Capital Investment Research Articles

Design of a 1-D auger reactor for upcycling polystyrene to styrene via pyrolysis.

Design of a 1-D auger reactor for upcycling polystyrene to styrene via pyrolysis.

Cost and resource utilisation for liquid biopsy vs tissue biopsy genotyping in advanced NSCLC: A micro-costing model.

1542 Background: For patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, tumour genotyping identifies actionable variants that inform targeted therapeutic choices, that improve outcomes. Liquid biopsy genotyping (LBG) is a non-invasive approach to tissue biopsy genotyping (TBG) that reduces turnaround, avoids repeat tissue biopsy, and can identify additional actionable variants. However, despite these benefits, patient access to LBG is not universal in a range of healthcare systems. While others have developed models evaluating the cost-effectiveness of LBG, these have are limited by assumptions regarding frequency of oncogenic variants and treatment utilisation. We utilised a micro-costing model (MCM) to quantify the cost/resources of LBG and TBG in a prospective trial ( PLAN; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05542485) aimed at investigating the feasibility of LBG in a tertiary cancer centre. Methods: A deterministic MCM was developed to enumerate the cost to generate a genomics report for both LBG and TBG in NSCLC. Capital costs were calculated based on up-front investment and annual depreciation/maintenance. Costs of consumables and staff time associated with each procedure was sourced from relevant hospital departments (e.g. Medical Physics) and evaluated for accuracy by a health economist and medical oncologist. We calculated the cost of sample acquisition (endobronchial ultrasound-guided biopsy or phlebotomy), processing, and genotyping for both LBG and TBG, from patients enrolled on the PLAN study (n = 100) between 08/2023-07/2024. Finally, we performed an exploratory analysis investigating potential reduction in staff time associated with automated library preparation, using currently available technology. Results: We identified that TBG requires more staff time (€534 vs €330), capital investment (€326 vs €16), and consumables (€1544 vs €788), resulting in an overall increased cost, compared with LBG (€2404 vs €1135). Automation of library preparation would reduce staff time required for LBG (Reduced to €191; 33% reduction) with less of an impact on TBG (Reduced to €485; 10% reduction). This difference was due to the increased wet-lab time with LBG and greater staff time for sample acquisition in TBG vs LBG (€298 vs €8). Finally, in the PLAN study, LBG resulted in cancellation of 12 repeat tissue biopsies, resulting in further savings. Conclusions: LBG is a cheaper alternative to TBG. Our data indicates LBG saves cost in the areas of healthcare staffing and capital infrastructure with further savings made through avoidance of repeat tissue biopsies. Thus, the resources required for LBG and TBG are different and should be considered in service planning for tumour types such as NSCLC in which genotyping is standard-of-care. Clinical trial information: NCT05542485 .

Consumer credit, family education level, and human capital investment

Consumer credit, family education level, and human capital investment

Restaurant work in the globalizing ethnic enclave: Examining conditions and wages in Los Angeles’ Koreatown

ABSTRACT Ethnic economies comprise clusters of businesses with easy access to a strong supply of co-ethnic labor, and previous research has shown that working conditions in these contexts can be substandard. Ethnic restaurants generate significant scholarly attention because of the symbolic role they play in helping ethnic communities reproduce and preserve their culture. Koreatown, Los Angeles, is a multiethnic enclave and globally known commercial hub that contains nearly 700 restaurants in roughly two square miles. With the influx of foreign capital investment from South Korea, the neighborhood’s economy has undergone corporate consolidation and the emergence of local and international restaurant chains that dominate the local restaurant industry. The COVID-19 pandemic also created new vulnerabilities for restaurant workers while exacerbating existing ones. The purpose of this study is to examine the restaurant sector in Koreatown, Los Angeles, to better understand how these trends have impacted working conditions in an ever-expanding ethnic economy.

