Ambiguous Impact Research Articles

Economic security of the Russian oil and gas sector in the context of geopolitical shocks: economic and legal analysis

The article reveals the key aspects of the problem of ensuring the economic security of the Russian oil and gas sector at the regional, national and global levels in the context of geopolitical and economic shocks caused primarily by the introduction of economic sanctions against Russia. The authors used complex and systemic approaches, which consisted in a comprehensive study of the problems of economic security of the oil and gas sector, considered as an open system, and the study of the impact of sanctions against it not only on individual companies, but also on the entire national economy. The relevance of such areas of scientific research as the assessment of the consequences of the anti-Russian sanctions policy against the oil and gas sector and the study of its systemic effect as a result of the integral impact on the national economy, as well as the analysis of measures has been confirmed, undertaken by domestic companies and the Russian Federation as a whole, in response to the economic sanctions of the West. A matrix of the effects of the anti-Russian sanctions policy on the oil and gas sector is proposed, which demonstrates, firstly, the ambiguous impact of sanctions on oil and gas companies and the Russian economy, and secondly, shows that sanctioning countries face significant costs of the sanctions war for their economies. It is established that the degree of negative impact of restrictions on the object of sanctions and the ability to resist them depends on a variety of economic and political factors that are different in nature and multidirectional in effect. The Russian oil and gas sector in 2022 showed a good ability to ensure the stability of functioning under economic pressure.

ВЛИЯНИЕ ЭРОЗИОННО-РУСЛОВЫХ СИСТЕМ НА ИНФРАСТРУКТУРУ НАСЕЛЕННЫХ ПУНКТОВ ЕВРОПЕЙСКОЙ ЧАСТИ РОССИИ

The infrastructure of any settlement, whether it is a village or an urban agglomeration, ensures the functioning of the systems that serve the needs of the population. Regardless of the age of the settlement, its size and layout, the system of engineering communications depends on the features of the relief and erosion-channel processes in this area. To identify the impact of gully erosion and riverbed processes on the functioning of infrastructure, the southern megaslope of the Russian Plain was selected. There is a high degree of erosive dissection and activity of riverbed processes. Satellite images and cartographic material were used to assess the impact of erosion-channel processes. For the basins of the Volga, Oka, Don, and Dnieper rivers (within the territory of the Russian Federation), a map of the impact of erosion-channel processes on the infrastructure of settlements has been compiled. The basis for drawing up the map was a physical and geographical map of Russia on a scale of 1:8,000,000 and a map of the hazardousness of channel processes on the rivers of Russia. The resulting map shows 120 settlements: 84 – in the Volga River basin, 13 – in the Don River basin, and 24 – in the Dnieper River basin (within the Russian Federation). According to the developed methodology, each settlement was assigned a score of the impact of erosion and riverbed processes on the infrastructure. The most common are small values of such impact: 1 point – 45%, 2 points – 29.5%, 3 points – 23%, 4 points – 2.5% (only 3 settlements). The lowest (1–2 points) impact on the infrastructure corresponds to the territories within the lowlands and relicts of glacial relief. Settlements on the Central Russian and Volga Uplands are more dependent on gully erosion (3–5 points) and show a weak dependence on riverbed processes. The research results indicate an ambiguous impact of erosion and riverbed processes on the infrastructure of the settlements. Large and big cities are less dependent on erosion and riverbed processes, in contrast to small and medium-sized ones.

Role Conflict, Role Ambiguity and Job Performance among Supervisors: With Special Reference to Selected Apparel Companies in Sri Lanka

