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The purpose is to detect the nonlinearity wholesale rice price formation process in Italy in the 1995–2017 period.

A nonlinear smooth transition autoregressive (STAR)-type dynamics model is used.

Wholesale rice prices are significantly affected by variations in the international price of rice as well as variations in Arborio price.

The limitations include policy recommendations for the production and commercialization of rice in Italy.

Understanding rice pricing dynamics and nonlinearity behavior is pivotal for the survival of the entire European and Italian rice supply chain.

In the extant literature, no evidence exists on non-linearity of rice prices in Italy.

This study aims to capture the “persistence effect” of credit risk in Indian banking industry using the bank-level data spanning over the period of 19 years from 1998/1999 to 2016/17. Alongside, the study explored how the bank-specific, industry-specific, macroeconomic variables alongside regulatory reforms, ownership changes and financial crisis affect the bank's asset quality in India.

Using two-step system generalized method of moment (GMM) approach, the study derives key factors that affect the bank's asset quality in India.

The empirical results confirm the time persistence of credit risk among Indian banks during study period. This reflects that bank defaults are expected to increase in the current year, if it had increased past year due to time lag involved in the process of recovery of past dues. Further, higher profitability, better managerial efficiency, more diversified income from nontraditional activities, optimal size of banks, proper credit screening and monitoring and adherence regulatory norms would help in improving the credit quality of Indian banks.

The practical implication drawn from the study is that nonaccumulation of nonperforming loans (NPLs), higher profitability, better managerial efficiency, more diversified income from nontraditional activities, optimal size of banks, proper credit screening and monitoring and adherence regulatory norms would help in improving the credit quality of Indian banks.

This study is probably the first one that identifies in addition to the current year, whether lag of bank industry-macroeconomic affects the level of NPLs of Indian banks. So far, such an analysis has received less attention with respect to Indian banking industry, especially immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis.

This study aims to explore the link between mortality and climate change. The focus is in particular on individuals’ adaptation to temperature changes. The authors analyze the relationship between climatic change (measured by temperature rate) and mortality in 23 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries during 1970-2010.

This study performs the adaptation regression model in the level form as a dynamic panel fixed effects model. The authors use a non-linear threshold estimation approach to examine the extreme temperature changes effect on the temperature–mortality relation. More specifically, the study explores whether the large increases/decreases in temperature rates affect mortality rates more than the modest changes.

This study indicates that the temperature–mortality relation is significant in early part of the sample period (before 1990) but insignificant during the second part (after 1990). After including controlling factors, as well as nation and year fixed effects, the authors provide evidence that people do adapt to the most of the temperature-related mortalities. Also, this study provides evidence of the non-linear relationship between national temperatures and mortality rates. It is observed that only after 5 per cent increase in the annual temperature, the relation between temperature and overall mortality is significant.

Most studies cover only one specific country, hence making it difficult to generalize across countries. Therefore, the authors argue that the best estimation of the health effects of temperature change can be found by modeling the past relationships between temperature and mortality across countries for a relatively long period. To the authors’ knowledge, previous studies have not systemically tested the adaptation effect across countries.

This paper examines the effect of ESG ratings and its dimensions (environmental, social and governance) on the financial performance of JSE-listed firms included in FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index.

The paper employs panel data covering 40 JSE-listed firms included in FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index between 2015 and 2019. The paper employs the two-stage least squares (2SLS) instrumental variable regression technique to estimate the effect of ESG ratings and its dimensions (environmental, social and governance) on both accounting- and market-based performance indicators.

The results of the two-stage least squares instrumental estimation analysis reveal that investment in ESG initiatives improves both accounting- and market-based indicators of financial performance. Of the ESG pillars, the paper finds environmental initiatives improves firms' financial bottom line and market performance, while a firm's social and governance practices are observed to have no effect on a firm's accounting and market performance measures.

The insights from this study proffers policy implications for firms' management, investors and regulatory authorities.

As far as the authors are concerned, this paper presents the first empirical analysis on the contribution of ESG ratings on financial performance in South Africa.