Impact of Venture Capital Finance on Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Nigeria

This study examined the effect of venture capital investment on SMEs in Ekiti State. The study employed small and medium-sized firms as the dependent variable and long-term investors, investment banks, and financial institutions as the independent factors. Using a stratified sample technique, a well-structured questionnaire, descriptive statistics, and ordinary least squares estimate as method of analysis, the study indicated that long-term investors greatly affect SMEs' performance. This defies the null hypothesis. The regression study revealed a favourable correlation between long-term investment and SME success (coefficient = 0.537, p-value = 0.000, p < 0.05). The second hypothesis was rejected since investment banks positively affect SME financial viability. The regression coefficient of 0.817 and p-value of 0.000 indicate a substantial influence. Investment banks may assist SMEs improve their finances by providing structured financial products, consultation, and corporate rearrangement. The statistical data also rejected the third hypothesis by showing that financial institutions substantially and favourably enhance stakeholder and investor trust in SMEs. The research shows that external stakeholders trust and believe SMEs sponsored by reputable financial institutions (r=0.822, p=0.000). The research concluded that long-term investors, investment banks, and other financial institutions, improve performance, sustainability, and credibility for Nigerian SMEs. These venture capital investment sources provide small and medium firms the financial, managerial, strategic, and reputational support they need to succeed. Thus, Nigerian SMEs can maximise venture capital financing by upgrading their goods, expanding operations, and investing in technology. SMEs should also teach managers and owners on venture capital fund management regularly. This includes accurate record-keeping, quick risk assessment, and financial compliance. SMEs receiving venture capital must be transparent and accountable. This may be achieved by doing business responsibly, keeping thorough financial records, and reporting to investors honestly.

Pivotal Role of the Central Grants

In the Indian federal system, the Central Finance Commission is appointed every five years under Article 280 to make recommendations on the distribution of central taxes among the states. Besides, the central government provides grants for various needs to the states under Article 275. To address challenges such as evident economic imbalances, distorted resource distribution, natural disasters, epidemics, and adverse global events, the Government of India has established a robust and resilient grant system. Unlike the central share of taxes, the central government imposes selected conditions on utilising specific grants. Some states have complained that this affects their fiscal autonomy. However, in many states, by sacrificing the basic tenets of public resource utilisation, stupendous amounts of loans are mobilised in the name of capital investment and diverted to financial extravagance for their political gain, creating fiscal stress in the economy and a high burden for the taxpayers in the years to come. In this context, the role of central grants in the financial status and economy of various states is analysed with the help of simple statistical techniques using budget data. This system is designed to deliver assistance rapidly during crises, supported by a flexible framework that helps states navigate their crisis phases efficiently. At the same time, federal grants are beneficial for achieving sustainable development goals. They encourage states to prioritise projects that emphasise environmental and social considerations and maximise creative and productive investments. The advantages of grants from the central government extend beyond mere financial assistance; they also strengthen the country’s framework and improve public welfare programs that promote inclusive development for all. Further, these grants empower states and help them fully leverage the benefits of a cooperative federal structure. This article analyses the goals of central grants, focusing on practicality and effectiveness.

Financial inclusion and living standards: evidence from Nepal

ABSTRACT We investigate the impact of financial inclusion on twelve different sets of expenditure domains. We use Nepal Household Risk and Vulnerability Survey (NHRVS) collected by the World Bank to investigate the impact of financial inclusion on household living standards in Nepal. To circumvent the endogeneity problem, we introduce an instrument, the ‘VDC-level borrowing ratio’, motivated by network theory popular in migration studies. Financial inclusion enhances living standards by facilitating investment in human capital, long-term assets, and agriculture.

