The Dynamic Relationship Between Technology Innovation and Human Development in Technologically Advanced Countries: Fresh Insights from Quantiles-on-Quantile Approach

Our study investigates the relationship between technology innovation and human development in technologically advanced countries using data from quarterly observations from the last decade of the twentieth century to the first two decades of the twenty-first century. This objective of this study is to implement Quantile-on-Quantile regression (QQ) technique that as formulated by Sim and Zhou (J Bank Finance 55:1–8, 2015) and the renowned Granger-causality in quantiles as proposed by Troster (Econom Rev 37(8):850–866, 2018) examine the basic relationship between the given quantiles of technology innovation and their effects on the quantiles of human development. Therefore, the outcomes of this study explain the overall interdependence of technology innovation and affect the overall human development index. It is enumerated that the empirical results indicate that a significant positive relationship exists between technology innovation and human development in all selected technologically advanced countries, predominantly in both low and high tails. Moreover, the outcomes of Granger causality quantiles indicate a bi-directional fundamental relationship between these two variables in the dataset of all countries. The outcomes of the observations are extended to the recent findings on these two variables’ nexus and imply a differential impact on the technologically advanced countries. This causality guides us to offer some specific policy recommendations to each group of countries.

     

Spatio-temporal patterns of pre-eclampsia and eclampsia in relation to drinking water salinity at the district level in Bangladesh from 2016 to 2018

Population and Environment - This analysis examines whether salinity in drinking water is associated with pre-eclampsia and eclampsia (PE/E), a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality....     

Modeling Causality Between Financial Deepening and Poverty Reduction in Egypt

This paper explores the determinants of immigration to Portugal. It is the first study to empirically evaluate an extended set of determinants to explain this new phenomenon in Portugal, a highly globalized economy and a 40-year-old democracy. This study finds evidence that the use of Portuguese as the mother tongue and prior Portuguese immigration are the main determinants of current immigration to Portugal from a given country. Depending on which subgroup is considered (refugees, students, or workers), more specific findings also arise. For refugees and foreign workers, human rights violations help explain increased immigration; for foreign students, low per capita income (in the home country) is a significant factor. Dividing the sample into Portuguese speakers and non-Portuguese speakers, we also identified the level of economic development as an important determinant for immigrants from non-lusophone countries. The military situations of the home countries were also important determinants for lusophone immigrants.     

The roles of supply network centralities in firm performance and the moderating effects of reputation and export-orientation

Abstract

This study explores how supply network degree, closeness, and betweenness centralities affect firm performance, and the moderating effects of organizational reputation (measured by PageRank centrality) and export-orientation. The supply chain relationship empirical data are drawn from manufacturing and manufacturing service companies in Hong Kong, China. Social network analysis and moderated regression analysis were adopted to test the hypotheses for a sample of 814 focal firms with 3086 supply chain ties. The results indicate that in-degree and closeness centralities improve firm performance. Reputation is found to positively moderate the relationship between closeness and sales performance, but negatively moderates the relationship between betweenness and sales performance. Export-orientation has no effect on relationships. This study contributes to the literature by providing additional empirical evidence on the role of supply network position in firm performance. It also introduces PageRank centrality as a new measure of organizational reputation in a supply network.     

When the victim becomes vicious: Combined effects of pseudo transformational leadership and epistemic motivation on contempt and deviant behaviors

Utilizing affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), the current study unravels how and when pseudo-transformational leaders promote contempt, avoidance, and aggression. Specifically, we examined whether pseudo-transformational leadership enforces feelings of contempt, which, in turn, fosters interaction avoidance and covert aggression in followers. We hypothesized that contempt also has an indirect effect that is contingent on levels of epistemic motivation of followers. By adopting a multi-wave research design, we gathered data from 277 employees of the service sector of Pakistan. The results signified that followers of pseudo-transformational leaders feel contemptuous of them and respond with interaction avoidance and indirect aggression. Further, we found that the impact of pseudo-transformational leadership on contempt was more pronounced in individuals with higher levels of epistemic motivation. We believe that this study opens up a new avenue in the pseudo-transformational leadership literature by highlighting the mechanism and conditions under which such leaders are deleterious for organizations.     

The Dyadic Effects of Controlling Emotional Abuse on Subjective Emotional Experience in Iranian Older Married Couples

This randomised control trial study examines the impact of an emotional‐focused intervention on emotional abuse and subjective emotional experience in Iranian older married couples. In the study, 57 older couples were randomly assigned into control and experimental groups with the latter taking part in an intervention program over 4 weeks, twice a week, with sessions lasting 90 minutes. In the experimental group, significant improvements were found for reducing emotional abuse behaviours and increasing subjective emotional experience. Dyadic analysis revealed that a partner's ability to control their own emotional abuse significantly effects both his/her subjective emotional experience and that of their spouse.     

Social media and Web 2.0 for knowledge sharing in product design

Working collaboratively with internal and external partners (suppliers, customers and internal stakeholders) has been at the epicentre of product design. Knowledge sharing has been well recognised in this context. However, there is limited research that has addressed the role of social media/Web 2.0 in facilitating knowledge sharing for sense- and decision-making within product design. To address this gap, this study draws on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and two vignettes that relate to ‘collaborative co-design’ and ‘collaborative design-to-order’. We illustrate the role of social media/Web 2.0 in building knowledge sharing capabilities for sense- and decision-making for internal and external partners during product design. Limitations and further research into the use of social media/Web 2.0 are also discussed.     

Rent seeking and the North-South terms of trade

In this paper results are reported for a series of counterfactual experiments with an eight- region numerical general equilibrium model of world trade, production, and welfare. In these analyses trade restrictions in the developing world are modeled as quantity constrained import licensing, which generates competitive rent-seeking behavior. Model experiments concentrate on the implications of differential factor endowment growth for the North-South terms of trade, and the effects of alternative trade policy changes in developing countries.