Government Interest Research Articles

Traffic in Asian Women

Traffic in Asian Women

Activists in international courts: Backlash, funding, and strategy in international legal mobilization

Activists in international courts: Backlash, funding, and strategy in international legal mobilization

Borrowed Agency: The Institutional Capacity of the Early Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

AbstractBorrowed capacity builds upon institutional capacity scholarship to discuss how interactions between government agencies and interest groups can increase agency resources and scope during agency formation and development. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission scholars often note the lack of capacity to implement Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 during the first years of the agency. I argue that current assessments of the agency’s capacity between 1965 and 1968 are incomplete by expanding the definition of capacity to include borrowed and nontraditional forms of capacity, reviewing congressional allocations to the agency and agency budgets, and considering the active roles state and local agencies as well as interest groups played in the early implementation of Title VII. I demonstrate the agency amassed not only claims but also capacity during its early years.

Scientific Research for European Decision-Making

No AccessScientific Research for European Decision-MakingEmilia Blank, PhD Lukas Danko, Kata Katz, Dr. sc Volodymyr Polishchuk, Dr Ivan RubinićEmilia Blank University of Wuppertal Germany BA; is currently finishing her double master’s degree from the University of Wuppertal and Andrássy University in Budapest. She is majoring in Policy Science and International Relations, while also working at the Institute for Democracy and Participation Studies as a research assistant. In addition to being the chairwoman of an association advocating for equal access to education around the globe, her interests lie in development cooperation between countries as well as educational policies within Europe.Search for more papers by this author, PhD Lukas Danko Tomas Bata University Czech Republic PhD; is an assistant professor and secretary at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Faculty of Management and Economics, Department of Regional Development, Public Sector Administration and Law. With a background in economics, Lukáš has a range of interests in creative economy, collaborative spaces, and multi-level governance. He has published both qualitative and quantitative papers in WoS and Scopus, and book chapters in Routledge, and Springer.Search for more papers by this author, Kata Katz University of Arts Berlin Germany MA; studied Philosophy, Literature and Film Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Arts Berlin (UdK), Germany. She is an independent lecturer and one of the co-founders of the Project Failure Stories. Her research focuses on media and photography theory, philosophy of science and science history.Search for more papers by this author, Dr. sc Volodymyr Polishchuk Uzhhorod National University Ukraine Dr. sc; is a professor at Uzhhorod National University (Ukraine). He is a project manager and expert on many IT and scientific projects, whose interests include research and development in information technology and aviation, with an emphasis on assessing process control in complex systems. He is the author of more than 150 scientific works.Search for more papers by this author, Dr Ivan Rubinić Maastricht University The Netherlands Dr; is a postdoctoral researcher in European integration at Maastricht University. He is working toward the advancement of political economy, economic inequality, and international trade. Ivan is a political economist committed to exposing that excessive inequalities stand in the way of the European vision of shared prosperity, equality, and cohesiveness. His scholarly record is comprised of a number of publications, including Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, and Oxford University Press.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:Feb 2023SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book coverVolume 63Issue 1-2February 2023 ISSN: 0012-5415eISSN: 2307-289XHistoryPublished online:February 2023 PDF download

ESG Fund Usage among Individual Investor Households: A Machine Learning–Based Behavioral Study

Interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has increased substantially in recent years. Still, little research has demonstrated how ESG funds are being incorporated into portfolios by individual investor households. In this article, the authors explore a unique dataset containing the demographic and portfolio characteristics of more than five million households and identify those holding an ESG fund. Using an unsupervised machine learning technique called K-prototype clustering, the authors find five unique types of investors who have incorporated ESG mutual funds and/or ETFs into their portfolios. The authors then test to what extent incorporating ESG funds biases traditional portfolio construction decisions and find that ESG households have a strong growth tilt compared with similar non-ESG households. The research serves as a foundation for further study into the motivations behind, and portfolio implications of, implementing any of the identified ESG investment strategies.

