90 research outputs found
The role of renewable energy and natural resources for sustainable agriculture in ASEAN countries: Do carbon emissions and deforestation affect agriculture productivity?
No full textThe adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015 shifted the attention towards sustainability-related concerns in both developing and developed counties. The aim of this paper is to examine how agricultural productivity – a key driver in achieving many of these SDGs – is affected by carbon emissions, deforestation, renewable energy consumption, natural resources, and regional integration for the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. Using the Mean Group (MG) class estimators, able to tackle the cross-sectional dependence in the data, empirical findings reveal that environmental degradation (in the form of CO2 emissions) reduces agricultural productivity in the region. Both the forest area and natural resource variables negatively affect the productivity of the agricultural sector, while the use of renewable energy sources positively contributes to the agricultural sector. However, despite being one of the highest integrated regions in the world, regional integration among the ASEAN members does not boost their agricultural productivity. The causality tests confirm the existence of bidirectional causality between agricultural productivity and renewable energy consumption, and unidirectional causality across a few other variables. Accordingly, the study provides policy recommendations for the governments of ASEAN economies on improving the environmental performance of agriculture and achieving the SDGs by 2030
Application of Artificial Intelligence in Stock Market Forecasting: A Critique, Review, and Research Agenda
No full textThe stock market is characterized by extreme fluctuations, non-linearity, and shifts in internal and external environmental variables. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can detect such non-linearity, resulting in much-improved forecast results. This paper reviews 148 studies utilizing neural and hybrid-neuro techniques to predict stock markets, categorized based on 43 auto-coded themes obtained using NVivo 12 software. We group the surveyed articles based on two major categories, namely, study characteristics and model characteristics, where ‘study characteristics’ are further categorized as the stock market covered, input data, and nature of the study; and ‘model characteristics’ are classified as data pre-processing, artificial intelligence technique, training algorithm, and performance measure. Our findings highlight that AI techniques can be used successfully to study and analyze stock market activity. We conclude by establishing a research agenda for potential financial market analysts, artificial intelligence, and soft computing scholarship
Suppression of Wolbachia mediated Cytoplasmic Incompatibility
Get PDFInsect biocontrol applications often hinge upon insect reproduction. Wolbachia are maternally inherited intracellular bacteria that infect insects. Wolbachia sterilizes a mosquito sperm resulting in a lethal embryonic phenotype called cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), wherein eggs from un-infected females fail to develop when fertilized from Wolbachia-infected males. Contrary to this, if males and females both are infected, embryos are viable. The molecular mechanism of CI involves Wolbachia deubiquitylating enzyme CidB and its cognate partner antidote, CidA.
In CHAPTER II, the process of identifying potential molecular targets and suppressors of Wolbachia’s CidB is described. By finding alleles capable of suppressing CI, we will gain insights into the molecular pathways targeted by CidB. In toto, we propose that CidB targets Kap-α, nuclear-protein import, and P32, protamine-histone exchange to induce CI.
