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.

     

Federalism and the Implementation of Environmental Policy: Changing Trends in Canada and the United States

In a federal system of government, powers are shared by the national and sub-national units in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. However, the process of policy implementation may differ on the basis of allocation of power and the nature of the system. Canada and the United States of America adopted federal systems of government, and faced similar pressures for implementing policies on environmental issues. Yet, the degree of success and outcome appear to be different due to variations in the strength of the respective federalist systems. An analysis of the various aspects of the federal system in the two countries reveals noticeable differences in institutional configurations, relationship between national and sub-national units, and variances in intra-institutional relations. All these have contributed to a divergence in the past, but there is an emerging trend of convergence as both the Canadian and American governments are gradually moving away from their existing patterns of policy implementation toward a new approach involving private-sector initiatives and self-enforcement with strong inclinations toward voluntarization, corporatization and marketization.     

A cross-cultural comparison of death anxiety: a brief note

Data are reported from samples of undergraduates around the world who have been administered Templer's Death Anxiety Scale. Data from 24 American samples and from 16 nations were identified. Strong sex differences were found and an association between the scores of men and women.     

Environmental practices and firm performance in emerging markets: the mediating role of product quality

Environmental practices have not received as much research attention in emerging market contexts as traditional topics like quality. However, the importance of environmental practices for a firm’s production strategy has been increasing at an unprecedented level across the globe. Our research objective is, therefore, to investigate the interplay between environmental practices and quality in the pursuit of firm performance. Relying on 492 responses from Turkish manufacturers to test our hypotheses, we show that environmental practices directly improve the quality of products over and above the effect of quality management practices in emerging markets. Product quality, in turn, is important for increasing firm performance, acting as a mediator for the positive effects of environmental practices on performance. Thus, we reveal that product quality functions as an instrumental conduit between environmental practices and firm performance in emerging markets like Turkey where stakeholder pressures are weak, and regulations are often not properly enforced.     

Generalized neighbor designs with block size 3

A generalized neighbor design relaxes the equality condition on the number of times two treatments as neighbors in the design. In this article, we have considered the construction of some classes of generalized neighbor designs with block size k=3 by using the method of cyclic shifts. The distinguishing feature of this construction method is that the properties of a design can easily be obtained from the sets of shifts instead of constructing the actual blocks of the design. A catalog of generalized neighbor designs with block size k=3 is compiled for v∈{5,6,…,18} treatments and for different replications. We provide the reader with a simpler method of construction, and in general the catalog that gives an open choice to the experimenter for selecting any class of neighbor designs.     

Inference on effect size indices from several two-armed experiments

The statistical inference problem on effect size indices is addressed using a series of independent two-armed experiments from k arbitrary populations. The effect size parameter simply quantifies the difference between two groups. It is a meaningful index to be used when data are measured on different scales. In the context of bivariate statistical models, we define estimators of the effect size indices and propose large sample testing procedures to test the homogeneity of these indices. The null and non-null distributions of the proposed testing procedures are derived and their performance is evaluated via Monte Carlo simulation. Further, three types of interval estimation of the proposed indices are considered for both combined and uncombined data. Lower and upper confidence limits for the actual effect size indices are obtained and compared via bootstrapping. It is found that the length of the intervals based on the combined effect size estimator are almost half the length of the intervals based on the uncombined effect size estimators. Finally, we illustrate the proposed procedures for hypothesis testing and interval estimation using a real data set.     

Merging data from multiple sources: pretest and shrinkage perspectives

In this article, we have developed asymptotic theory for the simultaneous estimation of the k means of arbitrary populations under the common mean hypothesis and further assuming that corresponding population variances are unknown and unequal. The unrestricted estimator, the Graybill-Deal-type restricted estimator, the preliminary test, and the Stein-type shrinkage estimators are suggested. A large sample test statistic is also proposed as a pretest for testing the common mean hypothesis. Under the sequence of local alternatives and squared error loss, we have compared the asymptotic properties of the estimators by means of asymptotic distributional quadratic bias and risk. Comprehensive Monte-Carlo simulation experiments were conducted to study the relative risk performance of the estimators with reference to the unrestricted estimator in finite samples. Two real-data examples are also furnished to illustrate the application of the suggested estimation strategies.     

Can Public Management Contribute to Governance in Developing Countries?

Governance ensures a wide range of desirable values including efficiency, productivity, participation, transparency, and accountability. The wide scope and overambitious demands of governance make it difficult to conceptualize and operationalize. Despite huge investments in time and resources, developing countries seldom succeed in establishing good governance. Based on the experience of Hong Kong, this article argues that many of the desired values of governance can be attained through effective design and the implementation of public management reforms. Public management cannot serve as an alternative for governance, but reforms in this area can help update and adjust institutional structures, processes, and practices in developing countries; they help to ensure the benefits of the desired values of governance without undertaking enormous risks. However, the size of a country and the nature of its political system will influence the degree of success in establishing governance.