The evangelical foreign policy model: Jair Bolsonaro and evangelicals in Brazil

The article proposes an evangelical foreign policy model to analyse the relationship between evangelical groups and conservative governments in foreign policymaking. Using Brazil as a case study, we argue that the model is defined by the convergence of views and interests between conservative cabinet members and domestic evangelical groups on four foreign policy issues that are critical to evangelicals worldwide – the relationship with Israel, persecution of Christian minorities, abortion rights, and evangelical missions in Africa. To analyse the convergence, we use an original database of 207 speeches from Brazilian evangelical parliamentarians (Evangelical Parliamentary Front) and 1992 discourses from Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet members from January 2019 to July 2022, as well as multiple documents from the main evangelical groups in Brazil. In the case of Brazil, this is the first time that typical religious considerations have been officially adopted by the country’s foreign policy, indicating the growing importance of evangelical thinking in Brazilian politics. This is also one of the first analyses, not centred in the United States, that shows how views and interests of evangelical groups and conservative governments converge in international affairs, broadening perspectives on the political participation of the ever-growing evangelical movement in the Global South.

The Doctor Knows Best?: Reconsidering the Role of Expert Discretion in the False Claims Act

In 2021, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Care Alternatives v. United States, leaving open a circuit split regarding the intersection of expert testimony and the falsity element of the False Claims Act. This uncertainty could lead to significant civil liability not only for Medicare/Medicaid service providers, but also for any private parties that receive money from the federal government. This Note outlines three potential solutions that can resolve this circuit split to balance between the interests of the federal government in countering fraud from the contracting process, and the interests of private sector firms in facilitating ease of doing business with the public sector.

Firms’ Performance in Pakistan: The Impact of Government Policies, Capital Structure, and Board Diversity

The present study has three main objectives. First, to investigate the effect of capital structure on firms' performance. The second is to investigate the effect of board member diversity on firms' performance. Third, given government interest in the thriving business sector, the study aims to access the impact of government support policies on the performance of firms, particularly in the construction and automobile sectors. For this, we selected 40 firms from these sectors from the period 2010 to 2021. The generalized method of movement (GMM) is used to test the relationships. The results of the present study show that capital structure has a significant and positive effect on firms' performance. The diversity of board members, which is divided into two sub-categories i.e. demographic diversity and cognitive diversity has significant negative and positive effects on firms' performance. Lastly, there is a negative relationship between government support policies and firms’ performance. These findings provide unique insight to the government, policymakers, researchers, and managers in the context of Pakistan. The thriving business sector is key for the economic survival of a country and these finding can enable managers and policymakers to utilize capital structure and board composition for ensuring optimal performance and effective policy making.

Finance Must Be Defended: Cybernetics, Neoliberalism and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)

In the last decade, interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) surged dramatically. This article contends that corporate perspectives on ESG—as managing risk and/or returning expected value—are insufficient to account for developments presently unfolding in the ESG finance space. There, novel derivative tools are being developed and deployed, promising to flip the sustainability market on its head. Unlike other sustainability metrics or strategies, ESG derivatives do not attempt to price a given firm’s risk profile in light of the environment, but rather seek to price the risk profile of environmental catastrophe itself. What this translocation of risk prophesies is the direct application of financial engineering to the climate. In this article, re-visiting the late work of Friedrich Hayek and tracing his legacy in Michel Foucault’s lectures on neoliberalism frames my argument that the modern financial system from which these derivatives spring is best understood as a cybernetic one. Cybernetic systems are ones that endeavor to negate entropy and maintain organization by means of information feedback loop-based learning; in finance, this takes the form of Hayekian price discovery. With ESG derivatives, the system of cybernetic finance is presently setting to work converting climate uncertainty into pricing efficiency. Because derivatives such as these represent the polity’s most advanced media for the meaningful sensation of threats, what emerges about the environment from the trade of these products will soon be fed backwards as a powerful set of inputs to governance, shaping how the climate is brought into representation and what responses to its associated crises are possible.