You believe your LLM is not delusional? Think again! a study of LLM hallucination on foundation models under perturbation

Large Language Model (LLM) has recently become almost a household term because of its wide range of applications and immense popularity. However, hallucination in LLMs is a critical issue as it affects the quality of an LLM’s response, reduces user trust and leads to the spread of misinformation. Detecting hallucination in the presence of the context or a golden response is relatively easier but it becomes considerably more challenging when both of these are absent, which is typically the case post deployment of an LLM. In this study, we present a framework that relies on query perturbation and consistency score calculation between the responses generated against the original query and the perturbed query to identify the potential hallucination scenarios. This framework has no dependency on the availability of the context or the ground truth. In this study, we focus on the popular foundation models because majority of the LLM applications leverage these specific models since training an LLM from scratch or even finetuning LLMs may require a lot of capital investment. Moreover, we specifically investigate LLM hallucinations under different levels of perturbation: character-level, word-level and sentence-level — robustness towards these perturbations indicates that an LLM has a good understanding of a concept, and thus is less susceptible to hallucinations – this, in turn, should help in the LLM’s user adoption. Our study shows that GPT-4 hallucinates the least when faced with perturbations; in contrast, other LLMs start hallucinating even with minor typos.

Public Sector Investment on Human Capital and Sustainable Development in Nigeria

In recent years, the link between public sector investment in human capital and sustainable development has gained increasing attention. However, despite various policy interventions, Nigeria continues to grapple with persistent challenges associated with human capital development, particularly in education and healthcare. These deficiencies hindered progress in achieving sustainable development and have motivated the investigation into the direction of causality and the impact of public sector investment in human capital on sustainable development in Nigeria from 1980 to 2021. The Granger causality test and Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation techniques were used. The findings revealed that government investment in health and education positively influenced sustainable development. The results indicated a unidirectional causality from sustainable development to educational expenditure and a bidirectional causality between sustainable development and government expenditure on health. Based on these findings, the study recommended that the Nigerian government prioritize sustained investment in education and healthcare services to promote sustainable development.

The Role of the World Bank in the Economy: An Evidence from Selected Developing Countries from 2015 Through 2021

This study critically examines the impact of World Bank Group (WBG) borrowings on the economic development of selected developing countries. Drawing on regression analysis, the findings present a complex narrative: while theoretical models suggest that WBG financial support should drive positive development outcomes, empirical evidence reveals a mixed reality across different nations. Notably, countries like Ukraine and Nigeria exhibit some developmental benefits from WBG loans, whereas China, Brazil, and Mexico do not report significant gains. These findings underscore the non-universality of development models, highlighting the influence of regional, cultural, and political dynamics in shaping economic outcomes. The research affirms that without tangible improvements in human capital and quality of life, the costs of WBG membership may outweigh its benefits. It also raises concerns about governance practices within the World Bank, including infrequent oversight by its Board of Governors and the lack of objectivity in project appraisals. On the side of borrower nations, the study emphasizes the need for stronger institutions, transparent fund management, and prioritization of human capital investments in health and education. Ultimately, the research argues for a re-evaluation of the WBG’s strategies and encourages the development of context-sensitive economic support models that align with the unique socio-political realities of borrowing countries.

Improving Public Sector Performance through Human Capital Investment: The Role of Training and Career Development in Pariaman City, Indonesia

Employee performance plays a crucial role in governance and public service. Enhancing staff performance through training and development to increase competencies in order to improve performance is one way the government is working to increase the efficacy and efficiency of public services. The firm can reap long-term benefits from investing in human resource development, so it is imperative to provide staff training and career development greater thought and assistance. The primary goal of this research is to examine the effects of training and career development on the performance of civil servants in the Pariaman City government. The respondents total are 295 civil servants from the Pariaman City Government participated in the data gathering process, which involved distributing questionnaires to them both online and offline. The Slovin formula and cluster random sampling technique were used to get the sample size. To examine data was used the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) – Partial Least Square (PLS) method. According to the study’s result, training has a considerable and substansial impact on employee performance. Career development also has an influence on employee performance but has a weak correlation. Simultaneously, training and career development have impact with a percentage of 45.5% on employee performance.

