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The opioid epidemic in the USA, the new psychoactive substances emerging on the market and the recent increase in cocaine treatment demands in Western Europe, all emphasise the importance of monitoring the use and harms of drugs over time. To be informed about new consumption patterns, this study aims to study the trends among people entering treatment for substance use in Belgium.

Belgian data from the Treatment Demand Indicator collected between 2015 and 2019 were used. A reference group of treatment units was selected to allow for comparisons between the different years. Trend analysis was performed by using a joinpoint regression among different regions and groups of clients.

The drugs of choice that were most frequently mentioned among the 23,000 analysed treatment episodes were alcohol and cannabis. Both remained relatively stable over time. Heroin seemed to be decreasing significantly at the national level, but increased in Brussels. Benzodiazepines decreased significantly in Flanders and Brussels, but not in Wallonia. On the other hand, reports of crack cocaine increased significantly in the three regions with a more pronounced trend in Wallonia and Brussels. Substances such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, ketamine or volatile inhalants have been mentioned significantly more by people entering treatment in 2019, although their contribution to the total number is still limited.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to evaluate trends for all drugs of choice at a national and regional level. These results might not only benefit national policymakers but also other countries with similar alcohol or drug use patterns.

This paper aims to explore how the Celtic Tiger economic boom and Great Recession influenced drug and alcohol use in one Irish city.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 48 people, living in Cork City, who had previously used drugs and/or alcohol problematically. All participants had engaged with services for their problematic use and had at least one year of abstinence at time of interview.

Some participants reported that their drug and/or alcohol consumption increased during the economic boom; others, who were already in (self-defined) active addiction, reported how full employment lessened some of the harms of their problematic use. For others, problematic use struck once the economy entered a downturn and, heavy drink and drug use became a means of soothing the strains of economic recession.

The paper provides two key contributions. Methodologically, it demonstrates how large-scale national quantitative data can mask local idiosyncratic tendencies, suggesting the need for mixed-method approaches for understanding drug market trends. The paper also provides insights into the impact of global and local economic conditions on drug and alcohol consumption in Ireland.

Due to the young age of proptech, little is known about the dynamics of its expansion. In particular, there is limited agreement about a definition of “proptech,” while different categorizations are popping up. A severe lack of information emerges for the proptech scenario in Italy. The goal of this paper is to systematize multiple proptech maps in the attempt to create a framework for comparison of country-specific trends and an overarching definition of proptech. The research examines the evolutionary stage of the Italian digital real estate sector and compares it to the international context.

An in-depth analysis of 12 proptech maps at both national and international level was conducted based on online research. A list of Italian proptech companies was composed through multiple methods. A map was built for a cross-country comparison.

Each country or organization tends to develop its own categorization. This creates a multifaceted context where comparison and analysis are challenging. The Italian proptech sector seems underdeveloped compared to neighboring countries. Big room for improving the proptech business in this country still exists.

The results are valuable for proptech start-ups, business investors and well-established real estate actors to build on new entrepreneurial initiatives. The opportunity to advance proptech mapping and categorization emerges as a prospect for future research.

This research adds an overview of cross-country proptech categories and proposes the first analysis of Italian proptech. This will contribute to support entrepreneurial opportunities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of fiscal policy, namely, net tax and government expenditure on national saving and its nonlinearity. The author first investigates whether the impacts of fiscal policy on national saving have changed after the global financial crisis of 2008. Then, the author tests the nonlinearity of the relationship by taking account of the economic cycle, namely, economic expansion (boom) and economic recession (bust).

The empirical model bases on a reduced-form equation with national saving as a dependent variable, lagged value of national saving, output gap and fiscal policy as independent variables. The two-step system GMM approach was employed to estimate the empirical model, using a panel of 23 emerging Asian economies in the period of 1990-2015.