Relevance of DNA barcodes for biomonitoring of freshwater animals

The COI gene, colloquially named the DNA barcode, is a universal marker for species identification in the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, due to the taxonomic impediment, there are various proposals for molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs) because high-throughput sequencers can generate millions of sequences in one run. In the case of freshwater systems, it is possible to analyze whole communities through their DNA using only water or sediment as a sample. Using DNA barcodes with these technologies is known as metabarcoding. More than 90% of studies based on eDNA work with MOTUs without previous knowledge of the biodiversity in the habitat. Despite this problem, it has been proposed as the future for biomonitoring. All these studies are biased toward the Global North and focused on freshwater macrofaunae. Few studies include other regions of the world or other communities, such as zooplankton and phytoplankton. The future of biomonitoring should be based on a standardized gene, for example, COI, the most studied gene in animals, or another secondary consensual gene. Here, we analyzed some proposals with 28S or 12S. The studies on eDNA can focus on analyses of the whole community or a particular species. The latter can be an endangered or exotic species. Any eDNA study focused on a community study should have a well-documented DNA baseline linked to vouchered specimens. Otherwise, it will be tough to discriminate between false positives and negatives. Biomonitoring routines based on eDNA can detect a change in a community due to any perturbation of the aquatic ecosystem. Also, it can track changes along the history of an epicontinental environment through the analyses of sediments. However, their implementation will be complex in most megadiverse Neotropical countries due to the lack of these baselines. It has been demonstrated that a rapid functional construction of a DNA baseline is possible, although the curation of the species can take more time. However, there is a lack of governmental interest in this kind of research and subsequent biomonitoring.

Crowding in and crowding out in Pakistan: A Co-Integration Analysis of Public and Private Investment (1972-2015)

Investments in both public and private are essential to Pakistan's economy. Public investment iscrucial for any nation's economic development, but private investment serves as a catalyst for the creation of jobs and income. The primary purpose of this stud y is to empirically examine the “crowding-out and crowding-in” effects of state spending on private investment in Pakistan. The 43 most recent years (1972–2015) of data were gathered and examined. The main data sources used for data collection were the “State Bank of Pakistan”, "the Economic Survey of Pakistan," and "World Development Indicators”. The researchers considered all forms of investment, including private investment, "government interest spending," “current government spending”, and current government spending transfer. In the analysis section, the “Augmented Dickey-Fuller” test was employed to gauge the stationarity of the variables. All of the study's variables were found to be non-stationary using the analytical tools. The results of the "vector error correction model" (VECM), which was employed to examine both long-run and short-run causation, illustrate that government interest spending has a substantial and encouraging impact on private investments.

Status of Katchi Class in Relation to Early Childhood Education Policies and practices in Punjab

The study aimed at identifying the present conditions of ECE ortraditionally termed ‘katchi class’ at government schools in Punjab(specifically targeting Okara city), while reviewing educational policiesand available literature to assess the reasons for non-implementation ofthe same. After failing to achieve its targets for EFA and MDG’s inregard to ECE specifically, spending a mere 2.3% of its GNP oneducation (UNESCO, 2014) the status of the katchi class, the mostcritical stage of learning remains deplorable in government schools ofPunjab. Analysis of the physical facilities, classroom practices andteacher assessment, along with interviews of headmasters and 3 districtofficials, the DCO, EDO (education) and DEO (primary schools) wereperformed using observation checklists and questionnaires respectively.The quantitative data was represented through simple percentages todraw conclusions to research questions while the qualitative data wasthematically analyzed to find out the reasons for non-implementation ofNCECE. The results indicated an overall low quality of katchi class bothin terms of physical environment and quality of education being offered,along with a lack of government interest and contribution in the field.Financial, organizational and cultural restraints were identified asbarriers in the implementation of the policies and recommendationssuggested for overcoming them.

Penguatan Pemahaman Keuangan Syariah bagi Guru dan Siswa di Yayasan An-Nikmah Al-Islamiyah Phnom Penh Kamboja

The rapid development of the Islamic economy has attracted the interest of the Cambodian government to develop its halal industry. For this reason, they are trying to attract investors from Muslim-majority countries to enter Cambodia. However, economic observers in Cambodia predict that Cambodia's move will be hampered by a lack of knowledge about the sharia economy. Moreover, the Muslim population in this country is only two percent of the total population. An-Nikmah Al-Islamiyah School is the best and most accomplished Islamic school in Phnom Penh, Cambodia which is located at Desa, Sangkat Chrang Chamreh 1, Khan Russey Keo, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This school only focuses on Islamic religious teachings such as boarding schools. Many teachers and students at these schools use financial services, both bank and non-bank. However, because the country which is a Muslim minority has not yet implemented an Islamic financial system and understanding of Islamic finance is still relatively low. Their lack of understanding of Islamic finance is the reason for the need to strengthen understanding of Islamic finance through socialization and education of Islamic finance to students of An-Nikmah Al-Islamiyah school, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Graduate Medical Education Training and the Health of Indigenous Peoples.