The next question was whether CidB cleaves ubiquitin directly off Kap-α or P32 to induce CI. In CHAPTER III, functional mutations and genetic modifications in these two genes were explored to test the role of these two genes in the suppression of CI in Drosophila. The work done here is important for two reasons, firstly, they provide hints toward pathways targeted by CI. Secondly, these genes might co-evolve as resistance factors to CI. Importantly, suppression of CI in vectors will reduce the effectiveness of global mosquito control efforts harnessing Wolbachia and CI
Can Sustainable Investment Yield Better Financial Returns: A Comparative Study of ESG Indices and MSCI Indices
Get PDF‘Sustainable investment’—includes a variety of asset classes selected while caring for the causes of environmental, social, and governance (ESG). It is an investment strategy that seeks to combine social and/ or environmental benefits with financial returns, thus linking investor’s social, ethical, ecological and economic concerns Under certain conditions, these indices also help to attract foreign capital, seeking international participation in the local capital markets. The purpose of this paper is to study whether the sustainable investment alternatives offer better financial returns than the conventional indices from both developed and emerging markets. With an intent to maintain consistency, this paper comparatively analyzes the financial returns of the Thomson Reuters/S-Network global indices, namely the developed markets (excluding US) ESG index—TRESGDX, emerging markets ESG index—TRESGEX, US large-cap ESG index—TRESGUS, Europe ESG index—TRESGEU, and those of the usual markets, namely MSCI world index (MSCI W), MSCI All Country World Equity index (MSCI ACWI), MSCI USA index (MSCI USA), and MSCI Europe Australasia Far East index (MSCI EAFE), MSCI Emerging Markets index (MSCI EM) and MSCI Europe index (MSCI EU). The study also focusses on the inter-linkages between these indices. Daily closing prices of all the benchmark indices are taken for the five-year period of January 2013⁻December 2017. Line charts and unit-root tests are applied to check the stationary nature of the series; Granger’s causality model, auto-regressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH)-GARCH type modelling is performed to find out the linkages between the markets under study followed by the Johansen’s cointegration test and the Vector Error Correction Model to test the volatility spillover between the sustainable indices and the conventional indices. The study finds that the sustainable indices and the conventional indices are integrated and there is a flow of information between the two investment avenues. The results indicate that there is no significant difference in the performance between sustainable indices and the traditional conventional indices, being a good substitute to the latter. Hence, the financial/investment managers can obtain more insights regarding investment decisions, and the study further suggests that their portfolios should consider both the indices with the perspective of diversifying the risk and hedging, and reap benefits of the same. Additionally, corporate executives shall use it to benchmark their own performance against peers and track news as well
Can Central Banking Policies Make a Difference in Financial Market Performance in Emerging Economies? The Case of India
No full textThis paper explores the importance of central banking policies in financial market performance, using the case of India. For this purpose, the paper comparatively analyzes the performance of financial markets during the regimes of last three governors of the Reserve Bank of India—Y V Reddy, D Subbarao, and Raghuram Rajan. The paper discusses the central banking policies in these periods with respect to monetary stability, inflation, and growth challenges. The paper presents an analysis of returns and volatility in stock markets and currency markets in their tenures in comparison with those from other selected emerging markets (Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa) and developed markets (USA and UK). The paper also brings out the leverage effect by applying the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model in addition to comparatively analyzing the performance of financial markets. Further, the paper assesses the impact of central banking policies on financial markets by using the fixed effect model on the reference countries for the period under reference
Towards Configured Intrusion Detection Systems
Get PDFThis paper studies the challenges in the current intrusion detection system and comparatively analyzes the active and passive response systems. The paper studies the existing IDS and their usefulness in detecting and preventing attacks in any type of network and control traffic with the performance of the system to be improved. The study also evaluates the emerging avenues in Intrusion Detection System and explores the possible future avenues in intrusion detection scheme. It is observed that the detection-based systems have started to gain popularity in the IT security domain. The paper highlights the need to implement an appropriately configured IDS since an optimally configured IDS deters hackers, thus, reducing the need for investigation by security experts for security violations
IMPACT OF MACRO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS ON FDI INFLOWS IN EMERGING ECONOMIES: EVIDENCE FROM BRICS
No full textThis paper focuses on the macroeconomic performance of BRICS and the factors determining FDI inflows to BRICS. To understand the characteristics of FDI inflow in BRICS the paper takes FDI Inflow and Portfolio Equity as the dependent variables reflecting the FDI inflow to BRICS. The impact of nine important macroeconomic factors including GDP growth rate, GDP per capita growth rate, GNI growth rate, GNI per capita growth, Gross National Expenditure, Consumer Price Index, Inflation rate, Market capitalization of listed companies and total value of stocks traded is studied on the dependent variables. Secondary data for the period ranging from 1994 to 2011 has been used for these variables. The study uses descriptive statistics including mean, median, standard deviation, correlation, skewness and kurtosis to get insights into the data. Correlation analysis and the Ordinary Least Square method of regression is used to understand the relationship between variables. The paper finds that two common determinants of FDI inflow in India and Russia are GDP growth and GDP per capita growth. Another determining factor in case of Russia is GNI per capita (Atlas method). In case of China the determining factors are GNI-Growth and Gross National Expenditure. However, the study finds no significant factors determining FDI inflows in Brazil and South Africa
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