<p class="Default">The apparel industry takes a more significant position than other industries that contribute to major income sources in Sri Lanka. Apparel firms mostly rely on the performance of their workforce. However, the problems with regard to job roles are reducing the job performance of the operational level employees, including supervisory employees. They engage in most of the activities that are beyond their responsibility, which results in role conflict and role ambiguity that directly affects their own job performance. Thus, this research study aimed at identifying the relationship and impact of role conflict and role ambiguity on job performance among supervisors in the selected apparel industry in Sri Lanka. The research model was developed from the existing literature regarding the study area. The data were collected from 75 operational level employees-supervisors in three apparel firms using simple random sampling method. Primary data collection was done by using a self-administrated questionnaire, which included 31 statements in terms of role conflict, role ambiguity, and job performance with a Five-Point Likert Scale. The dataset was analyzed based on descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis through SPSS. The findings revealed that supervisors in the selected three apparel firms experienced a high level of role conflict and role ambiguity, and that both role conflict and role ambiguity variables are positively correlated with job performance. Furthermore, role conflict and role ambiguity positively impact on job performance. Future researchers may assess some other variables that can have an impact on employee job performance.

Hybrid Marketplaces with Free Entry of Sellers

We study a hybrid marketplace such as Amazon that sells its own products and sets commissions on third-party sellers that engage in monopolistic competition with free entry. For a large class of microfoundations based on a representative agent, the introduction of its own products by the marketplace is neutral for consumer welfare for a given commission; but this product introduction exerts an ambiguous impact through changes of the commission. A “demand substitution mechanism” pushes for a higher commission; but an “extensive margin mechanism” pushes for a lower commission that is aimed at attracting new sellers and more purchases on the marketplace. For instance, with constant demand elasticities, a hybrid marketplace sets a lower (higher) commission rate and increases (decreases) consumer welfare compared to a pure marketplace if its products face a less (more) elastic demand.

The Mediation Chain Effect of Cognitive Crafting and Personal Resources on the Relationship between Role Ambiguity and Dentists’ Emotional Exhaustion

Based on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R), Conservation of Resources (COR) and self-regulation theories integration, this study investigated the association between role ambiguity and emotional exhaustion among 191 Romanian dentists, as well as the chain mediating role of cognitive crafting and three personal resources (resilience, optimism, and self-efficacy). Three conceptual models which included, separately, the three personal resources were proposed. PROCESS macros were used to verify the hypotheses related to the testing of the path mediation models. The results indicated that role ambiguity was directly and positively associated with dentists' burnout. More importantly, the sequential indirect effect of role ambiguity on burnout via mediators in chains (cognitive crafting and resilience for the first model; cognitive crafting and optimism for the second model; cognitive crafting and self-efficacy for the third model) was significant. The findings provide a direction for dentists' health intervention because it reveals how the negative impact of role ambiguity on emotional exhaustion increasing can be buffered by the cumulative effect of cognitive crafting and different personal resources, as a result of their chain reinforcement.

Wages and corporate social responsibility: entrenchment or ethics?

PurposeIn this article the authors examine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the wage policy of firms. At the first glance, one may think that socially responsible firms want to attract employees via ethical concerns and corporate culture, thereby inducing a negative link between CSR and wages. On the other side, socially responsible firms can be expected to increase wages as social entrenchment strategies.Design/methodology/approachIn order to correct for potential endogeneity bias, the authors employ a simultaneous equation model (SEM) on a French data set that includes 13,186 employees.FindingsThe authors show that CSR has an ambiguous impact on corporate wage policy depending on the type of monetary incentives and employee's occupation considered.Originality/valueThe authors extend prior research on the CSR–wage relationship by distinguishing between different forms of monetary incentives: the base wage, total wage and premium wage. Their results draw attention to the fact that the employees' occupation do matter. The evidence confirms that the effect of CSR on the wage is not to be taken for granted: it is wage form and occupation specific.

Explaining the ambiguous impact of overconfidence on corporate decision-making: a critique of the research methodology

The Institute of Social Sciences of the CSPS of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Košice is an interdisciplinary workplace of social sciences and humanities with a primary research focus on the area of Central Europe in the field of social psychology, sociology and history.

CSR and Firm Risk: Is Shareholder Activism a Double-Edged Sword?