Graduate Medical Education Training and the Health of Indigenous Peoples.

New paradigm in tax management in the footprints of industry 4.0: tax administration 3.0

Purpose- In the 2020’s the tax management is following the footprints of Industry 4.0, tax Office processes which were originally paper-based and partly manual have been digitalised globally, also allowing greater sharing of data within the administration and within government, the incorporation of third party data and the use of enhanced analytical tools. We proposed to start the assessment of the level of the maturity of Turkish tax office’s e- transformation project under the criteria of OECD and compare with similar countries with more advanced and established systems. Methodology- Based on the systematic of OECD Digital Transformation Project Tax Office 3.0 the study planned to cover the six building blocks (tax identity, touchpoints, data management, tax rule and applications, analytic capacity and asssesment and governance frameworks and related 13 indicative attributes and to propose an approach to apply to the Turkish tax Office. Findings- Change in management of tax offices is urgently needed and the sytem is increasingly difficult to manage since the current position is inherently unstable. Some of the 48 countries studied by the OECD Project that have a road map to digital transformations appear to have more mature (established) digitalised tax systems than Türkiye, but we observed that our system which has only started in 2010’s has progressed rapidly especially during the last five years. Turkish Ministry of Treasury and Finance, which has taken substantial steps in the tax system, is now aiming to develop the process that has started with the e-document by expanding the comprehenesiveness of the industries as well as establishing new vanguard projects as the “Turkey Digital Tax Office”. Conclusion- Our findings provide evidence that the tax office can perform better with taxpayer and accountant’s voluntary compliance to system. The study concluded that digital transformation requires integrated approaches and a new approach to co- develop the different systems of government with the tax Office. Turkish Tax Office has to improve the core capabilities necessary to facilitate future tax administration, and fit them together taking into account the mutual costs of change. It is recommended to the Turkish Ministry of Treasury and Finance in order to improve the maturity of the Turkish digital transformation, to develop new strategies to harmonise the needs and interests of government and private sector actors within an integrated digitalized system rather than expanding and diversifying the existing system. Keywords: Building blocks of digital transformation, tax offices, taxpayer compliance. JEL Codes: G28; G38, K34

인공지능 교육의 효과에 대한 메타분석

Purpose: According to the government policy, interest in and research on artificial intelligenceeducation has been actively conducted in Korea since 2019. The purpose of this study was to synthesizeeffects of artificial intelligence education through meta-analysis.
 Methods: The researcher rigorously selected a total of 43 primary studies including 25 journal articlesand 18 theses and dissertations reporting effects of artificial intelligence education. To calculate theeffect size, first, the effect size for each study was calculated, and then the overall effect size wascalculated. Subgroup analyses were then performed to compare differences by study characteristics. CMA 3.0 program was used in data analysis.
 Results: First, the overall effect size of artificial intelligence education is 0.687, which can beinterpreted as a medium effect size. Second, effect sizes according to the school level were 0.947for college, 0.784 for high school, 0.784 for middle school, and 0.633 for elementary school. Third,effect sizes according to the learning environment were 0.915 for online tools, 0.777 for the unplugged,0.705 for physical computing, 0.684 for block coding, 0.493 for script coding, and 0.332 for others. Fourth, effect sizes according to dependent variables were 0.857 for the cognitive domain and 0.57for the affective domain.
 Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it is expected that school administrators and educatorswill be able to develop effective and efficient artificial intelligence education programs. Therefore,the author hopes that artificial intelligence education will enable students at all school levels toexperience successful learning and achieve their educational goals.

