Post-2000 Era Research Articles

Global Equity Markets: An Empirical Study of Return Prediction and Diversification Benefits

My research delves into the equity market trends of China, Japan, and the UK in the post-2000 era. I analyze a dataset of macroeconomic variables from 2000 to 2022 to assess their ability to predict equity market returns. My study reveals that all three nations have seen an upward trajectory in their equity markets, with China's market experiencing the most substantial growth. In addition, I explore how macroeconomic variables affect stock prices and identify the variables that have the most significant impact on equity market returns. Finally, I conclude that a diversified investment strategy in multiple countries stock markets produces higher Sharpe ratios than any single-country investment.

Capital market manipulation and regulatory compliance – a bibliometric analysis of scholarly research in the post-2000 era

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the literature around regulatory compliance and market manipulation in capital markets through the use of bibliometrics and propose future research directions. Under the domain of capital markets, this theme is a niche area of research where greater academic investigations are required. Most of the research is fragmented and limited to a few conventional aspects only. To address this gap, this study engages in a large-scale systematic literature review approach to collect and analyze the research corpus in the post-2000 era. Design/methodology/approach The big data corpus comprising research articles has been extracted from the scientific Scopus database and analyzed using the VoSviewer application. The literature around the subject has been presented using bibliometrics to give useful insights on the most popular research work and articles, top contributing journals, authors, institutions and countries leading to identification of gaps and potential research areas. Findings Based on the review, this study concludes that, even in an era of global market integration and disruptive technological advancements, many important aspects of this subject remain significantly underexplored. Over the past two decades, research has lagged behind the evolution of capital market crime and market regulations. Finally, based on the findings, the study suggests important future research directions as well as a few research questions. This includes market manipulation, market regulations and new-age technologies, all of which could be very useful to researchers in this field and generate key inputs for stock market regulators. Research limitations/implications The limitation of this research is that it is based on Scopus database so the possibility of omission of some literature cannot be completely ruled out. More advanced machine learning techniques could be applied to decode the finer aspects of the studies undertaken so far. Practical implications Increased integration among global markets, fast-paced technological disruptions and complexity of financial crimes in stock markets have put immense pressure on market regulators. As economies and equity markets evolve, good research investigations can aid in a better understanding of market manipulation and regulatory compliance. The proposed research directions will be very useful to researchers in this field as well as generate key inputs for stock market regulators to deal with market misbehavior. Originality/value This study has adopted a period-wise broad-based scientific approach to identify some of the most pertinent gaps in the subject and has proposed practical areas of study to strengthen the literature in the said field.

The Patterns and Mechanisms of Residential Mobility in Nanjing, China: Insights from the Mantel Test

Residential mobility serves as a pivotal determinant in reshaping urban social spaces and driving spatial differentiation and segregation within cities. This study harnesses a rich dataset from surveys and the housing market in Nanjing, China to dissect the spatial distribution patterns of its mobile population. Employing the Mantel Test—a novel approach in this context—we assess the interplay between spatial shifts in residential locations and the socio-demographic attributes of individuals, thereby shedding light on the socio-spatial dynamics across various migration categories. Our findings underscore a pronounced trend in the post-2000 era of China’s housing marketization: residential migrations occur predominantly within a five-year cycle. The decay in migration distances aligns with the migration field formula, suggesting a systematic attenuation of mobility over spatial extents. The study identifies a strong congruence between the mobility rings—zones of frequent residential movement—and the micro-level characteristics of residents, reflecting the nuanced fabric of urban stratification. Furthermore, we unveil how macro-level institutional frameworks and the housing market milieu substantially shape and limit the migration frequency, hinting at the overarching impact of policy and economic landscapes on residential mobility patterns. The paper culminates by articulating the underlying dynamics of urban residential migration, providing a comprehensive account that contributes to the discourse on sustainable urban development and planning.

