COVID-19, Digital Transformation of Banks, and Operational Capabilities of Commercial Banks

The development of financial technology has promoted the innovation and digital transformation of commercial banks. Through digital transformation, commercial banks can improve bank efficiency and operational capabilities. Through empirical analysis, this study explored the relationship between digital bank transformation and commercial bank operating capabilities and how COVID-19, bank categories, and enterprise life cycles affect the relationship between digital bank transformation and commercial bank operating capabilities. This study selected data from China's commercial banks from 2011 to 2021 and used the regression method of fixed effects to conduct an empirical analysis. The research results show that the digital transformation of banks has improved the operational capabilities of commercial banks. Further analysis showed that the emergence of COVID-19 has negatively affected their relationship. At the same time, compared with rural commercial banks and commercial banks in the recession and phase-out periods, non-rural commercial banks and commercial banks in the growth and maturity stages play a more vital moderating role in the impact of the digital transformation of banks on the financial performance of commercial banks. The main research object of this study is Chinese commercial banks, and this study examines the results of banks' digital transformation and enriches the research on digital transformation. At the same time, this study is helpful to investors who like investment banks and has good practical significance.

Pandemic techno-politics in the global South

Brazil has been standing out as one of the worst places on Earth to be during a global health crisis, especially for those whose struggle for basic humanitarian rights is already routine. How do the political environment and historical inequalities in countries like Brazil affect the ways in which public policy and technologies are framed as responses for the pandemic crisis? In this paper we aim to present the sequence of actions and omissions in the fight against sars-cov2 in Brazil, concentrating on measures based on the use of digital technologies and the sociotechnical arrangements unfolding in materialities that give shape to such measures. We will also discuss possible repercussions of the widespread adoption of surveillance technologies as a quick fix to the effects of the pandemic. Our focus is to explain how the materiality of the virus and its political as well as territorial effects are combined with digital technologies as responses (or lack of them) in the fields of healthcare, education, communication and labour in the context of the global South. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Information Polity: The International Journal of Government & Democracy in the Information Age is the property of IOS Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Teaching, Learning, and Climate Change: Anticipated Impacts and Mitigation Strategies for Educators

The impacts of climate change present numerous risks to the present and future state of teaching and learning. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, heat waves, flooding, blizzards, wildfires, sea level rise, and droughts threaten our ability to produce the learning outcomes promised to our pupils. Taking action to adapt to imminent climate-related challenges and mitigating measures that provoke and prolong ecological challenges is critical to the survival of these cultural institutions. Paradoxically, centers of teaching and learning can be seen as both victims of climate change as well as an instrumental part of the solution. Providing an efficient and effective education to the world's youth is a catalyst for the innovations that future generations of skilled professionals will use to combat climate change. Educational settings are also crucial venues for raising social awareness about anthropogenic climate change to undermine the complacency and denialism that have stagnated the global response to this crisis thus far. This paper incorporates suggestions from climate scientists and learning scientists about how to change how we teach, where we teach, and what we teach to ensure teaching enterprises survive and thrive in the face of a changing climate.

The Impact of Entrepreneurship Financial Opportunities and Business Environment on the Country's Innovation Development and National Wealth

The Covid-19 pandemic caused negative consequences for the economic growth and national wealth of countries worldwide. In 2020 the GDP per capita growth was -4,3% worldwide and -5% in Azerbaijan. However, in 2021, it was 4,8% and 5,1% in accordance, indicating Azerbaijan's economic potential. At the same time, Azerbaijan takes only 80th place from 132 countries in the Global Innovation Index Rank, which is not sufficient and requires further innovation development of the country. Also, Azerbaijan is the 34th of 190 countries in the Ease of Doing Business rank. Still, according to the Enterprise Surveys made by the World Bank, 23,7% of firms in Azerbaijan choose access to finance as their biggest obstacle. At the same time, the average world indicator is 14,2%, and the average one in Europe and Central Asia is 9,4%. Therefore, this research aims to prove the hypothesis about the positive impact of entrepreneurship financial opportunities and the business environment on the country's innovation development and national wealth. In the first stage, a bibliometric and analytical analysis was carried out using the tools of the Scopus database, the VOSviewer, and Google Trends. In the second stage, a sample of 20 countries was formed. It includes the top 10 leaders in the Global Innovation Index Rank with high-income economies (as benchmark countries for innovation development, according to which Azerbaijan should increase its position) and the top 10 leaders with upper-middle-income economies (similar to Azerbaijan). The informational base consists of data from the World Bank, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the World Economic Forum for the last 10 available years. In the third stage, the correlation analysis was made to identify the relationship between the indicators of entrepreneurship financial opportunities and business environment (financing of SMEs, venture capital availability, domestic credit to the private sector, ease of doing business, ease of starting a business, ease of getting credit, ease of resolving insolvency, protecting minority investors, number of new limited liability companies, new business density) and the indicators of the country's innovation development (Global Innovation Index) and national wealth (total wealth per capita). And at the fourth stage, the impact of entrepreneurship financial opportunities and business environment on the country's innovation development and national wealth was determined based on regression modeling results. The obtained results could be useful for scientists in further research on this issue and for government officials in improving the state's economic policy.

