a rural district (Mayurbhanj) and another highly urbanised district (Khordha).

The comparative results show that the strength of the contextual conditions significantly influences the preferences of the beneficiaries in the rural district as compared to the effect on the beneficiaries of the urban district. Education seems to have an insignificant impact in rural areas. However, income and standard of living have positive significant effects on shaping the preferences for cash or in-kind transfers.

Examining the strength of the contextual conditions and emphasising beneficiaries' perspectives would stimulate a better understanding of the implementation of the proposed quasi-Universal Basic Income. The study would hence, be instrumental in dealing with the transition towards cash transfers in the Indian context where the co-responsibility of both stakeholders, the government and the beneficiaries, should be given equal weightage.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0158

The aim of this chapter is to develop a conceptual model for the analysis of sustainable development and the ranking of cities based on selected standard criteria and metrics of smart cities. The conceptual framework contains standard and measurable indicators that influence the creation and survival of smart cities that could be self-sustaining, Green Resilient. We can measure the level of smartness of cities from two perspectives, first from the point of view of the degree of automation of services, infrastructure, buildings, transport, etc. and second from the point of view of planning the further development of the city in order to raise the quality of life of its citizens. Indicators should satisfy the principles of specificity, measurability, availability, relevance and timeliness (Schomaker, 1997). Researchers in the field of smart cities define different sets of characteristics, on which they construct a system of indicators that together describe the degree of development of a smart city. It must be taken into account the fact that there is no single set of indicators that would refer to the level of smartness of the city. It is a complex phenomenon, which occurs differently depending on the conceptual framework and the goal of classifying cities according to the complex characteristics of smartness, especially if you take into account the fact that the general well-being and quality of life of citizens are more important than only indicators of the quality of city services.

The aim of the quantity study is to investigate the cost of living and food security nexus in Ghana. Time series secondary quarterly data from 2012Q1 to 2018Q4 were examined.

The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) to cointegration bound test was employed for the econometrics analysis. Time series secondary quarterly data from 2012Q1 to 2018Q4 were examined. Food security data based on the Global Food Security Index score were employed.

The result revealed that the variables are cointegrated in the long run. The study also revealed that the cost of living worsens food security in Ghana both in the short run and the long run. This could imply that people may not have enough money to afford adequate and nutritious food, which can lead to food insecurity. As the cost of living increases, people may have to spend more of their income on basic necessities such as housing, healthcare and transportation, leaving less money for food. This can result in people choosing cheaper and less nutritious options, or even skipping meals, which can have negative impacts on their health and well-being.

For policy implications, it is recommended that effort should be made by the Ministry of Finance Ghana, financial analysts and other economic agents to stabilize prices of goods and services in the country.

The study is among the few to have investigated the nexus between the cost of living and food security in non-Western economy using the secondary data.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0309

Hazel Kyrk, one of the first women economists at the Economic Department of the University of Chicago and author of A Theory of Consumption (1923), conducted groundbreaking research for the Bureau of Home Economics of the US Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kyrk made a considerable contribution to the development of standards for a “decent living,” the Consumer Price Index, and the conceptualization of what would later turn into the definition of the poverty line. This chapter evaluates Kyrk’s use of eugenic notions of gender and race that were widely used in Kyrk’s day. This chapter shows that eugenic reasoning impacts Kyrk’s theoretical work only superficially but does structure her research on consumption standards through her focus on the white middle-class family as the unit of analysis for consumer behavior. This chapter also makes clear that the American Institutionalist approach to consumer behavior, rather than marginalized and side-tracked due to a lack of theoretical progress, was relegated to the margins of economics science together with the research of women economists into Home Economics departments and policy research at government institutions.

Art return indices are usually estimated based only on a few means of artistic expression (mainly paintings and drawings). Other forms of expression (e.g. sculptures and installations) are generally ignored, in part because they are three-dimensional and, hence, more difficult to measure. We analyze the price determinants as well as the return and risk of three artistic expressions (paintings, drawings and sculptures) executed by Fernando Botero, the most expensive living Latin American artist, to analyze the degree to which their risk and return attributes differ throughout a 20-year period.

We analyzed all paintings, drawings and sculptures executed by Botero and sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s between 2000 and 2020 (a total of 707 artworks). The data and the images of each artwork were obtained from the web pages of these two auction houses. A hedonic regression was run to explain the price of each artwork and use explanatory variables that are standard in the literature. Art price indices for paintings, drawings and sculptures were constructed using the year-dummy variables estimated in the regressions. We performed a similar analysis for another artist, Carlos Cruz-Diez, as a robustness to our results.

