Economic policy uncertainty has been increasing globally, with consequences for financial sector stability. This paper investigates its influence on the risk-taking behavior of banks. The study examines the functional form of responses of banks to economic policy uncertainty and explores how regulatory quality and safety nets change bank behavior in periods of high uncertainty.
We utilize data from 1999 to 2023 of 796 banks in 21 countries, employing a quadratic two-step system GMM estimation technique to evaluate the impact of economic policy uncertainty on banks' risk-taking. Using the U-test, we confirm the nonlinear relationship and identify its threshold point. Finally, we show the consistency of the estimates by controlling for multiple major crisis periods during the sample period.
We find that economic policy uncertainty generally increases risk-taking among banks. However, beyond a certain point, further increases in economic policy uncertainty could lead to diminishing returns and heightened risk aversion, resulting in decreased risk-taking behavior. Stronger regulatory quality mitigates this effect; however, the reduction in risk-taking is less pronounced when economic policy uncertainty increases. Safetynets moderate the relationship by impacting bank risk-taking sensitivity. Additionally, we find cross-country heterogeneity in the size of economic policy uncertainty and risk-taking. Lastly, we find that the nonlinear effects are robust after controlling for major events like the global financial crisis, the eurozone crisis, COVID-19, and the Ukraine war.
We provide evidence of nonlinearity in the nexus of economic policy uncertainty, regulatory frameworks, safety nets, and bank risk-taking behavior. The findings underscore the significance of robust regulatory quality and safety nets in moderating banks' risk-taking behavior during economic policy uncertainty.
Urban land cover doubled between 1985 and 2015, yet the spatial dynamics of urban form remain under-quantified, despite its importance for sustainability, infrastructure planning, and climate risk. Urban expansion is a non-equilibrium process shaped by interactions between population growth, infrastructure, institutions, and market failures -- rendering static and equilibrium models inadequate. We review key challenges and modeling approaches, focusing on partial differential equation (PDE) frameworks. Borrowed from statistical physics, PDEs capture spatial heterogeneity, anisotropy, stochasticity, and feedbacks between land use and transport networks. Integrating economic and institutional factors remains a major challenge for policy relevance. We propose a research agenda that bridges remote sensing, urban economics, and complexity science to develop dynamic, empirically grounded models of urban expansion.
<p dir="ltr">Human populations are undergoing a structural shift toward older, slower-growing, and ultimately contracting configurations as fertility falls below replacement, childbearing is postponed, and longevity rises. These changes are commonly framed as policy failures or temporary anomalies. This paper argues instead that they reflect endogenous, system-level demographic dynamics analogous to late-successional ecological processes. It introduces Ecological Loop Demography (ELD), a framework that models population change as a stock–flow system governed by interacting reinforcing and balancing feedback loops embedded in age structure. ELD identifies four mutually reinforcing demographic loops: (1) fertility-driven cohort compression, (2) structural ageing–fertility suppression, (3) longevity-driven elder stock expansion, and (4) momentum exhaustion through natural increase collapse. Once activated, these loops shift population dynamics from flow-dominated growth to stock-dominated contraction, rendering fertility recovery increasingly ineffective. In ELD, fertility and mortality rates function as flows that modulate demographic change, while age-structured cohort sizes constitute dominant stocks that change slowly and generate inertia. As populations age, outcomes become increasingly governed by stock dynamics rather than by short-term rate changes, producing declining policy elasticity and asymptotic adjustment toward smaller, older population structures. Using global demographic data (UN WPP 2024; IHME) and comparative analyses of Nigeria, Brazil, and Japan, the paper demonstrates that sustained low fertility and longevity gains generate predictable trajectories of structural ageing and population contraction largely independent of short-term policy intervention. A composite ELD index shows that fertility responsiveness collapses once age-structural feedbacks dominate. These findings suggest that population decline is not a demographic malfunction but a self-organising adjustment within biophysical limits. However, because modern democratic capitalism remains institutionally dependent on labour-force growth and continuous accumulation, demographic ageing and contraction are widely interpreted as economic crises. ELD situates contemporary demographic change within a broader ecological–political economy framework, highlighting why ageing, inequality, and democratic fragility increasingly co-evolve.