Innovation and internationalisation during times of economic growth, crisis, and recovery prior to Covid-19: A configurational approach comparing Spanish manufacturing family and non-family firms

Based primarily on the Resource-Based View and prior evidence, this study gauges the potential differences in innovative behaviour between international family firms and non-family firms when conditions change drastically in the business environment (i.e. from a situation of economic growth to one of downturn, and then to recovery). The research setting is a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms between 2007 and 2016 (i.e. pre-Covid-19). During this period (2009-2013), the global economic and financial crisis affected Spain. Thus, three sub-periods are distinguished in the empirical analysis: growth, crisis, and recovery. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, our findings show that the paths of innovation activities that promote internationalisation via exporting in family and non-family firms are somewhat dissimilar in each sub-period, supporting the argument that the causal effect of innovation on internationalisation is heavily dependent on environmental conditions. Compared to non-family firms, our results show that when family firms internationalise, they follow a wide variety and more stable number of paths in innovation activities. Our findings also provide additional evidence to support the argument of heterogeneity among family firms.

Where is the world in the new state capitalism?

Alami and Dixon instead treat state capitalism not as a well-defined analytical category but rather a "flexible means of problematising...trajectories of state intervention and the role that it plays in the (geo) political re-organisation of global capitalism" ([1]: xx). One way this query might be posed is where in the world the phenomena described under the rubric of state capitalism are most pronounced or perhaps newly apparent;in which countries or in what parts of the world do we see a more muscular or interventionist state? Keywords: State capitalism;hegemonic cycles;macrohistorical sociology EN State capitalism hegemonic cycles macrohistorical sociology 770 773 4 05/16/23 20230501 NES 230501 The term "state capitalism" dates from the late nineteenth century, when it was coined by Marxists seeking to understand the growing role of the state as an owner of capital and orchestrator of production in European countries. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Environment & Planning A is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Detection of Covid-19 using Mask R-CNN

Deep learning has been widely used to analyze radiographic pictures such as chest scans. These radiographic pictures include a wealth of information, including patterns and cluster-like formations, which aid in the discovery and conformance of COVID-19-like pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on global well-being and public health. Until present, more than 27 million confirmed cases have been recorded globally. Due to the increasing number of confirmed cases and issues with COVID-19 variants, fast and accurate categorization of healthy and infected individuals is critical for COVID-19 management and treatment. In medical image analysis and classification, artificial intelligence (AI) approaches in general, and region-based convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in particular, have yielded promising results. In this study, a deep Mask R-CNN architecture based on chest image classification is suggested for the diagnosis of COVID-19. An effective and reliable Mask R-CNN classification was difficult due to a lack of sufficient size and high-quality chest image datasets. These complications are addressed with Mask Region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNNs) as a framework for detecting COVID-19 patients from chest pictures using an open-source dataset. First, the model was evaluated using 100 photos from the original processed dataset, and it was found to be accurate. The model was then validated against an independent dataset of COVID-19 X-ray pictures. The suggested model outperformed all other models in general and specifically when tested using an independent testing set. © 2023 IEEE.