The performance of Botero’s sculptures through time differs markedly from that of his paintings and drawings. Our results suggest that it is possible that returns estimated in the literature could suffer from a bias, as they have usually ignored the performance of sculptures and other artistic expressions. Botero’s paintings provided a return that was comparable to those of his sculptures (3.36% and 3.20%, respectively), they were two times as high as those of his drawings (1.68%). On the other hand, whereas paintings and drawings had similar annual standard deviations (26% and 25.22%, respectively), sculptures had a much smaller standard deviation (16.96%).

A limitation of the hedonic regression method lies in the need to have a significant and diverse sample to identify the true effect of each variable on the price of a good. Another limitation is that we were only able to use art prices from auctions, as this is the only comprehensive source of art price data that is publicly available. These two limitations are shared by all the studies that use the hedonic pricing model.

Our results have practical applications for art collectors and investors, as well as for artists, galleries and, in general, for the whole art market ecosystem. The risk and return attributes of the various artistic expressions of an artist can be different, and thus it makes sense to analyze each one of them individually, as well as their correlations with the other artistic expressions and with traditional and other alternative investments.

The art market is part of what is known as the “orange economy” (also known as the Creative Economy). According to the World Bank, the economic value of the creative sector is not well known or appreciated, even though cultural, creative and artistic activities are vital for our sense of well-being.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that compares the financial performance of paintings, drawings and sculptures for the case of a specific artist. We chose Botero for three reasons. First, he is a Latin American living artist who has achieved the highest levels of international sales. Second, Botero has worked extensively on various artistic expressions (oil paintings, drawings on different materials and sculptures) throughout his life, a characteristic that is essential to be able to carry out our study. Third, there is a long record of auction sales for each of Botero’s artistic expressions.

Los índices de rentabilidad del arte generalmente se estiman basándose únicamente en unos pocos medios de expresión artística (principalmente pinturas y dibujos). Otras formas de expresión artística (por ejemplo, esculturas e instalaciones) generalmente se ignoran, en parte porque son tridimensionales y, por tanto, más difíciles de medir. Analizamos los determinantes del precio, así como el retorno y el riesgo de tres expresiones artísticas (pinturas, dibujos y esculturas) ejecutadas por Fernando Botero, el artista latinoamericano vivo más caro, para analizar en qué medida sus atributos de riesgo y retorno difieren a lo largo del tiempo, en un período de 20 años.

Analizamos todas las pinturas, dibujos y esculturas ejecutadas por Botero y vendidas en Sotheby’s y Christie’s entre 2000 y 2020 (un total de 707 obras de arte). Los datos y las imágenes de cada obra se obtuvieron de las páginas web de estas dos casas de subastas. Se realizó una regresión hedonante para explicar el precio de cada obra de arte y se utilizaron variables explicativas estándar en la literatura. Los índices de precios de arte para pinturas, dibujos y esculturas se construyeron utilizando variables ficticias anuales estimadas en las regresiones. Realizamos un análisis similar para otro artista, Carlos Cruz-Diez, como análisis de robustez de nuestros resultados.

El desempeño de las esculturas de Botero a través del tiempo difiere marcadamente del de sus pinturas y dibujos. Nuestros resultados sugieren que es posible que los retornos estimados en la literatura sufran un sesgo, ya que generalmente han ignorado el desempeño de esculturas y otras expresiones artísticas. Las pinturas de Botero proporcionaron un retorno comparable al de sus esculturas (3.36% y 3.20%, respectivamente), pero fueron dos veces superiores a los de sus dibujos (1.68%). Por otro lado, mientras que las pinturas y los dibujos tuvieron desviaciones estándar anuales similares (26% y 25.22%, respectivamente), las esculturas tuvieron una desviación estándar mucho menor (16.96%).

Una limitación del método de regresión hedónica radica en la necesidad de contar con una muestra significativa y diversa para identificar el verdadero efecto de cada variable sobre el precio de un bien. Otra limitación consiste en que solo pudimos utilizar precios de arte de subastas, ya que esta es la única fuente completa de datos sobre precios de arte que está disponible públicamente. Estas dos limitaciones son compartidas por todos los estudios que utilizan el modelo de precios hedónico.

Nuestros resultados tienen aplicaciones prácticas para coleccionistas e inversores de arte, así como también para artistas, galerías y, en general, para todo el ecosistema del mercado del arte. Los atributos de riesgo y retorno de las diversas expresiones de un artista pueden ser diferentes, por lo que tiene sentido analizar cada una de ellas individualmente, así como sus correlaciones con las otras expresiones artísticas y con las inversiones tradicionales y otras alternativas.