This paper aims to determine whether local governments (LGs) use non-consolidated municipally owned companies (MOCs), excluded from public sector entities and, consequently, from sub-national debt to avoid fiscal debt limits. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the fiscal debt rule’s impact on the off-budget municipal activities in total and separate in different types of local government units.

This paper uses difference-in-differences and the system general method of moments model with the Blundell–Bond estimator for dynamic panel data analysis of MOCs owned by 866 Polish municipalities in 2010–2018.

This paper shows that the MOCs’ revenues support limited local public debt capacity by indebtedness restrictions imposed on municipalities in 2014. As a result, less indebted municipalities have higher off-budget revenues. The tightening of fiscal rules related to sub-sovereign indebtedness increased off-budget activities, but that effect is much stronger in rural and rural–urban municipalities than in urban municipalities and big cities.

This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the fiscal debt rule’s impact on the off-budget municipal activities in total and separate in different types of local government units. In this paper, the authors combine theories relating to private and public finance; this is a novel approach and one that is also necessary – as, in fact, the worlds of public and private actors intersect – as exemplified by the existence of MOC.

Adolescents being in a stage of growth need good sleep, but, today, they suffer from sleep deprivation due to such extrinsic factor as a smartphone which they enjoy spending time using the device. However, the effects of smartphone output power (SOP) on the duration of good sleep remains unclear. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the correlation of the SOP and sleep loss in high school students.

The time-series study was conducted among 145 high school students in Chiang Mai Province who completed a sleep diary which applied by the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index. The SOP was corrected by a smartphone application and transmitted by e-mail to a researcher every day. The completed data set contains 12,969 entries. Headache, anxiety and depression were also assessed. Data were analyzed using the generalized estimating equation adjusted for demographic data, smartphone use and other factors.

Most of the study subjects are female, 17.4 years old on average. The prevalence of sleep loss (<8 h) was 52.9 percent with averagely 7.4 ±1.7 h of sleep duration and poor sleep at 32.1 percent. Anxiety, depression, headache had relationships with sleep loss. The daily dose, evening and nocturnal SOP in the range of ≥ 2.00 × 10^‒5 mW had stronger relationships with sleep loss than their effects in the range of ≤ 1.79 × 10^‒5 mW (OR_adj1.32; 95% CI: 1.26–1.76, OR_adj1.34; 95% CI: 1.07–1.17 and OR_adj1.41; 95% CI: 1.07–1.17, respectively). Meanwhile, morning Lag_2 and daytime Lag_1 in the range of ≥ 2.00 × 10^‒5 mW appeared to have a strong relationship with sleep loss (OR_adj1.60; 95% CI: 1.26–1.76, OR_adj1.36; 95% CI: 1.07–1.17). The relationship between Lag_4 daily dose and sleep loss took the form of a reverse dose-response.

Sleep loss in adolescents has an increasing trend of prevalence and has been found to be correlated with the highest SOP group (≥ 2.00 × 10^‒5 mW range). These results confirmed that increased and longer smartphone use result in reduced sleep time. This causes them to be exposed to smartphone electromagnetic radiation and smartphone screen lighting. This disturbs brain waves and nervous system controlling sleep balance mechanisms. The findings recommended parents setting time and boundaries around technology use at home to reduce contact with electromagnetic radiation and smartphone screen lighting, thereby increasing sleeping time in order to create good sleep quality.

Sustainable employability is an important goal for individuals and organizations alike. However, scarce knowledge is available on possible cross-lagged relations of resilience among police officers and different aspects of their sustainable employability over time. Based on assumptions of COR theory, the purpose of this paper is to test these relations in a two-wave design.

A total of 532 police officers participated in a time-lagged survey design (time interval of six months) concerning their resilience and relevant aspects, i.e., self-reported vitality, workability and organization-reported individual absenteeism rates. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling.

Results indicate cross-lagged effects between resilience and vitality with an acceptable model fit. Thus, the level of resilience at T1 affected the level of vitality at T2 and vice versa. In addition, a nearly significant negative effect of vitality on T1 was found on absenteeism on T2.

More measurements over time are needed to test reciprocal relations and possible gain spirals. Different samples are needed to assess generalizability. Cross-lagged effects may indicate a reciprocal relation between resilience and vitality that can be further facilitated.