The empirical results show that tax policy and expenditure policy follow the predictions of the overlapping generation model with finite horizon and the Keynesian view. The nonlinearity of fiscal policy is twofold. The conduct of fiscal policy in the period after 2008 seems effective, while the effect is insignificant in the period before 2008. Likewise, fiscal policy tends to have more significant effects in bust cycle. The effect of tax policy is increased during recession, while the effect of government spending is more pronounced during economic downturn.

The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, it is shown that fiscal policies in the region had more impacts on national saving after the global financial crisis of 2008. Second, the research confirms nonlinear impact of fiscal policy on saving behavior during economic recession and economic boom.

This study illustrates the economic and financial dynamics of the sector, analysing the evolution of the main ratios of profitability and financial structure of 1,559 Italian real estate companies divided into the three macro-regions: North, Centre and South, in the period 2011–2020. In this way, it is also possible to verify the responsiveness to the 2020 pandemic crisis.

The analysis uses descriptive statistics tools and the ANOVA method of analysis of variance, supplemented by the Tukey–Kramer test, to identify significant differences between the three Italian macro-regions.

The study shows the increase in profitability after the 2008 crisis, despite its reverberation in the years 2012–2013. The financial structure of companies improved almost everywhere. The pandemic had modest effects on performance.

In the future, other indices should be considered to gain a more comprehensive view. This is a quantitative study based on financial statements data that neglects other important economic and social factors.

Public policies could use this study for better interventions to support the sector. In addition, internal management can compare their company's performance with the industry average to identify possible improvements.

The research analyses an economic field that employs a large number of people, especially when considering the construction and real estate services covered by this analysis.

The study contributes to the literature by providing a quantitative analysis of industry dynamics, with comparative information that can be deduced from financial statements over the years.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the concept of a trend and the discourse of trend analysis.

This paper concisely discusses the concept of trends, the value of trend analysis for strategic planning and hierarchical trend pyramids as a tool to scan and analyse trends.

The examples will be given of how specific mega, meso and micro trends are related within a hierarchic trend pyramid.

The tool of trend pyramids helps to structurally analyse and understand trends and developments. Such analysis and understanding are relevant for strategic foresight and scenario planning in leisure and tourism.

The literature on trend levels and pyramids is scarce and varies in interpretation. The aim of this paper is to integrate the various viewpoints into a useful instrument for the scanning and analysis of trends and developments.

Postdocs make up a significant portion of the biomedical workforce. However, data about the postdoctoral position are generally scarce, and no systematic study of the landscape of individual postdoc salaries in the USA has previously been carried out. The purpose of this study was to assess actual salaries for postdocs using data gathered from US public institutions; determine how these salaries may vary with postdoc title, institutional funding and geographic region; and reflect on which institutional and federal policy measures may have the greatest impact on salaries nationally.

Freedom of Information Act Requests were submitted to US public universities or university systems containing campuses with at least 300 science, engineering and health postdocs, according to the 2015 National Science Foundation’s Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering. Salaries and job titles of postdocs as of December 1, 2016, were requested.

Salaries and job titles for nearly 14,000 postdocs at 52 US institutions around December 1, 2016, were received. Individual postdoc names were also received for approximately 7,000 postdocs, and departmental affiliations were received for 4,000 postdocs. This exploratory study shows evidence of a postdoc gender pay gap, a significant influence of job title on postdoc salary and a complex relationship between salaries and the level of institutional National Institutes of Health/NSF funding.

These results provide insights into the ability of institutions to collate and report out annualized salary data on their postdocs, highlighting difficulties faced in tracking and reporting data on this population by institutional administration. Ultimately, these types of efforts, aimed at increasing transparency regarding the postdoctoral position, may lead to improved support for postdocs at all US institutions and allow greater agency for postdocs making decisions based on financial concerns.

The paper investigates the market performance of strategic acquisitions for growth in the fifth and sixth merger waves and outlines the major determinants that affect the performance of acquiring companies in these most complex and most challenging corporate transactions.