The concrete function of the banking system: Samir Amin’s monetary theory of financial underdevelopment

Abstract Building on Samir Amin’s monetary theory, this paper argues that the underdevelopment of banking systems in peripheral economies is not merely the result of institutional inefficiencies or market failures but is deeply rooted in structural constraints. These constraints, such as insufficient production capacity and limited foreign exchange reserves, significantly limit the ability of banks to inject credit into the economy. Within this constrained capacity to extend credit, the concrete function of the banking sector is fundamentally distributional. Banks allocate scarce financial resources among sectors that foster capital accumulation instead of local development. Drawing on empirical evidence from Egypt, the paper demonstrates that credit to the private sector is heavily dependent on industrial growth and the availability of foreign exchange reserves. Furthermore, persistent fiscal deficits have exacerbated the already concentrated credit market, channelling limited financial resources toward recurrent public expenditures rather than capital investments, thereby weakening the industrial capacity of the economy.

Human Capital Investment as a Strategic Lever for Sustainable Tourism: A Conceptual Extension from an Omani Perspective

This conceptual paper explores the direct relationship between human capital investment and sustainable tourism within the context of Oman. As the Sultanate of Oman continues to diversify its economy through strategic initiatives such as Vision 2040, tourism emerges as a pivotal sector. However, achieving sustainable tourism remains a challenge due to overdependence on expatriate labor and underutilization of local human capital. This paper argues that investing in education, skills development, and workforce localization can significantly enhance sustainable tourism outcomes. Drawing on relevant literature and the principles of Vision 2040, the study provides conceptual insights into how human capital contributes directly to sustainability in the tourism sector. The paper concludes with practical recommendations for policymakers and future researchers.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CLIMATE FINANCE IN NORTH MACEDONIA

Climate change has emerged as the defining political and economic problem of this century. Governments, investors, businesses, and private individuals worldwide are beginning to take action in response to the climate issue, especially on decarbonization techniques. Moving to a low-carbon or green economy would need extraordinary levels of fresh capital investment, notably in the form of green financing, to support activities that cut GHG emissions and assist firms in adapting to the effects of climate change. The interaction between climate change and fiscal policy— physical and transition climate risks place pressure on public finances while at the same time fiscal policies can help contribute to achieving North Macedonia’s climate change objectives. This paper aims to explore the significance of the importance of climate public finance and its ability to manage climate-related contingent liabilities, finance climate action, promote a green transition, strengthen resilience, manage macro-fiscal sustainability, and enhance transparency and accountability in the allocation of public funds for climate action. As the world faces adverse impacts of climate change, additional funds or green bonds are required to flow toward climate finance to achieve the objective of limiting global warming and increasing climate resilience.

Artificial Intelligence and the LIPOR Approach: A Connection for Retail Equity Investors' Knowledge

Purpose: This study deals regarding appropriate capital investment and, retail equity investors estimating the potential returns on their investment, the LIPOR technique given by Gupta and Loya could represent a better option for it. Finding: This study has identified some gaps in the literature to address the difficulties retail investors face due to changes in governmental financial policies and changes in bank and repo rates, among several other factors triggered by the central bank of a specific country. This study outlines the relationship between the LIPOR approach and AI tools to raise awareness among retail equity investors. Methodology: A mixed method approach is used in this study for data analysis. Some statistical test correlation, regression, and ANOVA are used to predict the relationship between two constructs. Ethical consideration is used to collect the data from respondents in this study. Originality: The LIPOR approach is used for justifies the stock market investment awareness among Retail Equity Investors in this research paper

Optimal taxation in ben-porath model

This paper is about Ben-Porath model of human capital investments and non-trivial labor supply decisions throughout the lifetime of the individual. In Ben-Porath model without taxation: The time allocation condition ensures optimal trade-offs between leisure, work, and investment in human capital. Shadow price of human capital is increasing over time. In Ben-Porath-Huggett model Mirrlees taxation is the best option when skill is private knowledge, Ramsey taxation requires subsidies to prevent human capital stagnation. Pareto taxation is the second-best solution when redistribution is a goal. Ramsey taxation yields highest government revenues, Mirrlees and Pareto taxes yield highest utility.

