Bubble Burst Research Articles

The evolution of corporate payout in Canada

We document changes in the aggregate percentage and number of dividend-paying Canadian firms from 1989 to 2021 and observe a disappearing and partially reappearing dividend phenomenon similar to that in the United States. Unlike the US experience, in Canada, the number and percentage of dividend-paying firms are consistently higher than those of repurchasing firms throughout the sample period. Further, in Canada, the changes are driven by changes in the number of listed firms before and after the bursting of the internet bubble and the effects of the global financial crisis, which we call the new listing effect. The numbers are also affected by a tax change directed at income trusts and the change in the number of firms in the oil, gas, and mining sectors. In predicting a firm's dividend status based on firm-level characteristics, unlike recent US research, we find that the life-cycle theory, as measured by cumulative retained earnings and earnings volatility, plays an important role in explaining dividend status.

Blockchain, sport and fan tokens

PurposeThis paper provides a thorough examination of Socios.com, a blockchain platform that integrates token sales with the fan experience in the sports industry. The study focuses on three key aspects: the performance, bubble phenomenon and dynamics of fan tokens. The author aims to address important questions that may concern potential supporters and investors. Might sports fans incur financial losses due to their team loyalty? Is the fan token market just a passing trend? Are fan tokens driven by the behaviour of the cryptocurrency market?Design/methodology/approachThis analysis aims to involve several methodologies. The author evaluates the short- and long-term performance of fan tokens by computing first-day and buy-and-hold (abnormal) returns. The author also employs the Phillips, Shi, and Yu's (PSY) real-time bubble detection method to investigate the presence of bubble phenomenon in the fan token market segment. Finally, the author examines the potential dependences between fan tokens, Chiliz and the cryptocurrency market (represented by the CCi30 index) using both Pearson/Kendall correlations and the wavelet coherence approach.FindingsThe study presents three notable contributions to the existing literature. First, the author demonstrates that investing in fan tokens to support one's favourite sports teams can lead to financial losses, whereas traders can potentially outperform the market by investing in Chiliz. Second, the author states that fan tokens were a short-lived trend, as evidenced by their decline in value after the bubble burst in 2021. Third, the findings indicate that the fan token market was influenced by the cryptocurrency market and Chiliz during periods of market downturns.Originality/valueTo the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first paper to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the performance, bubble phenomenon and dynamics of the token market fan segment, along with the exclusive on-platform currency, Chiliz.

The Lost Decade: Research on the Japanese Asset Price Bubble

Due to the burst of Japanese asset price bubble in 1989s, Japan’s economy has started a clearly great depression, specifically manifest as downturn in GDP, decline in economic activity, decrease in the general price level, and manufacturing sector in recession. The burst of bubble directly shows as expansion on credit and money supply, overheating in assets market and economic activity. This paper aims on elaborating and analyzing Japanese unique economic development history after Second World War. This paper also focuses on how the Japanese economic miracle happened and how does Japanese economic miracle came into asset price bubble. Based on those economic policies implemented by Japanese government, including zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), negative interest rate, quantitative easing (QE), qualitative quantitative easing (QQE), and the three arrows of Shinzo Abe, this paper analyzes those policies in economic direction. This paper also researches on some other potentials and secondary influences on Japanese economy, such as Japanese corporate system since 1600s, the involvement of the USA, the plaza accord, several Japanese bank’s bad loans.

The Global Financial Crisis and Its Aftermath

This review of the 2008 financial crisis discusses the triggers of the crisis, the direct consequences, and the policy responses to the crisis. Pre-crisis condition is analyzed in linear time order: the Federal monetary policy, with the motivation to stimulate the economy, set loose lending criteria and facilitated the increase of subprime mortgages. Based on the subprime mortgage, credit default swaps (CDS) emerged as a new derivative of arbitrage and speculation without adequate regulation. Rather than its original use of risk diversification and transfer, such expansion of CDS eventually led to contagion, dragging the whole market into crisis. Direct consequences include mass unemployment, reduction in corporate investment, and bankruptcy of giant banks such as Lehman Brothers. A series of policies were released to suppress the contagion of the crisis and help the economy recover, among which the Dodd-Frank Act and Basel III serve as necessary regulations. The government had interfered with the housing market, which suffered from the burst bubble; bank regulators had re-examined the rules, adjusting the fraction of capital reserves required for banks.