Socioemotional wealth of family firms during the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of slack resources

Purpose: This study investigates the behaviour of family firms, family management and family ownership regarding their socioemotional wealth (Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)) during the COVID-19 pandemic and according to their slack resources availability. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a multiple regression analysis to analyse 245 firm-year observations from 2020 to 2021. Findings: Family firms have a negative effect on CSR, as do family management and family ownership. Slack resources (both absorbed and unabsorbed) reduce the negative effect of family firms (and family ownership) on CSR. Unabsorbed slack resources reduce the negative effect of family management on CSR and absorbed slack resources increase the negative effect of family management on CSR. The results are robust with various measurements of slack resources. Extra analyses reveal that family commissioner has no effect on CSR. Originality/value: To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first empirical study to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the preservation of socioemotional wealth in family firms. This study proves the theoretical argument of prior studies that the preservation of socioemotional wealth in family firms during the COVID-19 pandemic depends on their financial condition. The study also proves that there are different attitudes among family ownership, family management and family firms concerning the use of slack resources for socioemotional wealth preservation that have not been analysed by previous research. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Introduction: The Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacted a historic toll on Americans' health and longevity. It has also shaped socioeconomic inequalities along the lines of gender, race, ethnicity, nativity, and class in America. The effects of COVID-19 are evident in the stratified experiences of Americans in work, unemployment, and unpaid labor;in stark inequalities in wealth and income;in the historic expansions and retrenchments in social welfare spending;and in the increase in violence and changes in the criminal justice system. While there has been an outpouring of research on the social and economic consequences of COVID-19, far less work draws together research across these varied, but interrelated, domains. In this introduction, we provide a broad narrative of how the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in America and reshaped, in some instances fleetingly and in others more permanently, the landscape of socioeconomic inequality in America.

Generosity and Gender: Philanthropic Models for Women Donors and the Fund Development Professionals Who Support Them

The social, political, and economic environment is ripe with opportunity to engage women and their philanthropy. Professionals working in the field of philanthropy want ideas, practical information, research, and guidance about how to work with women donors, how to build women's philanthropy initiatives, and how to integrate this subset of donors into their current fund development departments. This book offers insight into the three historical waves of women's philanthropy and provides a summary of current research and inspiring stories collected from interviews with more than 70 women philanthropists and leaders. Each chapter begins with current research, followed by interviews and examples, and ends with suggestions for fundraisers on how to implement the information into a women's philanthropy initiative using a six-step process: Awareness, Assessment, Alignment, Action, Acknowledgement and Achievement. The last several chapters focus on lessons learned from successful programs in traditional organizational settings-healthcare, higher education, and environment-and what we have yet to learn from the new and emerging philanthropic models led by Laurene Powell Jobs, Priscilla Chan, Melinda Gates, Nancy Roob, and MacKenzie Scott. Throughout the book, themes of equity, diversity, and inclusion are evident and featured in stories and programs led by women of color and younger donors. Additionally, COVID has impacted how fundraisers work, requiring the philanthropy community to adapt and create new ways to reach women donors. The final chapter is a call to action to all women, to give bigger and bolder as the fourth wave of women's philanthropy rises. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2022.

Playing the wild cards: Antecedents of family firm resilience

The purpose of this study is to explore how family firms respond to wild cards. We aim to capture the under-standing of family firm owners/managers of what wild cards are in terms of frequency, kind, and impact. We also examine how familiness and entrepreneurial orientation form the resilience and survival of family firms when facing wild cards. The scope of our attention is limited to extreme events so far overlooked in the family firm resilience literature, and the empirical context of our study involves the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that the response to wild cards depends on the understanding of those extreme situations that family firms managers/owners develop. Deep time horizon is relevant in developing a useful understanding of wild cards, and generational involvement helps to socially construct it. After developing an understanding, family firm man-agers/owners use decision making preferences in selecting their response to wild cards. Our study offers a behavioral take on family firms resilience, and provides a fine grained view incorporating behavioral constructs.

Are family owners and managers good stewards in global crises? Evidence from stock market reactions to Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic as a truly global crisis has shown the importance of firm resilience in times of crisis. Yet, so far, we lack an understanding of the role of firm ownership and management in building this resilience. Based on stewardship theory, we posit that family management and ownership help firms to navigate through a global crisis. To test our predictions, we analyze how Covid-related negative events affect the stock market reactions of 300 German listed firms and how family ownership and management moderate these effects. Our cross-sectional regression results show a positive effect of family management while no such effect was found for family ownership. We contribute to the research on family involvement and stewardship in crisis situations by showing that family ownership and management constitute distinct determinants of stewardship behavior and by bringing a context element into family business stewardship research that was missing so far in the literature. Practical implications exist for family firm's top management employment policies and capital market communication in crisis situations.

