Specific Market Sectors Research Articles

The role of biotechnology in the transition from plastics to bioplastics: an opportunity to reconnect global growth with sustainability.

Building new value chains, through the valorization of biomass components for the development of innovative bio‐based products (BBPs) aimed at specific market sectors, will accelerate the transition from traditional production technologies to the concept of biorefineries. Recent studies aimed at mapping the most relevant innovations undergoing in the field of BBPs (Fabbri et al. 2019, Final Report of the Task 3 BIOSPRI Tender Study on Support to R&I Policy in the Area of Bio‐based Products and Services, delivered to the European Commission (DG RTD)), clearly showed the dominant position played by the plastics sector, in which new materials and innovative technical solutions based on renewable resources, concretely contribute to the achievement of relevant global sustainability goals. New sustainable solutions for the plastic sector, either bio‐based or bio‐based and biodegradable, have been intensely investigated in recent years. The global bioplastics and biopolymers market size is expected to grow from USD 10.5 billion in 2020 to USD 27.9 billion by 2025 (Markets and Markets, 2020, Bioplastics & Biopolymers Market by Type (Non‐Biodegradable/Bio‐Based, Biodegradable), End‐Use Industry (Packaging, Consumer Goods, Automotive & Transportation, Textiles, Agriculture & Horticulture), Region ‐ Global Forecast to 2025), and this high growth is driven primarily by the growth of the global packaging end‐use industry. Such relevant opportunities are the outcomes of intensive scientific and technological research devoted to the development of new materials with selected technical features, which can represent feasible substitutes for the fossil‐based plastic materials currently used in the packaging sectors and other main fields. This article offers a map of the latest developments connected to the plastic sector, achieved through the application of biotechnological routes for the preparation of completely new polymeric structures, or drop‐in substitutes derived from renewable resources, and it describes the specific role played by biotechnology in promoting and making this transition faster.

Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, Do They Make a Difference? The U.S. and the European Union Companies

Sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies of companies delineate the health and the welfare of the communities across the globe. The two major goals of this study are (1) To explore the relationship between the environmental regulations, market value, and adoption of sustainability and CSR strategies of the publicly traded firms listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) and (2) To examine the impact of being added to or deleted from DJSI per different market sectors for the firms in the U.S. and the European Union (EU). The selected starting window, the year 2015, for studying the impact of addition to or deletion from the DJS indices was the Paris Accord proposal by the EU and strict sustainability regulations of the EU versus the U.S. We used event study methodology and regression analyses to explain the cumulative abnormal returns utilizing firms’ characteristics and specific market sectors. In addition, the other focus of the study was on heavy (polluting) industries and investigating if the addition to or deletion of the firms in these industries from the sustainability indices had an impact on the market value. The findings of this study reveal no impact of the environmental rules and regulations on adopting sustainability and CSR strategies by either the EU or the U.S. firms. The novel findings of this study indicate a significant negative impact on the market value of firms in heavy industries, Energy, Basic Materials, and Utilities when added to the DJS indices. The study discusses the underlying reasons for these differences and proposes strategies to enhance the impact of addition to or deletion from the DISI to increase firms’ commitments to sustainability and CSR strategies and altering the attitudes of the investors.

Droit privé, réglementation et justice

Cet article porte un regard critique sur la thèse du Droit privé réglementaire européen (ERPL). La plus grande force de l’ERPL est qu’il offre une perspective entièrement nouvelle sur le droit privé européen. Toutefois, en tant que théorie exhaustive du droit privé européen, l’ERPL est trop unilatéral, d’un point de vue à la fois descriptif et normatif. Le fait qu’il se concentre fortement sur le droit privé enfermé dans des silos réglementaires pour des secteurs du marché spécifiques dissimule la réalité de l’acquis touchant au droit de la consommation et sa force transformative. Un tableau plus complet inclurait les contours d’un système plus ou moins cohérent de droit privé européen qui émerge à l’heure actuelle. Les principaux piliers de ce système pragmatique sont (pour l’instant) les droits de rétractation, le contrôle des clauses abusives et les remèdes en cas de non-conformité. De plus, la contribution du droit privé européen à la justice de l’accès ne peut pas être l’unique standard pour son évaluation et sa critique ; la justice interpersonnelle et la légitimité démocratique sont au moins aussi importantes.

Bringing Outdoor Therapies Into Mainstream Mental Health.