Software-Vendor Diversification: A Source of Organizational Rigidity in Adversity?

ABSTRACT Firms often assemble digital infrastructures using continuously evolving software applications sourced from a multitude of vendors. Using the theoretical lens of the threat-rigidity thesis, we raise the possibility that during adverse environmental conditions, software-vendor diversification can be a source of organizational rigidity that may dampen firm performance. Empirical analysis using data on 918 large public U.S. firms operating during two severe environmental shocks, the global financial crisis and the burst of the dot-com bubble, lends strong support to our thesis. Results indicate that a variety of firm performance indicators (e.g., stock return and operating income measures) are negatively associated with software-vendor diversification during crisis periods. Mediation analysis highlights the role of IT-related material weakness in firms’ internal controls in transmitting threat-rigidity effects that decrease performance. These results underscore the importance of software portfolio optimization for countering the dysfunctional effects of software-vendor diversification during adverse environmental shocks.

Bubble floatation, burst, drainage, and droplet release characteristics on a free surface: A review

The phenomenon of a bubble bursting to generate droplets exists in industrial and environmental systems and has a subtle impact on our daily lives. A bubble generated by gas injection or heating rises to the free surface and undergoes floating, drainage, and eventually bursting processes to produce film and jet droplets. The interrelated processes make it difficult to understand the characteristics of a bubble burst. Thus, a summary of the individual stages of a single bubble from generation to burst is necessary. First, we describe the calculation method and simple expressions for the shape of a bubble floating on a free surface. Next, we discuss the bubble drainage model and its influencing factors as this directly determines the time evolution of the film thickness. As an essential factor that affects the film thickness, the bubble drainage time is defined as the bubble lifetime. We compare the bubble lifetime distributions in the published literature and explore the associated influencing factors. Then, we investigate the bubble bursting dynamics and focus on the bubble film opening process once a hole appears on its surface. As a legacy of bubble burst, we explore the production process, size, and number of film and jet droplets. Finally, we discuss the enrichment phenomenon and the enrichment factors of film and jet droplets when releasing particles entrained by droplets. This review considers a series of processes for bubble burst to generate droplets and concentrates on the mechanism and experimental correlations with a summary and future prospects.

Residential segregation by nationalities: A global and multilevel approach to Barcelona and Madrid (2008–2018)

AbstractThis paper analyzes patterns of residential segregation for many nationalities in Barcelona and Madrid during the 2008–2018 period. In the first year, the financial bubble burst, halting the exponential growth of immigrants and in the second, after the great recession, the arrival of immigrant population resumes. The multilevel analysis for the dissimilarity index is applied for the first time to Spanish cities. Complementing the results of global indices with the multilevel framework provides a richer and more detailed profile of segregation patterns. Based on these results, a typology of segregation patterns by nationalities was carried out. Global indices show higher segregation in Madrid than in Barcelona, and multilevel results evidence increasing and extending areas of high concentration of immigrants and mixing neighbourhoods. The cluster analysis demonstrates that, in this case, segregation patterns are not the same for continents or income levels of countries of origin. The results provide nuanced empirical evidence of place stratification and ethnic enclave models.

Our First 20 Years

The launch of the Socio-Economic Review 20 years ago should have surprised no one with any scholarly interest in capitalism. The journal was the result of more than a decade-long intellectual movement that began with the creation of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics in 1989 at the initiative of Amitai Etzioni. His communitarian vision, academic reputation and entrepreneurship attracted both top scholars and young researchers to the intellectual project of developing alternatives to the dominance of neoliberal thinking. The alternative approach was to view the economy in the wider context of political and social forces and moral concerns, and that in turn, called for inviting social science disciplines that had been marginalized by neoclassical economics to investigate the economy. Years of gathering scholars from both sides of the Atlantic and community building resulted in the Madison Declaration on the Need for Socio-Economic Research in 1999. If the idea of socio-economics looked quaint and marginal in the late 1980s, by the 2000s it was a thriving intellectual movement very much riding the waves of the times. As the Socio-Economic Review appeared, the world economy was struggling. After the roaring 1990s, the Washington consensus, which had previously guided economic policies, was crumbling, and the triumphalist phrase, ‘the end of history’, was reduced to a punchline. The Asian Crisis in 1997 was an early warning, quickly followed by the crash of the ruble, revealing the failure of the capitalist transition in Russia. Next came the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, a large hedge fund, led by two economists, who just the year before won the Nobel prize. The fund that heavily invested in Russian bonds had to be rescued with a $3.6 billion bailout. The burst of the dotcom bubble in 2000 further reinforced the notion that global capitalism was much more fragile than neoliberal ideas had led us to believe, and was not at all a self-contained, self-driving and self-correcting system, but was at the mercy of politics, and social and cultural processes. The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, on the physical centre of world finance, demonstrated in a crude fashion the power of political forces. A more benign form of the power of politics over the economy was on exhibit in January of 2002, when the euro was launched as the currency in most of the member countries of the European Union. Less spectacular, but equally important was the steady rise of social inequalities. It has been an obsession for sociologists, but long ignored by mainstream economics until Piketty and Saez forced the topic into economics in an article published a month after SER appeared.