Investigating the dynamics of crisis transmission channels: A comparative analysis

This paper analyzes the growing complexity of cross-market interdependence during financial crises. From macroeconomic, investor constraint, and quantitative easing policy perspectives, we investigate crisis transmission channels across major stock markets by comparing the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, and the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis. We find that lower-tail contagion is mainly driven by the wealth effect and upper-tail contagion is mainly driven by the portfolio rebalancing, and shed light on the underlying dynamic mechanisms, such as credit spreads, risk aversion, economic policy uncertainty, and quantitative easing policy. Additionally, we show the impact of macroeconomic fundamentals, investor sentiment, and quantitative easing policy on lower-tail and upper-tail financial contagion.

Do dividend announcements override the pandemic impacts? Evidence from the BSE 500 constituent firms

With a sample of 332 dividend announcements from January 2019 to December 2020, using the event study methodology with the market model, we provide evidence that the dividend announcements failed to influence the stock prices under the pandemic stress. Although the pre-pandemic period announcements significantly impacted the stock returns, the pandemic period dividend announcements failed to generate significant abnormal returns even for an increase in dividend over the previous year. The pre-pandemic period results are consistent with previous literature with significant returns for constant, increase, and decrease in dividends. During the pre-pandemic period, we also find the possibility of information leakage in the Indian stock market as the pre-announcement period is marked with positive significant abnormal returns while the post-announcement period seems to be profit booking. The industry-wise analysis reveals the presence of positive returns in the Information Technology, Media and Telecommunication sector. However, the rest of the results are in line with the previous analysis. The findings suggest that before making such announcements, the companies should wait for the market to recover;else, the positively impacting dividend announcement will fail to influence the stock prices when the market is already under pandemic stress. We conduct the first-ever study to examine the impacts of dividend announcements during a pandemic stress period with also comparing the impacts during the pre-pandemic period. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of College of Management, National Cheng Kung University.

Understanding the Context of Global Health Policies: Their Post-Colonial

The systemic inadequacies of models of health systems propagated by the advocates of global health policies (GHPs) have fragmented health service systems, particularly in middle- and lower-income countries. GHPs are underpinned by economic interests and the need for control by the global elite, irrespective of people's health needs. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the advocates of GHPs, leading to calls for a movement for "decolonisation” of global health. Much of this narrative on the "decolonisation” of GHPs critiques its northern knowledge base, and the power derived from it at individual, institutional and national levels. This, it argues, has led to an unequal exchange of knowledge, making it impossible to end decades of oppressive hegemony and to prevent inappropriate decision-making on GHPs. Despite these legitimate concerns, little in the literature on the decolonisation of GHPs extends beyond epistemological critiques. This article offers a radically different perspective. It is based on an understanding of the role of transnational capital in extracting wealth from the economies of low- and middle-income countries resulting in influencing and shaping public health policy and practice, including interactions between the environment and health. It mobilises historical evidence of distorted priorities underpinning GHPs and the damaging consequences for health services throughout the world.

Growth, income and wealth accumulation in rich countries

This paper discusses estimates of the distribution of national income and wealth produced by the World Inequality Lab in its World Inequality Report 2022. The methodology combines all existing microeconomic data on incomes (surveys, tax data) with macroeconomic data (the system of national accounts). While growth has slowed in rich countries, private wealth accumulation has continued to accelerate and public wealth continued to decline in an era of rising asset prices. The importance of «pre-distributive» policies for income inequality, and «popular wealth» for wealth inequality is emphasised, as well as the differing effects of the financial and Covid crises. In an age of big data it is time for countries to reconcile sources to provide official distributional estimates consistent with macroeconomic growth. © 2023,Ekonomiaz. All Rights Reserved.