Few can argue with the notion that corporations should at least consider corporate social responsibility (CSR) to better understand the impact of their operations on society. However, recent empirical tests suggest CSR has an ambiguous impact on firm performance. To shed new light on this debate, we examine the extent to which voting support for nonbinding shareholder-initiated CSR proposals is empirically linked to changes in firms’ underlying systematic risks. Using a rich dataset of proposals in the US from 1998 to 2011, we contribute several novel findings. First, we show that shareholder voting support is nonlinearly linked to changes in systematic risk. Specifically, proposals with low voting support increase risk while those with high support decrease risk. This nonlinearity is particularly pronounced for consumer-sensitive firms that cater primarily to individual consumers rather than for firms in non-consumer-sensitive industries that produce goods or services meant for industrial or governmental use. Second, the 2007–2009 financial crisis exacerbated increases in firms’ systematic risks for proposals with low voting support. Our results, which highlight asymmetry regarding firms’ CSR initiatives, remain robust when controlling for firm-specific factors as well as shifts in investor sentiment. From a risk management perspective, our findings suggest that CSR initiatives need strong shareholder support to realize benefits from the so-called ‘risk-reduction hypothesis’.

A Kalman filter-based online fractional cycle bias determination method for real-time ambiguity-fixing GPS satellite clock estimation

Integer ambiguity resolution (IAR) is one of the most powerful methods to improve the precision and the convergence of estimating real-time satellite clocks, which is an indispensable prerequisite to support the real-time precise point position (PPP) service. In this study, a Kalman filter-based online fractional cycle bias (FCB) determination method is proposed to facilitate the real-time IAR for satellite clock estimation. A real-time recursive algorithm for smoothing the average float wide-lane (WL) ambiguity is developed to mitigate the impact of pseudorange noise. Quality control procedures are established throughout the entire FCB filter process to remove low-quality observations and mitigate the impact of incorrect integer ambiguities. This method is designed as an embedded module in the clock estimation procedure to fix both integer WL and narrow-lane (NL) ambiguities in an epoch-by-epoch way for recovering the integer property of the undifferenced ionosphere-free (IF) ambiguities in real-time. The performance of the FCB filter and the ambiguity-fixing clock estimation is validated with a GPS network from the international GNSS service (IGS). Experiments show that the WL and NL FCB estimation accuracy reaches 0.004 cycles and 0.080 cycles for GPS satellites. The WL and NL residuals fit the normal distribution well after several minutes and 1.5 h, respectively, making the ambiguity-fixing clocks converge rapidly in about two hours. The online FCB filter method improves real-time ambiguity-fixing clock estimation accuracy significantly. Compared to the ambiguity-float solution, the STD of the ambiguity-fixing real-time satellite clocks is averagely improved by 31.0 % to 0.040 ns with the ultra-rapid orbits. The ambiguity-fixing satellite clocks can be applied in the real-time kinematic PPP ambiguity resolution, and the positioning accuracy is improved by 24.1 % to 51.7 % compared to that of using the ambiguity-float clock products.

Закономірності формування со-ціального капіталу в Україні: теоретичні засади і міжнародний контекст

In the paper, the regularities of the formation of social capital as a component of the problem of capitalization of social interaction have been studied. The methodological approach of the research includes two aspects: theoretical, the purpose of which is to substantiate the theoretical structure of the regularities of the formation of social capital; analytical, according to which the manifestation of the revealed regularities in Ukraine and other countries has been assessed. Four main regularities have been considered (empathy, risk reflectivity, migration impact, norm correspondence), which determine the functioning of the essential elements of social capital, as well as the features of transformation and conversion of its forms. The selection of proper economic indicators that reflect trends in the manifestation of social capital formation has been performed. The results of analytical assessment of the actualization of the specified regularities in Ukraine compared to other countries have been presented. The research revealed that empathy, as a relationship between rationality and sociality of human interaction, constitutes a solid foundation for the development of social capital and has the most vivid and positive manifestations in Ukrainian society when economic agents readily and carefully respond to the needs of their counterparts in social relations. The paper demonstrates the features of the differentiation of forms of social capital according to the direction of internal connections within social networks and the homogeneity (density) of social networks. The determinism of the variability of the forms of social capital is substantiated by the different perceptions of risks by the agents of social interaction. The low tolerance of Ukrainian economic agents to risk has been registered. This determines their preferences regarding participation in vertical and closed social networks. The relationship between migration (mobility) and social trust is revealed. It is argued that the relationship manifests itself in the generally ambiguous impact of immigration to Ukraine and emigration from Ukraine on the functioning of trust networks. This testifies to the possibilities and reserves of managing such an impact to increase social capital in the country. The objective relationship between trust in social norms (the degree of their social recognition and acceptance) and the productivity of social capital is specified. It has been observed that in Ukraine, a critically low level of trust in social norms and norm-setting institutions contributes to the development of corruption and destructive social networks.