A 50-year history of “zombie firms” in Japan: How banks and shareholders have been involved in corporate bailouts?

We review long-term changes in “zombie firms” in Japan over this half-century using listed firm data with a framework in which the concept of “zombie firms” includes possible efficient bailouts. The first wave of zombie firms occurred during the period of main banks (hereinafter MBs). MBs were able to actively choose which firms would receive bailouts at the time. However, commonly held beliefs about MBs’ monitoring power and the special role of corporate groups and long-term credit banks for bailouts are not supported. In the largest wave of the lost decade, we find the zombie firm problem in the manufacturing sector was just as serious as the non-manufacturing in terms of firm count. Moreover, the pathological phenomena such as unwilling concentration of loans to MBs were also rather typical in the manufacturing. Soft budget constraints have continued in the manufacturing even after the resolution of banks’ non-performing loans since the bubble burst came to an end, leading to the manufacturing-centered third wave of zombie firms following the Global Financial Crisis.

Synergistic effect of ultrasonic and magnetic fields on the performance of non-aqueous iron-vanadium redox flow battery with deep eutectic solvent electrolyte

In this paper, the synergistic effect of magnetic and ultrasonic fields on FeV redox flow battery with deep eutectic solvent (DES) electrolyte is studied. The results show that the synergistic effect of the two physical fields can reduce the high viscosity and increase diffusion coefficient of the DES electrolyte, and has a positive effect on the oxidation and reduction peaks of DES electrolyte of the FeV redox flow battery. Due to ultrasonic cavitation, the bursting of cavitation bubbles transfers energy to the DES electrolyte. The magnetic field changes the motion rate of charged particles through Lorentz force driving the charged particles in the electrolyte, and influences the electrochemical reaction rate. When the two physical fields are synergistically applied, ultrasonic plays a leading role, and the effect of the two physical fields acting together is better than that of either single physical field: The performance increment for the one with two fields affecting together is 37.1 %, which is larger than the sum of increments for applying a single field (for magnetic field, the increment is 8.6 %; for ultrasonic, 20.8 %). Besides, the application of magnetic field could reduce the cost of ultrasonic application, which is conducive to the application of ultrasonic technology in non-aqeous flow battery with DES electrolyte. In brief, this study shows that an effective and simple method improving the physical and electrochemical properties of DES electrolytes together with enhancing electrochemical reaction rate, which has the potential to be widely used in non-aqueous flow batteries.

The meanings of tenshoku for Japanese young regular workers: a self-reliant strategy to pursue well-being

Tenshoku means changing jobs: quitting one’s company and starting work in a new company. Under the lifetime employment system, regular workers have enjoyed the security and stability provided by corporations, and tenshoku used to be rare among regular workers. In the decades after the Japanese economic bubble burst in 1991, tenshoku has become a more common practice in Japan. However, even now, young people’s job-changing behavior is often regarded negatively. What young workers inside the prestigious lifetime employment system think of tenshoku remains underexamined. This qualitative study uses young regular workers’ experiences of tenshoku as a lens to investigate their values. Overall, instead of relying steadfastly on their employers, I find in this study that young workers are actively utilizing tenshoku for better working lives: it is an option that supports their subjective well-being.