The dark side of intangibles? Organizational capital and corporate investment efficiency

PurposeOrganizational capital (OK) represents an important intangible productive firm asset, yet one subject to agency problems. This paper provides a first examination of how OK impacts corporate investment inefficiency using an unbalanced panel of listed US companies from 2009 to 2020.Design/methodology/approachWe utilize fixed-effect regressions to explore the relationship between OK and investment efficiency. Additionally, we implement a battery of robustness tests of the main study findings based on a variety of panel data techniques, including firm fixed effects, alternative measures of investment efficiency, estimators, including Newey–West as well as additional steps to address endogeneity concerns using system-GMM, two-stage least-squares and entropy balancing analyses.FindingsOK is associated with reduced investment efficiency (underinvestment and overinvestment). A one-standard deviation increase in OK to total assets is associated with a 4.42% decrease in investment efficiency. Based on average firm investment, this represents a $390.88 million decrease in investment. CEO gender and career concerns as well as R&D intensity, positively moderate this relationship, while CEOs’ age, power, tenure and connections as well as corporate governance and disclosure quality, negatively moderate it. The findings can be understood from the perspective of agency theory, whereby informational asymmetries surrounding OK make it challenging for firm outsiders to monitor and evaluate managerial investment choices.Originality/valueWe lack understanding as to how it impacts the efficiency of corporate investment. We contribute the first evidence in this regard by demonstrating that OK is associated with lower investment efficiency.

Problems and Prospects of the Social Sphere of Kyrgyzstan

The social sphere of Kyrgyzstan is facing a number of challenges: high levels of poverty, inequality, limited access to quality education and healthcare, especially in rural areas. Demographic changes, migration, and inefficient resource management are exacerbating the situation. Reforms are needed in education, healthcare, and social protection. Investments in human capital, infrastructure development, and support for small and medium-sized businesses can contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction.

Life-Cycle Assessment of Data-Driven Mineral Extraction: Environmental and Economic Trade-Offs

This study presents a comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) comparing traditional and data-driven mineral extraction methods for critical minerals. The research quantifies both environmental impacts and economic implications across the entire extraction lifecycle, from exploration to site rehabilitation. Primary data collected from three operational mining sites with varying levels of technological implementation demonstrates that data-driven approaches reduce global warming potential by 26.7%, water consumption by 36.2%, and land disturbance by 31% compared to traditional methods. Economic analysis reveals that despite 34.2% higher initial capital investments, data-driven operations reduce operational expenditures by 22.8% with a payback period of approximately 4.3 years. The study identifies significant trade-offs between environmental performance, capital investment, social impacts, and extraction efficiency. The findings provide evidence-based guidance for industry stakeholders and policymakers seeking to optimize mineral extraction while balancing environmental sustainability and economic viability, particularly in the context of increasing demand for critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies.

Endogenous growth and the influence of information and communication technology on Poland's economic trajectory

Background Poland has experienced a significant digital revolution, driven by technological advancements and supportive government initiatives. The increased use and integration of information and communication technology (ICT) have played a crucial role in this transformation. Understanding the economic impacts of these changes is essential, particularly through indicators such as gross fixed capital formation, labour force dynamics, human capital and education, technology/innovation, foreign direct investment (FDI), and ICT infrastructure. Method This research employs data spanning 33 years, from 1990 to 2022, to explore the relationship between ICT and economic growth in Poland. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing methodology is used to derive empirical results and assess both short- and long-term dynamics. Results The findings indicate that ICT, labour, and FDI have a positive and significant impact on Poland’s economic growth, with labour exerting the most substantial influence. Conversely, capital investment demonstrates a negative effect on economic growth, likely due to inefficiencies in allocation and diminishing returns in certain sectors. Conclusion Based on the results, several key policy recommendations are proposed to further enhance Poland's economic growth. This research also contributes to the macroeconomic theory of endogenous growth by providing new insights into the role of ICT and associated factors in an emerging digital economy.