To perform the quantitative analysis a unique data sample was built out of acquisitions performed in the 5th and 6th merger waves with an only single purpose – strategic growth. Their performance was first analyzed using the method of market-based event study. In addition, the impact of several non-accounting determinants identified through a thorough literature review was tested using univariate/multivariate regression analysis.

The new findings of the study state that strategic acquisitions for growth created more value for acquiring companies if they were completed internationally and involved an acquisition of a middle-sized company. Moreover, the acquisition of targets in the less related industries (2-SIC) led to stronger performance of acquirers, especially in the international settings.

The study suggests additional directions for future research. The future analysis can investigate the post-merger acquisition performance of strategic acquirers and can focus on additional financial (accounting) determinants in the evaluation of performance. This perspective can not only address the limitations imposed by the assumption of efficient capital markets but also provide additional insights.

The results of current study have important implications for executives performing M&A for growth. They show that the market reaction to M&A announcement can be at least partially anticipated and help managers to plan their strategic moves based on a defined set of variables.

The study contributes to the sustainable, value-creating growth dynamics and encourages Executives to “lead for value.”

(1) In contrast to the existing studies that do not differentiate between the transaction rationale in their analysis, this paper focuses explicitly only on those acquisitions that have strategic growth as their primary objective and responses therefore, to the problem stated by Halpern (1983). This approach helps to mitigate the distortion of results and make a reliable assessment of the strategic move. (2) The results of quantitative analysis also outline that acquisition of mid-sized targets and larger degree of diversification (2-SIC, international focus) code were associated with higher value creation.

本文旨在研究於第五和第六波的併購浪潮中為增長而作出的策略性收購的市場表現;本文亦概述在這些極其複雜的和極具挑戰性的公司交易中影響作收購公司的表現的主要因素.

為了能進行定量分析,研究人員收集在第五及第六波的併購浪潮中以策略性增長為唯一目的的收購個案、建立一個獨特的數據樣本。研究人員首先以基於市場的事件研究法分析那些進行了收購的公司的表現,並以單變量/多變項迴歸分析法去試驗那幾個透過深入的文獻研究而找到的非會計的決定因素的影響.

研究得出的新發現是、如果以增長為目的的策略性收購是於國際間完成及涉及收購中型公司的話,則這收購行動會給進行收購的公司帶來更多價值。而且、如果收購目標的產業與作收購公司的不太相關的話 (2-標準產業分類),收購行動會為進行收購的公司帶來更強的表現、特別是在國際環境下進行這收購行動.

(1) 有別於現時其它於其分析中不區分交易理由的研究，本文明確地表示只集中探討那些以帶來策略性增長為主要目標的收購；因此、本研究對 (哈爾彭，1983年)(Halpern, 1983) 陳述的問題作出了回應。本研究的理念有助於減輕我們對收購結果的曲解，從而讓我們對策略性行動能作出可靠的評估. (2) 定量分析的結果、亦概述了以中型公司為目標的收購及更大程度的多樣化 (2－標準產業分類、以國際為焦點) 代碼與創造更大價值是有關聯的。

本研究的結果對學術界及管理人員均具吸引力，亦為策略規劃提供一個額外的工具.

本研究可帶來可持續的及可創造價值的增長動力，又可鼓勵行政主管採用以價值為本的領導方針.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review extant studies on what makes a country fully, partially or not adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRS) and categorize these factors into meaningful categories. In so doing, this study facilitates policy-making for accounting and economic standard setters and also points out conflicting viewpoints in the current literature, thus, opportunities for future research.

This paper is a literature review on academic studies that examine factors influencing national adoption of IFRS. The reviewed articles are limited to published, peer-reviewed papers only.

Overall, the review suggests that although a wide range of determinants on national adoption of IFRS has been identified, prior literature consists of conflicting viewpoints on what influence national accounting policies toward IFRS, thus, highlighting areas in which there are needs for future research.

First, this study focuses only on the de jure adoption of IFRS. Second, the study focuses mainly on research findings, not theory use in the extant literature.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study, which provides a comprehensive review of studies on de jure IFRS adoption.