Paradigm shift in the onset phase of the Indian Summer Monsoon since 2000 and its potential connection to South Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean basin has undergone significant changes over the past two decades, and this study examines major shifts in the onset characteristics of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) in response to changes in the dynamical and thermodynamic conditions. A thermodynamic index shows that the post-2000 period witnesses an approximately 3-day earlier (May 27) onset of ISM than the pre-2000 period. In the absence of an abrupt and distinct change from the dry to the wet season, the post-2000 era can be distinguished by its early and longer onset process. The Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole (SIOD) undergoes a phase change during its evolution, which weakens the Mascarene High (MH) and hence the pressure gradient. The weakening of the MH along with the heterogeneity in Sea Surface Temperature (SST) trends have led to a weaker meridional pressure gradient over the Indian monsoon domain, resulting in a weak onset of the ISM. Additionally, warming in the Arabian Sea starts earlier than expected. The prolonged duration of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) onset process in the post-2000 era can be attributed to several factors. These include the broader ascending limb of the Hadley cell over the south equatorial Indian Ocean, reduced wind shear, and the early development of a warmer Arabian Sea prior to the onset of the monsoon.

Spatial Constructions of Homeland in Turkish National Identity: Exclusion and Inclusion of Europe

This paper focuses on the geographical, historical, and cultural spatializations of Turkish national identity by political elites in the post-2000 era. Considering the close link between the formation of national identity and the spatial constructions of homeland, the paper shows that Turkish national identity since the foundation of the Republic has been constructed through different supranational visions, navigating through different civilizational ingredients. We show that the Kemalists’ Western-oriented or Eurocentric geopolitical discourses, which perceive Turkey as a “bridge country”, have been transformed in the postCold War era into a more ambitious geopolitical discourse of a “central country”, which aims to broaden Turkey’s “identity space” through its Ottoman heritage. In line with this transformation, in the 2000s, the Turkish homeland was imagined as the “cradle of civilizations”, but the national identity did not develop as a counter-hegemonic measure against the West (Europe). The post-2010 era – with a pronounced emphasis on Islamic culture and Ottoman geopolitical space – constitutes a departure from the previous years’ spatial and identity constructions of Turkey, in the sense that the political elites’ perception of national identity has never gone beyond the national frontiers to this extent, and the West (Europe) has never been so trivialized in terms of progress and civilization.

A ‘leftist premium’ to protest movements?: How incumbent partisanship conditions austerity-spurred mass protest

Fiscal austerity is a policy characteristic of governments that adhere to conservative economic ideologies. In recent decades, however, especially after the 2009 Eurozone Crisis, leftist and left-centre coalition governments have also adopted austerity policies. While it is documented that fiscal austerity incurs electoral costs upon incumbent governments and these costs depend on their partisanship, whether and how the partisanship of the incumbent government affects the pattern of protest movements remains unknown. In this paper, I hypothesized that fiscal austerity by leftist governments, through adding a ‘premium’ to public grievances and demining citizens’ utility of electoral participation, results in a higher likelihood of protest movements than fiscal austerity implemented by right-dominant governments. I supported this hypothesis by analysing panel data for 37 developed countries between 1973 and 2015. Besides, the partisan-pronounced effects on the protest likelihood are observed particularly for non-violent protests such as demonstrations and strikes and for the post-2000 era.

Slow repair: gender and restorative justice in Zimbabwe

This article reports on a ceremony gone awry at Kufunda Village, Zimbabwe, in which women had refused to follow a gendered cultural script of forgiveness and had instead released rather than slaughtered a chicken. They thus reinscribed old symbols with new meanings as a means of contesting patriarchy and beginning a slow process of restorative justice. Kufunda Village was set up as a direct response to conditions of postcolonial modernity in Zimbabwe: the village’s inhabitants see themselves as engaged in a process of learning new ways of inhabiting Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the socioeconomic collapse of the post-2000 era. This paper presents a detailed ethnographic examination of this locally generated example of an invented- tradition-in-process to argue that the refusal of “quick” forgiveness allowed for the development of a slower, more processual form of restorative justice that was seen as being more likely to succeed. I contrast this form of slow change to larger-scale internationally generated models of transitional justice that have been rolled out in the country. I argue that any attempts at restorative justice in Zimbabwe need to recognise justice as a slow, processual and uneven process that needs to incorporate multiple hidden and overt harms.