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Human populations are undergoing a structural shift toward older, slower-growing, and ultimately contracting configurations as fertility falls below replacement, childbearing is postponed, and longevity rises. These changes are commonly framed as policy failures or temporary anomalies. This paper argues instead that they reflect endogenous, system-level demographic dynamics analogous to late-successional ecological processes. It introduces Ecological Loop Demography (ELD), a framework that models population change as a stock–flow system governed by interacting reinforcing and balancing feedback loops embedded in age structure. ELD identifies four mutually reinforcing demographic loops: (1) fertility-driven cohort compression, (2) structural ageing–fertility suppression, (3) longevity-driven elder stock expansion, and (4) momentum exhaustion through natural increase collapse. Once activated, these loops shift population dynamics from flow-dominated growth to stock-dominated contraction, rendering fertility recovery increasingly ineffective. In ELD, fertility and mortality rates function as flows that modulate demographic change, while age-structured cohort sizes constitute dominant stocks that change slowly and generate inertia. As populations age, outcomes become increasingly governed by stock dynamics rather than by short-term rate changes, producing declining policy elasticity and asymptotic adjustment toward smaller, older population structures. Using global demographic data (UN WPP 2024; IHME) and comparative analyses of Nigeria, Brazil, and Japan, the paper demonstrates that sustained low fertility and longevity gains generate predictable trajectories of structural ageing and population contraction largely independent of short-term policy intervention. A composite ELD index shows that fertility responsiveness collapses once age-structural feedbacks dominate. These findings suggest that population decline is not a demographic malfunction but a self-organising adjustment within biophysical limits. However, because modern democratic capitalism remains institutionally dependent on labour-force growth and continuous accumulation, demographic ageing and contraction are widely interpreted as economic crises. ELD situates contemporary demographic change within a broader ecological–political economy framework, highlighting why ageing, inequality, and democratic fragility increasingly co-evolve.</p>
Mohammed Er-Riyad Er-Riyad, Maroua El-Jihaoui, Ibrahim Bamohammed
Crowdfunding platforms are considered valuable tools within Islamic finance due to their potential compliance with Islamic Sharia principles and their absence of any suspicion related to usury (Riba). These platforms are new financing mechanisms based on raising funds from potential contributors to finance specific projects. This research aims to shed light on crowdfunding as a form of financing that can be classified within Islamic finance. The research also explores crowdfunding's role in financing disaster relief efforts and aiding disaster-stricken regions by providing financial solutions managed via digital platforms launched specifically for this purpose. As an example of crowdfunding to mitigate the aftermath of natural disasters, the research examines the "Tasharuky" platform. The platform primarily funds operations that mitigate the effects of certain natural disasters in accordance with Islamic Sharia rulings in regions across the Middle East, Indonesia and Africa.
Between 1957-1985, Chinese mathematician Loo-Keng Hua pioneered economic optimization theory through three key contributions: establishing economic stability's fundamental theorem, proving the uniqueness of equilibrium solutions in economic systems, and developing a consumption-integrated model 50 days before his death. Since 1988, Mu-Fa Chen has been working on Hua's theory. He introduced stochastics, namely Markov chains, to economic optimization theory. He updated and developed Hua's model and came up with a new model (Chen's model) which has become the starting point of a new economic optimization theory. Chen's theory can be applied to economic stability test, bankruptcy prediction, product ranking and classification, economic prediction and adjustment, economic structure optimization. Chen's theory can also provide efficient algorithms that are programmable and intelligent. {Stochastics} is the cornerstone of Chen's theory. There is no overlap between Chen's theory, and the existing mathematical economy theory and the economics developments that were awarded Nobel Prizes in Economics between 1969 and 2024. The distinguished features of Chen's theory from the existing theories are quantitative, calculable, predictable, optimizable, programmable and can be intelligent. This survey provides a theoretical overview of the newly published monograph \cite{5rw24}. Specifically, the invariant of the economic structure matrix, also known as the Chen's invariant, was first published in this survey.
The goal of this study is to propose a new concept, Sustainable Economic Value, to define it logically, and to build a simplified model for its evaluation.
