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This chapter introduces dividend policy as both financial and business decisions. First, it presents the history of dividend payment, definition of dividend, and typical types of dividend. Dividends originate from liquidating payments of sailing vessels in the early 16th century and become popular with the development of corporations. In this book, a dividend is defined as a cash payment to shareholders. By payment time, there are three typical types of dividend including final dividend, interim dividend, and special dividend. Second, it presents definition, important dates, measures, and patterns of dividend policy. Dividend policy includes two decisions: the first is to pay or not to pay dividends, and the second is the dividend magnitude. Investors have to follow important dates of dividend payments in order to make their investment decisions. Important dates include declaration date, record date, ex-dividend date, and payment date. Dividend payout ratio and dividend yield are two common measures of dividend policy. Common patterns of dividend policy are no dividend policy, residual dividend policy, stable dividend policy, and irregular dividend policy. Finally, dividend policy is both financial and business-related decisions. Therefore, dividend decisions are affected by various levels of business environment such as internal, micro (industry), and macro-environment. Dividend theories are the behind mechanisms to explain the effect of each factor in the business environment on corporate dividend policy. Dividend policy, in turn, determines shareholders' wealth through its impact on stock price.

The integration of women into the armed forces of western democracies reveals a pattern of significant diversity: while some countries have integrated women, granting them real (and not only formal) access to a wide range of positions and occupations, other keep women in little more than symbolic spaces.

Among the variety of factors which account for different paths and integration levels – which range from global social-economic conditions, political factors, cultural and historical patterns, military organizational structure, or time effects – there are institutional policies. One rather common assumption is that explicit organizational policies are a crucial factor to promote integration at the organizational level. However, some studies have also reached disappointing conclusions regarding the power of institutional policies to help redress culturally entrenched stereotypes that often function as obstacles to integration.

This paper discusses the impact of organizational policies on gender integration using available empirical data from a comparative study conducted among NATO nations (Carreiras, 2006). It specifically addresses the following questions: what is the impact of organizational policies on gender integration? To what extent does the existence of explicit and active integration policies contribute to promote equality in military forces? Under which conditions are policies effective and under which conditions may their effects be blocked?

It concludes that polices may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for integration – that their impact, while positive on formal integration, may not always be so on social integration – and that conditions for change do not depend strictly on formal policies. A final suggestion is made regarding the need to analyze the specific conditions under which the efficacy of policies might vary.

This position chapter explains the importance of designing policies for smart cities. This chapter aims to provoke discussions that will allow further understanding of the smart cities policy agenda. It is inevitable for various smart cities actors to agree on ways to implement change in smartness. This is because of the different views on developing smart cities (or smart cities initiatives) that will ensure shared benefits for everyone. To achieve a wider understanding of how this might be achieved, the chapter raises the points of designing policy for smartness and the influence of governance on policy design. It explains what we mean by policy and governance and the link between them. Overall, the policy needs to be supported by a governance system, which is widely accepted – for example for truly smart cities, a governance system needs to evaluate the benefits through liveability; these are the environmental, societal, governance, and economic lenses. A liveability approach to the governance system can promote open and democratic processes to smartness.

This research investigates (1) the impacts of working capital investment policy and working capital financing policy on firms’ performances (profitability and market value) and (2) the impact of profitability on market value. Data are gathered from 68 companies listed in the Stock Exchange of Thailand covering production sector. Data collected from 2012 to 2016 are analyzed using path analysis to measure the impacts of working capital policy on performances and examine the consistency of the model and the empirical data.

The model is found to be consistent with the empirical data; the probability level is 0.085, χ ²/df is 2.96, CFI is 0.951, GFI is 0.979, IFI is 0.957, and RMR is 0.004. The result reveals a statistically significant positive relationship between working capital investment policy and profitability. In addition, working capital investment policy affects market value through profitability as a mediator variable. However, there are significant negative impacts of working capital financing policy on profitability and market value. Overall, it can be implied that companies which adopt conservative working capital investment policy and conservative working capital financing policy can increase their profitability and market value.