The Impact of Job Stress, Role Ambiguity and Work-Life Imbalance on Turnover Intention during COVID-19: A Case Study of Frontline Health Workers in Saudi Arabia.

The main objective of the present study is to examine the impact of job stress, role ambiguity, work–life imbalance and burnout on employee turnover intention. Moreover, the mediating role of burnout between job stress, role ambiguity, work–life imbalance and turnover intention is also examined. The data collection for this quantitative research was conducted through the “Questionnaire” technique. The questionnaire was developed based on previously established questions available in the literature. The data were collected using simple random sampling from the healthcare workers of KSA. From the distributed questionnaire, 73.5% of the usable questionnaires were returned. This study used SPSS and PLS for the analysis of the data to highlight the most significant variables that impact the employees’ turnover intentions among KSA health workers. The findings show that job burnout is clearly related to turnover intentions and is positively affected by both role stress and role ambiguity. Moreover, a statistically positive association is found between work–life imbalance and burnout among the healthcare workers in KSA. Furthermore, the mediating role of burnout is also confirmed in this study. The study also indicates that role ambiguity and role stress due to COVID-19 may create burnout among employees, which may lead to turnover intention among healthcare workers. There is a lack of research on the assessment of the impact of the novel COVID-19-related job stress, role ambiguity and work–life imbalance on the medical staff’s turnover intentions in hospitals. This study fills the gap of the limited studies conducted regarding the identification of the factors that can create turnover intention among healthcare workers of KSA by providing empirical evidence from a Gulf country, Saudi Arabia. This study provides managerial implications for hospital management and health policymakers to develop a strategy to retain the employees. Furthermore, healthcare administrators need to pay close attention to front line workers’ turnover intentions as these medical heroes are the vital part of our society who assist patients to receive their initial treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pandemic COVID-19 Influence on Adult's Oral Hygiene, Dietary Habits and Caries Disease-Literature Review.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2. The pandemic over the past two years has completely changed people’s daily habits with an impact on oral hygiene, eating habits, and oral health. Materials and methods: The available literature was reviewed on the PubMed platform and from other sources MEDLINE and Cochrane Reviews. The analysis included comparative and clinical trials as well as pragmatic clinical/randomized controlled trials, and observational studies which focused on the effects of COVID-19 on the dietary habits of the population, oral hygiene, and caries incidence. Results: The analysis shows that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant negative impact on dietary habits and an ambiguous impact on oral health habits of the population. The researchers showed that patients’ visits were limited only to those necessary, because of fear of infecting with the SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions: The literature review shows that the COVID-19 pandemic, by affecting many aspects of everyday life, including eating habits, caring for oral hygiene, and avoiding regular visits to the dentist, may generate an increase in oral diseases. Due to the differences in knowledge results, further research observations in this field are necessary.

Emigration and fiscal austerity in a depression

What is the role of emigration in a deep recession when the government implements fiscal consolidation? To answer this question, we build a small open economy New Keynesian model with matching frictions and emigration. In simulations for the Greek Depression, fiscal austerity accounts for almost 1/3 of the GDP decline and 12% of emigration. A no-migration scenario under-predicts the bust in output by 1/6 and the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio by 8 percentage points. The link between emigration and austerity is bi-directional. Emigration increases the labour tax hike and time required to reduce the debt ratio due to endogenous revenue leakage. In turn, tax hikes intensify emigration, while unproductive government spending cuts have a mild, ambiguous impact as they exhibit opposite demand and wealth effects. However, productive spending cuts display a fiscal multiplier above one, which incentivizes emigration. Emigration then amplifies the productive spending multiplier through internal demand. Similarly, the cumulative labour tax multiplier after five years rises from 0.86 without migration to 1.27 when the unemployed emigrate and 1.47 when both the unemployed and the employed emigrate.