У даному дослідженні розглядається концепція управління талантами та описано ключові процеси талант-менеджменту, такі як: ідентифікація, адаптація, розвиток, мотивація та збереження талантів, а також оцінка ефективності управління талантами. Проаналізовано методи розвитку талановитих працівників, такі як асесмент-центри, коучинг, наставництво, тренінги та курси від компанії. Визначено, що для збереження талантів необхідна мотивація як у вигляді матеріальних винагород з різноманітними методами систем оплати праці, так і у вигляді нематеріальних заохочень. Надано рекомендації з впровадження стратегії управління талантами в організації. Доведено ефективність талант-менеджменту та його позитивний вплив на діяльність підприємства.
Human gait has been shown to provide crucial motion cues for various applications. Recognizing patterns in human gait has been widely adopted in various application areas such as security, virtual reality gaming, medical rehabilitation, and ailment identification. Furthermore, wearable inertial sensors have been widely used for not only recording gait but also to predict users' demography. Machine Learning techniques such as deep learning, combined with inertial sensor signals, have shown promising results in recognizing patterns in human gait and estimate users' demography. However, the black-box nature of such deep learning models hinders the researchers from uncovering the reasons behind the model's predictions. Therefore, we propose leveraging deep learning and Layer-Wise Relevance Propagation (LRP) to identify the important variables that play a vital role in identifying the users' demography such as age and gender. To assess the efficacy of this approach we train a deep neural network model on a large sensor-based gait dataset consisting of 745 subjects to identify users' age and gender. Using LRP we identify the variables relevant for characterizing the gait patterns. Thus, we enable interpretation of non-linear ML models which are experts in identifying the users' demography based on inertial signals. We believe this approach can not only provide clinicians information about the gait parameters relevant to age and gender but also can be expanded to analyze and diagnose gait disorders.
Christian Di Pietro, Mariafortuna Pietroluongo, Marco M. Sorge
We investigate pairwise stochastic comparisons of stationary solutions to the linear recurrence <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><mrow><msub><mi>X</mi><mrow><mi>t</mi><mo>+</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msub><mo>=</mo><msub><mi>A</mi><mi>t</mi></msub><msub><mi>X</mi><mi>t</mi></msub><mo>+</mo><msub><mi>B</mi><mi>t</mi></msub></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>A</mi><mi>t</mi></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>B</mi><mi>t</mi></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> are non-negative random variables. We establish novel order-preserving properties, which enable us to obtain comparison theorems about well-known measures of conditional size, tail variability and skewness across probability distributions. While useful in studies of ergodic wealth accumulation processes and the persistence of inequality, our results can fruitfully be exploited to conduct comparative statics exercises in structural models entailing Kesten-type reduced-form representations. An application of our analysis to a dynamic asset accumulation model uncovers the qualitatively similar effects of capital income and earnings taxation on expected wealth concentration over higher quantiles as well as on conditional upper tail dispersion of wealth holdings, qualifying previous results that solely rely on the determination of Pareto exponents.
El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar los f lujos del comercio exterior de las compañías más grandes de la Argentina durante el Gobierno de la alianza Cambiemos (2015-2019). Las transformaciones institucionales en este período tuvieron un claro enfoque ortodoxo y, entre otras cosas, acarrearon un proceso de desindustrialización y reprimarización del perfil de especialización y de inserción internacional. Por otra parte, debido a la gravitación que poseen las empresas líderes en el conjunto de la economía, el comportamiento de estas explicó en buena medida el derrotero del frente externo en el transcurso de esta experiencia neoliberal. Dicho poder económico mostró gran dinamismo en los flujos comerciales, ya sea gracias al aumento de las exportaciones mayormente asociadas a la explotación de recursos naturales o a su papel en el boomimportador de bienes que compitieron de lleno con la producción nacional. Finalmente resaltamos que la gestión de Cambiemos, realizó cambios relevantes en las reglas de juego del comercio exterior. De acuerdo con el enfoque ortodoxo imperante, en la etapa estudiada se aplicaron diversas políticas que, en su articulación, condujeron a un agudo proceso de desindustrialización y reprimarización del perfil de especialización e inserción de la Argentina en el mercado mundial.