Conflicting interests between local governments and the European target of no net land take

To halt land take in Europe, the European Union set a “no net land take by 2050″ target in 2011. However, land take continues to occur in European countries, with recent studies suggesting that local decision-making is playing a major role in these land-use conversions. In this study, we investigated how urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are used by local governments to manage urban growth in Romania. A mixed-method approach was adopted, combining analysis of UGB changes over the past decade in all Romanian cities (N = 319) with a survey among representatives of local governments involved in land-use decision-making (N = 91 cities). The results showed that many cities have expanded their UGBs, despite population loss and sufficient undeveloped land within UGBs, showing that local government decisions conflict with policy targets at the European level. This is even the case when there is no physical need for land-take limits to be exceeded. We show that population dynamics and the extent of nature conservation areas significantly contribute to UGB changes, though these explain just a small fraction of all UGB changes. Furthermore, we identified a wide range of motivations among decision-makers regarding changing UGBs, including not only the fiscal system but also cities’ competitiveness and decisions about the long-term vision for development. We argue that policy innovations in urban containment should (i) aim to balance the interests of governments at different administrative levels, (ii) account for the particularities of each state member’s planning system, and (iii) allow for integrated and strategic city planning.

Corporate ESG performance as good insurance in times of crisis: lessons from US stock market during COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThe COVID-19 outbreak and its confinement resulted in an unexpected stock market crash, hence the interest in environmental, social and governance (hereafter, ESG) policies. This paper aims to examine the association between ESG performance and stock market volatility before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThis paper examined 500 US companies listed in the S&P 500. The window period volatility refers to March 18, 2020, when the US President signed into law the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Here, the Thomson Reuters database was used to collect ESG data and daily market information.FindingsThe findings suggest that companies with high ESG performance have lower stock price volatility than companies with poor ESG performance. In other words, strong ESG performance reduces stock price volatility resulting from the COVID-19 shock and promotes resilience and stock price stability.Practical implicationsThis research contributes to current debates on emerging pandemics and unexpected risks and highlights the need to invest more in improving corporate sustainability.Originality/valueThe results have substantial implications for managers and investors, as it highlights the relevance of customer and investor loyalty to the durability of ESG stocks.

A Faustian Bargain? Rethinking the Role of Debt in Law Students' Career Choices.

Despite the absence of strong empirical evidence to support the relationship, legal scholars have long argued that a model of financing legal education through student debt makes it difficult, if not impossible, for most students to take seriously a career path in Government and Public Interest law (GPI), where salaries are generally lower than private, corporate practice. Drawing from a multi-wave, panel survey of law students, we take advantage of a unique tuition remission intervention that occurred at the founding of UCI Law, resulting in a natural, quasi-experiment. Using OLS regression and an instrumental variables approach, we ask whether law student debt influences the likelihood that students (1) will launch their careers in the GPI and (2) aspire to the GPI sector five years after graduation. We find little to no evidence that student debt is a barrier to a graduate's decision to take a position in the GPI sector at career launch or that debt is a factor in a graduate's career aspirations at UCI law school during the study period. These counterintuitive findings provoke new questions about our understanding of debt in the context of legal education and the types of interventions that might facilitate greater entry into the public sector.

The potential human health hazard of nitrates in drinking water: a media discourse analysis in a high-income country

BackgroundRecent studies linking low levels of nitrate in drinking water to colorectal cancer have raised public concerns over nitrate contamination. The aim of this study was to analyze the media discourse on the potential human health hazard of nitrates in drinking water in a high-income country with a large livestock industry: New Zealand (NZ).MethodsSearches of media sources (“major newspapers”) held by the Factiva database for the NZ setting in the five-year period 17 December 2016 to 20 December 2021.ResultsThe largest number of media items was observed for 2017 (n = 108), the year of a NZ general election, with a notable decrease in 2020 (n = 20) that was likely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which dominated health media. However, the percentage of these media items with a health focus steadily increased over time, from 11.1% of all articles in 2017 to 51.2% in 2021. The most commonly mentioned health hazard was colorectal cancer, followed by methemoglobinemia. The temporal pattern of media items suggests that the release of scientific studies and scholarly blogs was associated with the publication of subsequent media items. Major stakeholders involved in the discourse included representatives of local and central government, environmental and recreational interest groups, researchers, local residents, agricultural interest groups, and health organizations. Māori (Indigenous New Zealanders) values or perspectives were rarely mentioned.ConclusionsAnalysis of major newspapers for a five-year period indicated that a wide range of expert comment and opinions were made available to the public and policy makers on the issue of nitrates in water. While many different stakeholder views were captured in the media discourse, there is scope for the media to better report the views of Māori on this topic. There is also a need for articles detailing the health issues to also refer to the environmental, recreational, and cultural aspects of protecting water quality to ensure that the public, policy makers, and regulators are aware of co-benefits.