Universal Basic Income, Social Justice, and Marginality: A Critical Evaluation

Struggles for economic justice have historically centered around the fight for jobs and higher wages, but universal basic income (UBI) seeks to distribute wealth outside of labor by giving every citizen an unconditional and universal minimum income. This paper critically assesses the policy ofUBI and asks what ought to be taken into consideration and addressed before the first practical implementation ofUBI on a broad scale. Three issues are outlined: UBI in relation to histories of oppression and the danger of a neoliberal universal basic income;UBI and the issues of citizenship, border imperialism, and social solidarity;and how UBI could affect the carceral system and the incarcerated. The essay argues that UBI runs the risk of reproducing precarity and inequality if not crafted with the needs of marginalized communities in mind and theorizes what a socially just UBI might look like if it was designed to confront these challenges.

Myth and Reality in the Great Inflation Debate: Supply Shocks and Wealth Effects in a Multipolar World Economy

This article critically evaluates debates over the causes of U.S. inflation. We first show that claims that the Biden stimulus was the major cause of inflation are mistaken: the key data series—stimulus spending and inflation—move dramatically out of phase. While the first ebbs quickly, the second persistently surges. We then look at alternative explanations for the price rises. We assess four supply-side factors: imports, energy prices, rises in corporate profit margins, and COVID. We argue that discussions of COVID's impact have thus far only tangentially acknowledged the pandemic's far-reaching effects on labor markets. We conclude that while all four factors played roles in bringing on and sustaining inflation, they cannot explain all of it. There is an aggregate demand problem. But the surprise surge in demand did not arise from government spending. It came from the unprecedented gains in household wealth, particularly for the richest 10% of households, which we show powered the recovery of aggregate US consumption expenditure, especially from July 2021. The final cause of the inflationary surge in the U.S., therefore, was in large measure the unequal (wealth) effects of ultra-loose monetary policy during 2020–2021. This conclusion is important because supply-side (and thus potentially inflationary) pressures are unlikely to subside soon. Going forward, COVID, war, climate change, and the drift to a belligerently multipolar world system are all likely to keep straining global supply chains. Our conclusion outlines how policy has to change to deal with a world of steady, but irregular supply shocks, including Covid's continuing impact on labor markets. By their nature, such shocks create problems that monetary policy can cope with only at an enormous cost;they require targeted solutions. But when supply plummets or becomes more variable, fiscal policy also has to adapt: existing explorations of ways to steady demand over the business cycle have to embrace much bolder macroeconomic measures to control over-spending when supply is temporarily constrained. © 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Factors influencing acceptance of Robo-Advisors for wealth management in Malaysia

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, many innovations have emerged in the financial sector as investors started to look for alternative methods to eliminate irrational decision-making in wealth management, and Robo-advisors is among those. Nine years after the first launching of Robo-advisors in the U.S. in 2008, the Securities Commission Malaysia has been issuing licenses to seven Robo-advisor platforms. The current COVID-19 outbreak has made this industry more in demand, increasing 763% in registration in 2020. However, much skepticism about Robo advisors' ability and reliability in providing a similar quality or better advisory service compared to human-financial advisors. Therefore, this study examines the factors influencing the acceptance of Robo-advisors in wealth management in Malaysia. Adopting some factors from various established technology acceptance models, an online survey with 122 respondents was conducted using convenience sampling. Findings show that Relative Advantage, Effort Expectancy, and Social Influence significantly positive influence the Malaysian Behavioral Intention to Accept Robo-Advisors. On the contrary, there is no significant relationship between Perceived Risk and Malaysian Behavioral Intention to Accept Robo-Advisors. The study provides a positive insight into factors influencing the acceptance of Robo-Advisors in Malaysia. © 2023 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

SWF 3.0: How sovereign wealth funds navigated COVID-19 and changed forever

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been significantly and uniquely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. From March 2020 to December 2021, governments around the world withdrew over US$ 211 billion from their books and "invited” them to bailout different sectors and businesses, most notably, state-owned airlines. However, some SWFs were also able to pursue opportunities overseas, and most grew their assets under management tremendously due to the stock market rally that followed the market and oil bust of the beginning of 2020. However, state investors are not expecting markets to stay bullish forever, and have been building an adequate level of liquidity in their books and of resilience as an organization for the next market shock, which may as well come with ESG. One can argue that SWFs have indeed entered a new phase "SWF 3.0” characterized by increasing size, influence, maturity, and sophistication;by an interest in different asset classes, regions, and industries;and by a focus on sustainability, collaboration, and long-term survival. © 2023, Academy of International Business.