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) in Banking Sector: Literature Agglutination

Abstract: Purpose - The basic purpose of the study is to classify and present the current status ofmergers and acquisitions(M&As) all over the world. Many robust aspects are appearingin post-2000 era. This research work is an effort to provide some emerging aspects to future researchers by reviewing the several accessible post-2000 literatures. These literatures are presenting the findingsto give a comprehensive picture regarding M&As. Design/Methodology/Approach - Different sources were considered to download the research papers. A sample of 40 research papers is taken out of hundred paperdownloaded for this study. These papers have been properly classified to demonstrate the present status on some aspects of M&As in banking sector. Findings - The present study organized the post-2000 literature from 2001 to 2018. A significant growth was noticed in recent five years i.e. from 2014 to 2018. The study covered many emerging aspects of M&As in banking sector. Originality/Value - The paper offers in-depth analysis of literatures, organize itproperly and give a comprehensive bibliography to the future researchers. Further, it will be helpful to the academicians, investors, practitioners and Government to understand different facets which buffeted by the wind of change over the sample period. Keywords: Restructuring, Strategy, Diversification, Organization, Complimentary.

The Continued Impact of Acute Rejection in the Last Decade of Liver Transplantation

In 2017, we published a study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology that demonstrated an increased risk of graft failure and death in liver transplant (LT) recipients with acute rejection (AR) in the post-2000 era.1 However, an important challenge raised was the recipients’ hepatitis C virus (HCV) status given the frequent diagnostic uncertainty in distinguishing AR from recurrent HCV. This was relevant as that study population originated from an era in which HCV constituted a high percentage of LT recipients with active viremia given the lack of effective direct-acting oral antiviral (DAA) therapies.

Governing the rural: The case of Izmir (Turkey) in the Post-2000 era

In recent years, among many concepts concerning space, concepts such as city, town or village fall short to account for what had been taken granted before. Lately, researchers have begun to question concepts based on discrete semantics such as urban-rural, city-countryside dichotomies too. The search for new concepts and definitions has led to handling of spatial processes such as urbanization that also include the rural. These developments inevitably have paved the way to new territoriality, which merged small units and absorbed surrounding villages and rural areas to form larger ones. A wave of legislative changes has expanded jurisdictions of metropolitan municipalities to regions. For example, in 2004 and later in 2012, regulations concerning local administrations in Turkey extended metropolitan municipality jurisdictions to rural areas in stages. However, institutional background and organization of municipalities that traditionally gauged to serve urban areas were not fit for rural areas and villages that were self-governed entities in spatial organization of administration. Therefore, territorial and jurisdiction expansion is challenging for metropolitan municipalities, in terms of institutional and organizational capacity. Accordingly, we focus on strategies, policies and projects deployed by Izmir (Turkey) Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) in the rural areas to show how the ‘new’ challenges of a metropolitan municipality have been met after the legislative regulations of the 2000s in Turkey. Following this thread, the paper elaborates on an innovative local development model, popularly known as ‘the Izmir Model’, a generic model, which aims to strengthen the administrative, managerial and functional structure of IMM but also mobilizes local resources through partnerships and collaborations for rural capacity development.

How Many Neurosurgeons Does It Take to Author an Article and What Are the Other Factors That Impact Citations?

A scientific publication is a mirror that defines the image of a researcher in his academic and professional world. Neurosurgery and Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS) are the 2 most reputed journals in the neurosurgical community. We evaluated all the original articles published in these 2 journals in the last issue of the year/December (2000-2019). We excluded all review articles and determined number of authors, institutions, and highest educational degrees. Individual abstracts were evaluated for the nature of the study, population, and citations with individual and comparative statistical analyses. A total of 682 original articles were analyzed. Neurosurgery had an increase in the number of authors (8.0 ± 4.11 compared with 5.65 ± 1.99), an increase in title word count (15.14 ± 5.05 from 13.2 ± 4.46), and an increase in basic science research (0.9% to 11.6%). Retrospective studies increased in JNS (35.8% to 46.8%), with fewer studies on animals (18.4% to 8.1%). An increase in number of authors from 6.1 ± 2.6 to 7.2 ± 3.2 and title count was similar. Between the 2 journals, the citation score for JNS improved faster compared with Neurosurgery, consistently. Studies of adult patients received more citations than did animal or pediatric studies. Clinical research garnered 19% more citations along with research with more collaborating institutes (coefficient= 3.5). Title count had a weak negative correlation to citations received. Multiauthor and multi-institutional studies ensure greater expertise and thus better impact. Limited by the sample size, only a weak correlation was found with increased title count and retrospective studies with citations, although their increase is an indicator of future trends. Both journals have shown a steady increase in their impact and quality of publications. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to examine the correlation of various factors and citations in neurosurgery in the post-2000 era.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN TURKEY / Türkiye’de Doğrudan Yabancı Sermaye Yatırımları İle Ekonomik Büyüme Arasındaki İlişki