For example, resilience can be addressed explicitly in training.

This study is the first to test the cross-lagged relations between resilience and indicators of sustainable employability among police officers. It is important to further study this for the sake of both police officers, as well as society as a whole.

This paper presents an overview of embedded finance. It identifies the applications, use case examples, benefits and challenges of embedded finance. The paper also analyzes global interest in embedded finance and compares it with interest in related finance concepts such as open finance, open banking, decentralized finance, financial innovation, Fintech and digital finance.

Granger causality test and two-stage least square regression were used to assess interest over time in embedded finance.

The empirical result show that interest in embedded finance increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States, the United Kingdom and India witnessed the highest interest in embedded finance compared to other countries. There is bi-directional Granger causality between interest in information about embedded finance and interest in information about financial innovation. There is uni-directional Granger causality between interest in information about embedded finance and interest in information about digital finance and open finance. The findings also reveal that interest in decentralized finance and open finance are significant determinants of interest in embedded finance. On the other hand, interest in embedded finance is a significant determinant of interest in digital finance, decentralized finance, Fintech and open banking. Also, interest in embedded finance is significantly correlated with interest in digital finance, decentralized finance, open banking and Fintech.

Presently, there is little academic interest in embedded finance despite the fact that embedded finance is part of the on-going digital finance revolution. This paper fills this gap in the literature by assessing the benefits, use case, challenges of embedded finance.

The authors investigate natural disasters’ impact on manufacturing and services foreign direct investment (FDI), both, in contemporaneous and time-lag contexts. Manufacturing and services FDI account for different types of technology transfers, respectively, through tangible physical assets and intangible knowledge assets. This paper aims to hypothesize that natural disasters that have pronounced physical impact, have different effect on different sectoral FDI.

The authors merge a data set from emergency events database, which covers natural disasters occurrences with a sector-level data on FDI for 69 countries for the period 1980-2011, distinguishing between four different kinds of natural disasters such as meteorological, climate, hydrological and geophysical, as well as between different geographical regions.

Controlling for commonly accepted determinants of FDI, such as output growth, quality of institutions and natural resource abundance, the authors find that manufacturing FDI is negatively affected immediately after the disaster and positively in the longer run- a finding that is in unison with the “creative destruction” growth theory. Services FDI, on the other hand, do not show such pattern. Meteorological disasters have no effect on services FDI and climate and hydrological disasters have long-lasting negative effects. For both, manufacturing and services FDI, geophysical disasters have a positive impact on FDI in the long run.

The study is limited to 69 countries for the period 1980-2011.

FDI bears tangible and intangible knowledge assets and provides means of financing, even in countries with under-developed banking systems and stock markets. FDI is impacted by climate change, manifested by intensifying and increase of frequency of natural disasters.

Natural disasters destroy infrastructure and displace people. The rebuilding of infrastructure and intangible capital present an opportunity for upgrading.

This is the first study that analyzes the impact of natural disasters on sector-level FDI in a multicounty and regional context.

While both perceived job autonomy and self-leadership are assumed to be important for optimal functioning of healthcare workers, their mutual relationship remains unclear. This cross-lagged study aims to theorize and test that perceived job autonomy and self-leadership have a reciprocal relationship, which is moderated by need for job autonomy.

Two-wave panel data were used to measure cross-lagged relationships over a time period of three months. Self-leadership is indicated by both self-leadership strategies and self-leadership behavior. The data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression (HMR).

Job autonomy was not causally nor reverse related to self-leadership strategies, but did relate to self-leadership behavior in both directions. Need for job autonomy did not influence the causal and reverse relationships between job autonomy and self-leadership (strategies and behavior). Instead, need for job autonomy discarded the influence of job autonomy on self-leadership behavior, and predicted self-leadership behavior over time.

For optimizing healthcare jobs, human resource management (HRM) policy makers need to consider other interventions such as training self-leadership, or developing an autonomy supportive work environment, since job autonomy does not lead to more use of self-leadership strategies.

This study used a cross-lagged study design which gives the opportunity to investigate causal relationships between job autonomy and self-leadership. Both self-leadership strategies and self-leadership behavior are included.