U radu se istražuju promene obrazovnog sastava bračnih partnera u bivšim jugoslovenskim republikama, posebno opadanje učešća brakova u kojima su muškarci obrazovaniji od žena (hipergamni brakovi). U osnovi ovih promena jeste razvoj tercijarnog obrazovanja i nastanak polne asimetrije visokoobrazovanih lica, usled kojih je u prve dve decenije XX veka došlo do porasta učešća bračnih zajednica u kojima su žene obrazovanije. Analiza se pretežno temelji na podacima Demografske (vitalne) statistike, a period koji je obuhvaćen istraživanjem odnosi se na poslednjih pedeset godina. Koristeći se specifičnim pokazateljima (F i H indeksom) i korelacionom analizom, dobijeni su rezultati koji su pokazali da obrazovna hipergamija opada u svim istraživanim zemljama, kao i da je opadanje hipergamije povezano sa prevagom žena među visokoobrazovanim licima. Rezultati daju nove uvide u tumačenje izbora partnera posredstvom socioekonomskih karakteristika, ali i ukazuju na ključnu ulogu koju u procesu selekcije ima obrazovna kompozicija stanovništva.
This study examined the relationship between trade facilitation and economic growth among the middle-income countries from 2010 to 2020 using 94 countries made up of 48 lower-middle-income countries and 46 upper-middle-income countries. The study utilized both difference and system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) since the cross-sections (N) were greater than the periods (T). The study found that container port traffic, quality of trade and transport-related infrastructure have a strong influence on imports and exports of goods and national income while trade tariff hurts the growth of the countries. The study also found that most of the trade facilitation indicators indicated a weak positive influence on trade flows and economic growth. Based on these findings, the study recommends that reforms aimed at significantly lowering the costs of trading across borders among middle-income countries should be highly prioritized in policy formulations, with a focus on the export side by reducing at-the-border documentation, time, and real costs of trading across borders while the international organizations should continue to report the set of Trade Facilitation Indicators (TFIs) that identify areas for action and enable the potential impact of reforms to be assessed.
Accuracy of economic theories and efficiency of economic policy strictly depend on the choice of the economic variables and processes mostly liable for description of economic reality. That states the general problem of assessment of any possible economic variables and processes chargeable for economic evolution. We show that economic variables and processes described by current economic theories constitute only a negligible fraction of factors responsible for economic dynamics. We consider numerous unnoted economic variables and overlooked economic processes those determine the states and predictions of the real economics. We regard collective economic variables, collective transactions and expectations, mean risks of economic variables and transactions, collective velocities and flows of economic variables, transactions and expectations as overlooked factors of economic evolution. We introduce market-based probability of the asset price and consider unnoticed influence of market stochasticity on randomness of macroeconomic variables. We introduce economic domain composed by continuous numeric risk grades and outline that the bounds of the economic domain result in unnoticed inherent cyclical motion of collective variables, transactions and expectations those are responsible for observed business cycles. Our treatment of unnoticed and overlooked factors of theoretical economics and policy decisions preserves a wide field of studies for many decades for academic researchers, economic authorities and high-level politicians.
The economic and financial variables of economic agents determine macroeconomic variables. Current models consider agents' variables that are determined by the sums of values and volumes of agents' trades during some time interval Δ. We call them first-order economic variables. We describe how the volatilities and correlations of market trade values and volumes determine price volatility. We argue that such a link requests consideration of agents' economic variables of the second order that are composed of sums of squares of agents' transactions during Δ. Almost any variable of the first order should be complemented by its second-order pair. Respectively, the sums of agents' second-order variables introduce macroeconomic variables of the second order. The description of the first- and second-order macroeconomic variables establishes the subject of second-order economic theory. We highlight that the complexity of second-order economic theory essentially restricts any hopes for precise predictions of price probability and, at best, could provide estimates of price volatility. That limits the predictions of price probability to Gauss's approximations only.
El objetivo del artículo consiste en indagar acerca de dos características fundamentales de la racionalidad del sistema económico: la coherencia de los fines hacia los que se dirige la teoría económica y la conducta de los sujetos a la racionalidad del sistema. Para esto, se expone la idea de que el trasfondo teleológico de la teoría económica no puede decir nada acerca de la jerarquía de fines. Esta idea se deja ver sobre todo en el concepto de utilidad y en la hipótesis de la nueva economía clásica de expectativas racionales.