Resilience of the economy is related with its ability to cope with the challenges (e.g., economic and environmental crises). Economies need to be resilient as countries having resilient economy can enhance welfare of their people and achieve sustainable development (SD). Total factor productivity can be improved through smart technologies, smart workforce, and innovations. It requires holistic and systematic as well as strategic approach as it is directly related with the SD of the countries and welfare of their people. It is directly related with the policies covering all these main aspects with the long-term, systematic, and holistic view. Resilient economies need to enhance their resilience to keep them resilient despite of the changes which can act as threats in the future. Resilience of the economy necessitates transformation of the manufacturing industry (MI) into the sustainable, smart, circular, and global one. In this way MI's competitiveness can be enhanced. For this reason, based on an in-depth literature review, this chapter aims to examine ways for enhancing resilience of the global economy through smart, circular, and competitive MI. Specific focus is on the policies fostering the transformation of the MI into the sustainable, smart, circular, global, and innovative one. This chapter emphasizes the importance of and need for the productivity-based resilient economy. Policy makers, academics, and researchers in the relevant field can get benefit from this chapter.

Global drug policy has undergone significant change over the past decade, especially with the advent of the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs. This was a catalyst moment both in highlighting the need for a gender perspective in drug policy, and in initiating a review of the indicators used to evaluate progress in drug policy.

To date, the UN has not adequately tracked gender-specific data in drug policy. This is symptomatic of the lack of focus granted to the specific vulnerabilities and needs of women in the illicit drug trade. This has resulted in a knowledge and understanding gap in relation to the issues faced by women worldwide.

The importance of quantitative and qualitative data and analysis of how and why women are involved in the illicit drug trade, and how this relates to their age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, family situation and history of trauma, violence and mental illness cannot be understated. Without adequate indicators on the underlying factors of their engagement in the trade, the differentiated impacts that both drugs and drug policies have on their lives, and the vulnerabilities they may face, policy makers will be unable to design and implement drug policies that are truly effective.

This chapter provides a historic overview of how data on women has so far been tracked by the UN. The chapter will then look to the future, focussing on opportunities to identify more meaningful indicators within a revised Annual Reports Questionnaire, and also by leveraging the Sustainable Development Goals, UN human rights mechanisms and civil society research.

Taiwan promotes social enterprises with the Social Enterprise Action Plan and Social Innovation Action Plan, focusing on solving social problems and achieving sustainable development goals. This study aims to clarify the impetus for the above policies and determines whether the relevant policy tools can achieve the established policy goals.

This study adopts the in-depth interview method and uses the “social impact investment framework” constructed by OEDC and Dunn’s definition of public policy stakeholders to select 22 respondents, who were divided into three groups.

Taiwan’s decision-making in social enterprise policy is mainly driven by the pressure of youth unemployment and the 318-student movement. Intrinsic motivation strategies popularized the concept of social enterprise. Various strategies are used to break the limitations and diversify the organization, trigger more diverse social investments, broaden the goals of investment and complete the social enterprise ecosystem through these. Taiwan’s social enterprise policies are consistent with the global trend of “replacing subsidies with investment.”

This study shows that social enterprises generate mutual benefits between investors and social enterprises, that is, achieve free matching through external mechanisms. This study fills the gaps in Oliver’s “behavioral cube” framework of policy instruments. A “behavioral four-dimensional matrix” composed of nudge, shove, budge and reciprocity is proposed to complete the framework for social enterprise policy analysis tools.

This paper aims to propose a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) to assess the response from the household sector to monetary policy shocks through the consumption function. Moreover, the transmission from monetary policy to household consumption and income distribution is experimented with through the vector autoregression (VAR) model.

In this study, the authors used the maximum likelihood estimation to estimate the DSGE and VAR models with the sample from 1996Q1 to the end of 2021Q4 (104 observations).

The DSGE model’s results show that the response of the household sector is as expected in the theory: a monetary policy shock occurs that increases the policy interest rate by 0.29%, leading to a decrease in consumer spending of about 0.041%, the shock fades after one year. Estimates from the VAR model give similar results: a monetary policy shock narrows income inequality after about 2–3 quarters and this process tends to slow down in the long run.

Based on the research results, the authors propose policy implications for the SBV to achieve the goal of price stability, and stabilizing the macro-economic environment in Vietnam.

The findings of the study have theoretical contributions and empirical scientific evidence showing the effectiveness of the implementation of the SBV’s monetary policy in the context of macro-instability, namely: flexibility, caution and coordination of different measures promptly.