El mercado del arte forma parte de lo que se conoce como “economía naranja” (también conocida como Economía Creativa). Según el Banco Mundial, el valor económico del sector creativo no es bien conocido ni apreciado, a pesar de que las actividades culturales, creativas y artísticas son vitales para nuestra sensación de bienestar.

Hasta donde hemos podido comprobar, este es el primer artículo que compara el desempeño financiero de pinturas, dibujos y esculturas para el caso de un artista específico. Elegimos a Botero por tres razones. En primer lugar, es el artista vivo latinoamericano que ha alcanzado los mayores niveles de ventas internacionales. En segundo lugar, Botero ha trabajado extensamente en diversas expresiones artísticas (óleos, dibujos sobre distintos materiales y esculturas) a lo largo de su vida, característica que resulta fundamental para poder realizar nuestro estudio. En tercer lugar, existe un largo historial de ventas en subasta de cada una de las expresiones artísticas de Botero.

The majority of MENA countries suffer low levels of human development, coupled with scarcity of funding resources, low level of governance, and poor institutional environment. Consequently, this research aims at detecting the impact of development finance resources and institutional quality on the human development in the MENA region, in order to examine if/why the MENA countries fail to efficiently exploit all the available financial inflows to promote human development and boost living standards.

This study tests the short- and long-run impact of six financing resources representing injections in the economy and four institutional quality variables on the human development index in the MENA region. It adopts co-integration analysis, vector error correction model, and Granger causality test on a sample of 13 MENA countries over the period 1996–2019.

This research finds that domestic credit to private sector and exports of goods and services do not have any significant added value for human development in the MENA region. In contrast, government expenditures and migrant remittances are found to be crucial in promoting human development in both the short- and long-run. FDI and ODA do enhance human development, but only in the short-run. In parallel, control of corruption, government effectiveness and regulation quality are essential boosters of human development in the MENA region, but with different importance, while political stability was found to be irrelevant.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of financial inflows and institutional quality on the overall human development index in the MENA region. The contribution of this paper lies in unlocking for policymakers the potential impactful financing resources to serve national developmental plans, in an endeavour to catch up to the SDGs amid the additional challenges imposed by governance and institutional environment.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate green buildings from the angle of greenness and improve the evaluation system. And the matter-element extension method is used to evaluate the greenness of green buildings, in order to provide useful references for the evaluation system of green buildings.

First, this paper studies the aspects of safety and durability, health and comfort, living convenience, resource-saving, environmental liability and ecological quality, etc. For the first time, carbon emission is included in the evaluation system, 18 key evaluation indexes are determined by using the Delphi method, and the green building evaluation index system is established. Then, the combined weight method is proposed to determine the weight of each evaluation index, and the greenness evaluation model of green building is established with the matter-element extension method. Finally, taking Beijing Daxing International Airport as an example, the evaluation model of green building greenness was established to evaluate the building.

In this paper, the greenness evaluation model of green building established by the matter-element extension method solves the problem of incompatibility between qualitative and quantitative material elements in multi-factor evaluation. It makes the evaluation indexes more accurate and objective relative to the affiliation calculation of the evaluation set and improves the scientific, accuracy and reliability of the evaluation model.

In this paper, for the first time, carbon emission-related indicators are included in the green building evaluation system, which makes the evaluation system more perfect. In addition, a more scientific extension matter-element method is used to evaluate the greenness of green buildings, breaking the previous rough star evaluation method.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which rural infrastructure resilience (RIR) impacted population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.

This study considered 213 administrative villages in Longxi County in the Longzhong loess hilly region as the evaluation unit. Based on the construction of a multidimensional RIR evaluation system, the spatial spillover effect of RIR on population loss was determined using the spatial Durbin model (SDM).

The average resilience of each subsystem of rural infrastructure in Longxi County was low, and there were large differences in the spatial distribution. The mean RIR index value was 0.2258, with obvious spatial directivity and agglomeration characteristics. The population loss index of Longxi County had a value of 0.1759, with 26.29 of villages having a high loss level. The population loss was relatively serious and was correlated with the spatial distribution of RIR. The villages with larger RIR index values had lower population loss. The RIR had a significant spatial spillover effect on population loss. Productive infrastructure resilience and living infrastructure resilience (LIR) had negative spillover effects on population loss, and social service infrastructure resilience (SSIR) had a positive spillover effect on population loss.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which RIR impacted on population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.