Economic history and conditions, Economic theory. Demography
As a developing country, Indonesia shows a quite interesting phenomenon, which is the high rate of debt of many companies in Indonesia. This fact shows that the policy of leverage plays an important role for the viability of the company. The main purpose of this research was to test empirically factors influencing leverage, for there are still inconsistencies in research results from the prior studies. Based on the data of the mining companies listed on BEI for period 2009-2011, in addition of using tax factors that consisted of Corporate tax rate and Non-debt tax shield, influencing the leverage, there are also another factors influencing leverage, which are Investment opportunity set, Profitability, Past debt, Tangibility of fixed assets, Firm size, and Cost of financial distress. The analyzed data are the combination of time series and cross-section data or, panel data, utilizing the regression model supported by the software SPSS 20 on 0,05 or 5% of significance level. The result of the study shows that at the significance level of 0,05 Corporate Tax Rate (0,543), Non–debt Tax Shield (0,518), Investment Opportunity Set (0,442), Tangibility of Fixed Assets (0,544), Firm Size (0,500), and Cost of Financial Distress (0,380) have no significant effect for the leverage. While Profitability (0,028) negatively has significance effect for the leverage at the significance of 0,05. While Past Debt (0,000) has significant positive effect on the leverage at the significance of 0,05.
Many scholars emphasize the importance of economic competitiveness in the improvement of economic growth. However, studies that quantitatively analyze the interconnection between different components of competitiveness in one economy and their impact on economic growth are very limited. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to fill the gap in the literature on economic growth and study the effect of competitiveness in different stages of economic development. In this regard, using the data of 81 countries of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in three groups of resource-, efficiency- and innovation-driven countries for years 2008-2017, the relationship between national competitiveness and economic growth is examined through the econometric model of generalized method of Moments (GMM). Our results indicate that the impact of institutions, infrastructure, higher education, business complexity and innovation on economic growth is positive and significant in all three groups of countries. In addition, the impact of labor market efficiency, financial market development and macroeconomic stability has been significant only in inefficiency - and innovation-driven, and the impact of primary education and health had been meaningful only in resource-driven countries. In addition, the effect of the goods market efficiency and market size on economic growth has been significant only in innovation-driven countries and technology-readiness was significant in all but innovation-driven countries. In summary, our estimation results indicate that the impact of competitiveness components on economic growth in different countries varies according to their stage of development.
Qardh al-hasan (or benevolent lending known as a form of interest-free loan), is introduced as a good tool to realize the general approach of "prohibition of Riba or usury". Also, the rights and privileges this contract provides to both parties make it attractive both for raising and saving funds and for the supplying of the invested funds; but the lender's complete confidence in the future purchasing power of the borrowed money is one of the key factors in people's decision to invest in Qardh al-hasan deposits, which depends on the quality of the economic environment. This paper examines the determinants of Qardh al-hasane deposits with emphasis on economic security in public and private Iranian banks over the period 1984-2016. The results show that economic security has a positive and significant effect on Qardh al-hasane deposits. Also other variables such as volume of liquidity and Qardh al-hasane deposits and savings have positive and significant effect on Qardh al-hasane deposits, while interest rate of bank deposits has negative and significant effect on Qardh al-hasane deposits.
Mohammad Taqiuddin Mohammad, Abdul Hannan, Alan Suud Maadi
Being declared in 2015 in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, sustainable development goals (SDGs) has an aim to answer various humanitarian-environment crisis of millennium era (MDGs). One of the main problems which become a focus is woman’s participation. Especially in development context, whether in international, national, or local scope. This paper entitle, The Marketing Strategy of Madura Tourism Industry Area trough Sustainable Development Based Gender. In particular, this study has an aim to analyze the existential of Madura woman, dealing with the area development based SDGs. Various crucial issues which become a focus of this study namely; the dynamic Madura tourism industry, sustainable development concept, and development idea based gender. The three crucial issues above will be elaborated based on the three research problems below: 1).How is the existence of Madura tourism? 2).Whatis the definition of sustainable development? 3). How is the position of gender plays a role and strategic function in marketing activity of Madura tourism industry for the next? This study is qualitative method. The data of this paper is from two sources namely primary and secondary data. The theory perspective of this study is using area marketing theory of Richard Florida and Femenis George Ritzer theory. In general, this paper has an aim to describe how the dynamic Madura tourism industry is, this study has big contribution in offering the Madura development idea, especially in promoting the local industry area to sustainable development area carrying the spirit of equality.
Keywords: Marketing area, Madura tourism, sustainable development, Gender.