Foreign direct investments (FDI) in Turkey expanded rapidly following the liberalization programme initiated in early 1980s. Turkey accomplished a record level in terms of its performance to attract FDI in post-2000 era. Foreign currency inflow, capital stock increase, employment generation, and technology transfer are among the benefits of FDI to host country. The most significant impact of FDI is contribution to host country’s economy through realizing production. This empirical study explores the relationship between FDI and economic growth in Turkey using time series analysis for 1980-2015 period. Johansen Co-integration test results demonstrated a positive long-run relationship between economic growth and FDI, and the effect was found as statistically significant. According to Granger causality test findings, there is bidirectional causality between economic growth and FDI. The results of this study imply that a positive change in level of FDI is likely to increase the production of goods and services in Turkey.

Persistent Vegetation Greening and Browning Trends Related to Natural and Human Activities in the Mount Elgon Ecosystem

Many developing nations are facing severe food insecurity partly because of their dependence on rainfed agriculture. Climate variability threatens agriculture-based community livelihoods. With booming population growth, agricultural land expands, and natural resource extraction increases, leading to changes in land use and land cover characterized by persistent vegetation greening and browning. This can modify local climate variability due to changing land–atmosphere interactions. Yet, for landscapes with significant interannual variability, such as the Mount Elgon ecosystem in Kenya and Uganda, characterizing these changes is a difficult task and more robust methods have been recommended. The current study combined trend (Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope) and breakpoint (bfast) analysis methods to comprehensively examine recent vegetation greening and browning in Mount Elgon at multiple time scales. The study used both Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Climate Hazards group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) data and attempted to disentangle nature- versus human-driven vegetation greening and browning. Inferences from a 2019 field study were valuable in explaining some of the observed patterns. The results indicate that Mount Elgon vegetation is highly variable with both greening and browning observable at all time scales. Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope revealed major changes (including deforestation and reforestation), while bfast detected most of the subtle vegetation changes (such as vegetation degradation), especially in the savanna and grasslands in the northeastern parts of Mount Elgon. Precipitation in the area had significantly changed (increased) in the post-2000 era than before, particularly in 2006–2010, thus influencing greening and browning during this period. The greenness–precipitation relationship was weak in other periods. The integration of Mann–Kendall and bfast proved useful in comprehensively characterizing vegetation greenness. Such a comprehensive description of Mount Elgon vegetation dynamics is an important first step to instigate policy changes for simultaneously conserving the environment and improving livelihoods that are dependent on it.

Contestation of Ideas: Media Activism and Media Democracy in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT The struggle for media reform by media reform activists in Zimbabwe has revolutionised the media sphere from various perspectives. Regardless of these changes, the media in Zimbabwe has remained undemocratic. This article explores the extent to which media reforms adopted in the post-2000 era have democratised the media. It further examines the contestation of ideas that characterised the media reform processes in Zimbabwe. Guided by the democracy theory, the article questions the extent to which media reforms in Zimbabwe have democratised the media space. Analysis of documents and in-depth interviews with media policy actors in Zimbabwe constitute the methodology of this study. The article argues that media reforms have changed the dynamics of media policy and practice in Zimbabwe. However, despite these changes, the media has remained undemocratic due to the hegemonic control of the media by the state.

The Disappearing IPO Puzzle: New Insights from Proprietary U.S. Census Data on Private Firms

The U.S. equity markets have experienced a remarkable decline in IPOs since 2000, both in terms of smaller IPO volume and entrepreneurial firms’ greater tendency to exit through acquisitions rather than IPOs. Using proprietary U.S. Census data on private firms, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the above two notable trends and provide several new insights. First, we find that the dramatic reduction in U.S. IPOs is not due to a weaker economy that is unable to produce enough “exit-eligible” private firms: in fact, the average total factor productivity (TFP) of private firms is slightly higher post-2000 compared to pre-2000. Second, we find little evidence that small firms experience a greater decline in IPO propensity than large firms. Third, we do not find a significant change in the characteristics of private firms exiting through acquisitions from pre- to post-2000. Fourth, the decline in IPO propensity persists even after we account for the changing characteristics of private firms over time. Fifth, we show that the difference in TFP between IPO firms and acquired firms (and between IPO firms and firms remaining private) went up considerably post-2000 compared to pre-2000. Finally, venture-capital-backed (VC-backed) IPO firms have significantly lower post-exit long-term TFP than matched VC-backed private firms in the post-2000 era relative to the pre-2000 era, while this pattern is absent among IPO and matched private firms without VC backing. Overall, our results strongly support the explanations based on standalone public firms’ greater sensitivity to product market competition and entrepreneurial firms’ access to more abundant private equity financing in the post-2000 era. We find mixed evidence regarding the explanations based on the smaller net financial benefits of being standalone public firms or the increased need for confidentiality after 2000.