Smallpox good and bad: evolution of popular perceptions of the personification of the disease in the Urals in the 19th — early 20th century

In this paper, elaboration of the image of smallpox in popular perception, which manifested itself in connec-tion with the organization of smallpox vaccination by the Russian government, is examined. In the context of the cultural dominance of the ruling class over the people and paternalistic attitude towards it, promulgation of the vaccination is a unique phenomenon for the early 19th century Russia, when the “amount at stake” forced the authorities to appeal to their subjects. It provides an opportunity to analyze the symbols generated by the domi-nant ideology and their perception by traditional consciousness. Propaganda started by means of sermons by the clergy. Numerous Exhortations emphasized contraposition of the benefits of the vaccinated smallpox and the harm of the natural smallpox. The verbal channel of the agitation was supported by a visual one — publication of ”popular prints”. Analysis of the plots in nine images from D.A. Rovinsky’s collection showed that corporeality was recognized as the main means of the visual agitation. Through the image of human body, health and beauty of persons vaccinated against smallpox was transmitted, as well as deformity and hideousness of those who went through the natural smallpox. Having absorbed the dualism of the pro-government propaganda, popular con-sciousness went to create an alternative version of perceptions of the infection and vaccination. By applying the binary oppositions ’friend-foe’ and ’sacred-profane’, people made an important change in their own system of values: unlike other epidemics, such a particularly dangerous infection as smallpox had changed its place in the traditional worldview. It stopped being associated with plague and death and became recognized as being “one’s own” and ”godsent”. Therefore, it should not be opposed but should be accepted with gratitude as a ”gift of God”. Intercultural communications on the subject of smallpox vaccination are not only a vivid illustration of the ambigu-ous impact of the dominant ideology on a folk culture; the emergence of socially and culturally differentiated im-ages of smallpox, having drawn a new demarcation line between the scholarly and folk cultures, deepened the rift in the Russian society, as well as introduced additional difficulties in the process of immunoprophylaxis and made it difficult to identify and treat the smallpox patients.

Joint visual template and natural language for robust visual tracking

At present, the target of interest in visual tracking is given in the form of a bounding box. Due to the randomness of the target shape, the bounding box may contain a lot of non-target information. When encountering complex tracking scenarios, the performance of the tracker reduces severely. To address this problem, in this letter, the authors propose a novel tracking framework based on the joint of the visual template and natural language (VNTrack) to alleviate the impact of bounding box ambiguity. Specifically, the authors first use a pre-trained language model to extract the features of the language description of the target. Then, a feature alignment module is designed to align and enhance the visual template feature and natural language feature. In addition, the authors design a multimodal query module to fuse the visual template, natural language, and search region information. Experimental results over tracking benchmarks with language annotations show that the proposed VNTrack is competitive among the state-of-the-art trackers.

Bordering through othering: On strategic ambiguity in the making of the EU-Turkey refugee deal

This article scrutinises the identity-constitutive role of bordering practices by taking EU-Turkey cooperation on border control and refugee governance as a case. Using Foucault's notion of dispositif, this empirically oriented contribution critically reflects on the link between bordering, othering, and the reification of identities. More specifically, it undertakes a Critical Discourse Analysis of the EU border dispositif to elucidate how material structures and socio-spatial practices and discourses are mobilised in the processes of bordering. Throughout this article, special attention is paid to the strategic uses of ambiguity in refugee governance. Examining strategic ambiguity operative at the level of discourse, in institutional and legal structures, and routine daily practices, the multifaceted approach adopted in this study extends the analysis beyond the impact of strategic ambiguity on refugee's living experiences. The analysis demonstrates that strategic ambiguity relates to multiple domains of refugee governance and becomes a practical ideological tool, a normalising procedure for norm-breaking practices. Providing multiple layers of distinct but mutually reinforcing critical exploration, this study demonstrates how accumulated layers of knowledge, imageries, and historical narratives support institutional, legal and administrative practices in the ambiguous time/space of the EU-Turkey refugee deal. The analysis also exposes how the EU border dispositif translates difference into otherness, and contributes to the construction of European identity through the othering of refugees.