Enrichment of saccharides at the air–water interface: a quantitative comparison of sea surface microlayer and foam

Environmental context Saccharides contribute substantially to dissolved organic carbon in the ocean and are enriched at the ocean surface. In this study, we demonstrate that saccharides are more enriched in persistent whitecap foam compared to the sea surface. The maturation of bubbles at the air–water interface is thus expected to enhance the enrichment of organic matter at the ocean surface and ultimately in the sea spray aerosol that forms when bubbles burst at the ocean surface. Rationale Organic matter accumulates at the ocean surface. Herein, we provide the first quantitative assessment of the enrichment of dissolved saccharides in persistent whitecap foam and compare this enrichment to the sea surface microlayer (SSML) during a 9 day mesocosm experiment involving a phytoplankton bloom generated in a Marine Aerosol Reference Tank (MART). Methodology Free monosaccharides were quantified directly, total saccharides were determined following mild acid hydrolysis and the oligo/polysaccharide component was determined as the difference between total and free monosaccharides. Results Total saccharides contributed a significant fraction of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), accounting for 13% of DOC in seawater, 27% in SSML and 31% in foam. Median enrichment factors (EFs), calculated as the ratio of the concentrations of saccharides relative to sodium in SSML or foam to that of seawater, ranged from 1.7 to 6.4 in SSML and 2.1–12.1 in foam. Based on median EFs, xylitol, mannitol, glucose, galactose, mannose, xylose, fucose, rhamnose and ribose were more enriched in foam than SSML. Discussion The greatest EFs for saccharides coincided with high chlorophyll levels, indicating increasing ocean surface enrichment of saccharides during phytoplankton blooms. Higher enrichments of organic matter in sea foam over the SSML indicate that surface active organic compounds become increasingly enriched on persistent bubble film surfaces. These findings help to explain how marine organic matter becomes highly enriched in sea spray aerosol that is generated by bursting bubbles at the ocean surface.

Conical focusing: mechanism for singular jetting from collapsing drop-impact craters

Fast microjets can emerge out of liquid pools from the rebounding of drop-impact craters, or when a bubble bursts at its surface. The fastest jets are the narrowest and are a source of aerosols both from the ocean and from a glass of champagne, of importance to climate and the olfactory senses. The most singular jets, which we observe experimentally at a maximum velocity of $137\pm 4\ {\rm m}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$ and a diameter of $12\ \mathrm {\mu }{\rm m}$ , under reduced ambient pressure, are produced when a small dimple forms at the crater bottom and rebounds without pinching off a small bubble. The radial collapse and rebounding of this dimple is purely inertial, but highly sensitive to initial conditions. High-resolution numerical simulations reveal a new focusing mechanism, which drives the fastest jet within a converging conical channel, where an entrained air sheet provides effective slip at the outer boundary of the conically converging flow into the jet. This configuration bypasses any viscous cutoff of the jetting speed and explains the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions observed in detailed experiments of the phenomenon.

Enhanced singular jet formation in oil-coated bubble bursting

Bubble-bursting aerosols have a key role in mass and momentum transfer across interfaces. Previous studies report that the bursting of a millimetre-sized bare bubble at an aqueous surface produces jet drops with a typical size on the order of 100 μm. Here we show that jet drops can be as small as a few micrometres when the bursting bubble is coated by a thin oil layer. The faster and smaller jet drops result from the singular dynamics of the oil-coated cavity collapse. The air–oil–water compound interface offers a distinct damping mechanism to smooth out the precursor capillary waves during cavity collapse, leading to a more efficient focusing of the dominant wave and thus allowing singular jets over a much wider parameter space than that of a bare bubble. We develop a theoretical explanation for the parameter limits of the singular jet regime by considering the interplay between inertia, surface tension and viscous effects. Contaminated bubbles are widely observed, therefore previously unrecognized fast and small contaminant-laden jet drops may contribute to the aerosolization and airborne transmission of bulk substances.

The Subprime Crisis: Cause and Effect

This research explains and analyzes how the Subprime Crisis happened in 2008 and how the crisis impacted the market and policy in America. The causes are unfolded from three perspectives. First reason is that government adopt a low interest rating, aiming at increasing the house affordability. Second, excessively innovative financial products, such as MBS, and credit rating agencies lead to even more unlimited loans with poor quality. Third, the complex commercial chain behind mortgage products enlarged the range of the crisis’s influence, which is triggered by government increasing the interest rate. The meltdown of subprime commercial chain brings a series damages: house market bubble burst, banks and businesses broken, rapidly decreasing employment rate, etc. To control the continuing damages from the collapse of mortgage market, the US government begins to intervene the market by promulgating laws, including Dodd-Frank legislation and Basel III to regulate and restrict businesses’ and banks’ behaviors.