Income inequality in the post-2000 era: Development, globalization, and the state

During the late 20th century, income inequality rose in most countries around the world, and by a substantial amount in some cases. By contrast, income disparities have stabilized during the post-2000 era, and have even begun to decline in a small majority of states. What accounts for this recent change? Unfortunately, existing work is not well-positioned to address this question. Researchers commonly restrict their attention to affluent nations or use empirical models that have not kept pace with either the changing landscape or the availability of newer measures, all of which suggests a path forward in this area of research. This article focuses on the post-2000 era, drawing from a large global sample (1284 observations across 129 states), while utilizing novel measures that better reflect the contemporary period. The study reports results from Prais–Winsten regression with panel-corrected standard errors and two-way fixed effects. The models show that income inequality is shaped by the major employment sectors (agriculture, industry, and services), the relative supply of unskilled/skilled labor (as indicated by population growth and tertiary school enrollment, respectively), globalization (international trade and migration), state characteristics (the size of government and regulation of labor), gender dynamics (female participation in paid work and government), and the unemployment rate. In sum, the results reveal a set of equalizing and disequalizing factors that shape each country’s income distribution.

Central-local state contestations and urban management in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT Most scholars agree that the character of the urban governance system in Zimbabwe is a reflection of the dominance of one political party, namely, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). However, the increasingly prominent role of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in urban governance has heralded, since the early 2000s, a period marked by change, contestation and confusion. Simultaneously, the destabilising effect of contested urban governance politics on urban management in Zimbabwe has become entrenched. This article focuses on the interface between urban governance politics and urban management in Zimbabwe in the post-2000 era. It analyses how central government, through the local government ministry, local government statutes and appointed officials, structures, and even destabilises, the administration of urban affairs. The article concludes that urban governance is not merely a site of political contestation, as it has also profoundly influenced and altered the functioning of urban administration in Zimbabwe.

Subtropical Gothic: New Orleans and Posthuman Supernaturals in The Originals

The rise of supernatural creatures throughout different media in the post-2000 era has resulted in a significant change of audiences’ perceptions of vampires, werewolves and witches (among others). Traditionally used to reflect human fears, lack of morals or instinct-related insufficiencies, these creatures are no longer fear-inducing monsters. Instead, their depiction tends to adopt human qualities to confront the audience with missteps and downfalls of contemporary societies and politics. This paper analyzes the television series The Originals as a supernatural mirror image of American society, where the different communities’ struggles for power and their place in New Orleans becomes a micro-cosmos for the American nation. The setting plays a crucial role in the series, which Gothicizes New Orleans to construct a space in which the characters are shown to operate in a posthuman context. This paper will clarify how the protagonists’ posthuman characteristics and their placement in the subtropical landscape of Louisiana uncovers contemporary societal concerns and brings aspects such as Urban Gothic and tropicality closer to the audiences’ reality. Ultimately, it is in the capital of the subtropical Deep South of America where the hegemonic discourse and practices of discrimination and spatial separation are reflected and challenged.

Extreme absolute strength of stocks and performance of momentum strategies

We find that removing stocks with extreme absolute strength from typical momentum portfolios can enhance their performance. Using data on common stocks traded on NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ, we find that stocks with extreme absolute strength feature very high volatility and are more likely to lose their momentum. Removing these stocks from typical momentum portfolios significantly reduces the volatility of the portfolios and increases the average return in most cases, improving the portfolios' performance. The removal of stocks with extreme absolute strength can also effectively alleviate the problem of momentum crashes and render momentum strategies profitable in the post-2000 era, a period during which momentum appears to have vanished.

Editorial

Editorial