Search, technology choice, and unemployment

AbstractTechnology variations among countries account for a significant part of their income differences. In this paper, a firm's technology choice is embedded in a search theoretic framework for unemployment. More advanced technology is assumed to have a higher setup cost, but it is more productive. The model is tractable and the following results are derived analytically. An increase in the unemployment benefit leads to an increase in the equilibrium wage rate, giving an incentive to firms to choose a more advanced technology. Thus, this result regarding unemployment insurance in models with wage posting carries through with Nash bargaining as well. As a consequence, the equilibrium unemployment rate increases. Furthermore, an increase in the bargaining power of workers increases the unemployment rate but has an ambiguous impact on the equilibrium level of technology and the wage rate. Finally, an increase in the exogenous job separation rate or the interest rate increases the unemployment rate and decreases the wage rate but does not affect the equilibrium level of technology.

Анализ влияния пандемии COVID-19 на распространение цифровых технологий в корпоративном секторе Российской Федерации

The purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the spread of digital technologies in the corporate sector of the Russian Federation. The authors suggested and tested the method of statistical measurement of the spread of digital technologies based on the indicator of the corresponding costs of firms. The costs of firms for the introduction and use of digital technologies are analyzed in the period from 2015 to 2020 in two sections: by types of costs, as well as by types of economic activity, which account for more than 80% of the total value of the indicator for the Russian Federation. In order to make a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the digitalization of the corporate sector in the Russian Federation, in addition to official statistical data, the authors use collections of analytical materials, including a brief overview of the study of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation on changes in business processes after the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the results of the analysis, it was revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic has an ambiguous impact on the digitalization process. On the one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly become an accelerator of digital development in certain areas, for example, the introduction of cloud solutions that ensure the volume to remote work and distance learning significantly increased. On the other hand, the “coronacrisis” led to a reduction in expenses, including on the IT infrastructure of enterprises whose revenue decreased during this period. The results of the analysis can be used in future studies of modeling and forecasting trends of digital transformation of the economy in the corporate sector in the Russian Federation.

TCT-117 Impact of Proximal Cap Ambiguity on the Outcomes of Chronic Total Occlusion Intervention: Insights From the PROGRESS-CTO Registry

TCT-117 Impact of Proximal Cap Ambiguity on the Outcomes of Chronic Total Occlusion Intervention: Insights From the PROGRESS-CTO Registry

The Economic Legacy of Mega Sporting Events. The Impact of Hosting European Olympic Games on GDP Growth Through Infrastructure Development

Abstract Introduction. The positive legacy of the Olympics is often cited by the International Olympic Committee and national organizers. Some scholars, however, question an uncritical approach to an exclusively positive economic legacy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of hosting the Olympics on infrastructure development, with a potential impact on economic growth in the form of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in three phases of seven Olympic Games organised in Europe in recent years. Material and methods. The effect of a particular Olympic period on the GDP was analysed using a difference-in-difference technique in which the difference between each of the analysed seven host countries’ GDPs and those of a reference set of countries was obtained. Each time, as part of the observation, an event time period was distinguished covering all three phases of the event: the preparatory phase, the event phase and the post-event phase. Results. For the Winter Olympic Games, no statistically significant positive results are observed in the long term, which may indicate a very limited importance of the economic legacy of these events for potential host countries. In the case of Summer Olympic Games, the positive impact of the organization of these events in the post-event phase is noticeable Conclusions. The obtained results confirm the ambiguous impact of Olympic Games on the hosts’ economies and are in line with the attitude of many scholars to an uncritical approach to the only positive legacy of these events.