The ocean fine spray

An important fraction of the atmospheric aerosols comes from the ocean spray originated by the bursting of surface bubbles. A theoretical framework that incorporates the latest knowledge on film and jet droplets from bubble bursting is here proposed, suggesting that the ejected droplet size in the fine and ultrafine (nanometric) spectrum constitutes the ultimate origin of primary and secondary sea aerosols through a diversity of physicochemical routes. In contrast to the latest proposals on the mechanistic origin of that droplet size range, when bubbles of about 10–100 μm burst, they produce an extreme energy focusing and the ejection of a fast liquid spout whose size reaches the free molecular regime of the air. Simulations show that this spout yields a jet of sub-micrometer and nanometric scale droplets whose number and speed can be far beyond any previous estimation, overcoming by orders of magnitude other mechanisms recently proposed. The model proposed can be ultimately reduced to a single controlling parameter to predict the global probability density function of the ocean spray. The model fits remarkably well most published experimental measurements along five orders of magnitude of spray size, from about 5 nm to about 0.5 mm. According to this proposal, the majority of ocean aerosols would have their extremely elusive birth in the collapsing uterus-like shape of small bursting bubbles on the ocean surface.

Diversification during Hard Times

Using a large sample of stocks from 48 developed and emerging markets over 1995 to 2021, we find evidence that suggests that international diversification is the best risk-reduction tool when all markets are considered. However, after the turn of the millennium, industrial diversification is the best alternative for funds limited to developed markets, especially when they are restricted to a region. Importantly, the benefits of diversification persist through hard times, such as the Asian financial crisis, the IT bubble burst, the global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating their countercyclicality and proving their value when investors need them the most.

Influence of relative thickness on static and dynamic stall characteristics and prediction of airfoils

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of relative thickness on the static and dynamic characteristics of airfoils. A series of NACA symmetric airfoils with relative thickness ratios ranging from 12% to 30% have undertaken a series of sinusoid pitching motion simulations and these airfoils' Glasgow wind tunnel experiment data were analyzed. It was found that the relative thickness of airfoils would affect the stall onset angle of attack (AOA), the severity of the stall, and the dynamic stall model parameters. As the relative thickness of airfoils increases, static and dynamic stall onset AOA decrease and stall occurs earlier. At the static AOA, the thickest airfoil shows a very large reverse flow region. At the dynamic stall onset AOA, the thinner airfoil exhibits a more obvious burst of the laminar separation bubble. When the relative thickness of the airfoil is smaller, a dynamic stall occurs with more severity. On the one hand, the aerodynamic characteristic curve and suction surface pressure curve of airfoils change are more complicated. And the severity of the dynamic stall was quantitatively compared by extracting the difference of lift coefficients corresponding to the same AOA in the upstroke and downstroke stages. On the other hand, vortex occurrence, convection and shedding on the suction surface of the airfoil are more frequent and complicated. This paper also gives a method to solve the problem of the lack of the dynamic stall model parameters of blades section airfoils when predicting the wind turbine's unsteady force.

Laminar separation bubble bursting in a surging stream

We identified a new dynamic stall mechanism in surging flows on thick airfoils at low angles-of-attack. Counterintuitively, the laminar separation bubble bursts during early imposition of the favorable temporal pressure gradient, which rapidly drives the bubble aft, rendering it unable to reattach. We also introduced a new generalized pressure coefficient, without which the experimental data are impossible to interpret.

The Current Situation and Differences of the Real Estate Bubble between China and the United States

With the continuous expansion of real estate bubbles in China and the United States, the two countries' governments have introduced various policies according to their respective national conditions to prevent the bursting of the real estate bubbles. This article describes how the real estate bubbles in China and the United States formed, the status quo, and the differences between the real estate bubbles in China and the United States. Because the economic systems and management methods of China and the United States are very different, studying the differences in real estate bubbles between China and the United States has excellent enlightenment and significance for China.