Several recent reviews have concluded that, while certainly not a panacea, exposure to nature and outdoor activities can improve mental health for at least some symptoms, causes, patients, and circumstances (1–6). They are particularly relevant for the psychological components of chronic disease syndrome, namely depression and dementia (7–9). Outdoor exercise plays a role, in addition to outdoor environments (10–12), but nature-based outdoor activities yield benefits additional to those of exercise alone (13–17). Outdoor therapies can also assist in overcoming some types of chronic pain (18). They are valuable at all ages, from children (19, 20) to seniors (21, 22), and for those with both minor and severe clinical symptoms (23). All of these have substantial economic implications (6, 24, 25). Currently, however, outdoor therapies have limited deployment, especially in wealthy urbanized nations where they are most valuable. Government health agencies, and private health insurers, run educational and marketing campaigns, but these are for voluntary patient-funded activities. There are various school and youth adventure education programs (19, 20), but these are preventive rather than therapeutic. A few countries have trialed so-called green prescription programs (26), but too small and short to be effective. Some privately run programs may be more successful (27), but they are targeted to specific market sectors, unconnected with mainstream health care. None of these yet provide for routine diagnosis and prescription of outdoor therapies, for patients who present themselves at their general practitioners with mental health concerns. Here, therefore, we consider what additional research may be required to achieve this. There are both social and technical aspects. The key social obstacle is that outdoor therapies are not yet perceived as mainstream medicine. Even though the practical delivery of outdoor therapies is very similar to widely prescribed physiotherapies and psychotherapies, outdoor therapies are not yet available through publicly or insurance-funded medical diagnosis, prescription, and providers. They are offered principally by private providers, who are forced to adopt business and marketing models more closely aligned to discretionary activities such as the fashion and beauty industry. Historically, similar social obstacles were also faced, and overcome, by many other components of modern health-care systems. It takes time, institutional change, and technical information for them to become routine (1, 6). Here, we focus on the technical obstacles and the research required to overcome them. Recent reviews agree that knowledge of the therapeutic links between nature exposure and mental health is currently only at proof-of-concept stage, and research is now required to elucidate dose–duration–response relationships (1, 4, 6). We endorse this view and propose two additional areas of research. The first additional area is to differentiate (a) patient symptoms and personality traits and (b) characteristics of therapies, to prescribe specific therapies that match particular patients and conditions. The second is to test the social levers needed to persuade individual patients to adopt and follow through with courses of outdoor therapies once prescribed.

Proactive Financial Reporting Enforcement and Shareholder Wealth

We examine the effect of proactive public financial reporting enforcement on equity values by exploiting a quasi-experimental setting in the United Kingdom where a regulator periodically selects specific market sectors for increased scrutiny. Theoretically, it is unclear whether the benefits to shareholders of an increase in enforcement outweigh the costs. We find that an approximately 150% increase in the likelihood of regulator-initiated reviews of financial reports on average (at the median) reduces equity values by 2.0% (1.7%). Reductions in equity values are greater for firms listed on the self-regulated AIM market and for firms with large outside blockholders, suggesting private contracting can effectively mitigate frictions without regulatory interference. Further evidence suggests that the permanent increases in compliance costs and myopic investment arising from increased enforcement contribute to the observed declines in equity values.

Private Law, Regulation, and Justice

AbstractThis paper critically engages with the European Regulatory Private Law thesis (ERPL). The main strength of ERPL is that it offers an entirely new perspective on European private law. However, as a complete theory of European private law, ERPL is too one‐sided, both from a descriptive and from a normative point of view. With its strong focus on the private law locked up in regulatory silos for specific market sectors, it obscures the reality of the consumer acquis and its transformative force. A fuller picture would include the contours of a loosely coherent system of European private law that is currently emerging. The main pillars of that pragmatic system are (for now) the withdrawal rights, unfair term control, and remedies for nonconformity. Moreover, the contribution of European private law to access justice cannot be the only standard for its evaluation and critique; at least as important are interpersonal justice and democratic legitimacy.

Asset Allocation and Intra-Sector Allocation Using Covariance and Precision Matrix Clustering

We investigate simply the usage of clustering method by inverse covariance estimation for asset allocation in finance. Allocation across various sectors of the market (i.e. sector ETF) is usually well understood through the usage of mean variance allocation. However, stocks inside a same sector (i.e. Biotechnology, IT,..) are little studied in the literature since high correlation between stocks leads to poor differentiation across stocks.Here, we apply covariance clustering method to study the behavior of one specific market sector: US listed biotechnology stocks. We show that this methodology allows differentiating highly correlated stocks and it provides more detailed information inside this sector. Additionally, the use of higher frequency data (intraday data) allows refining the clustering method and characterizing further each stock. This method can give further insight to select stocks inside a same sector.

Private Law, Regulation and Justice

This paper critically engages with the European Regulatory Private Law thesis (ERPL). The main strength of ERPL is that it offers an entirely new perspective on European private law. However, as a complete theory of European private law, ERPL is too one-sided, both from a descriptive and from a normative point of view. With its strong focus on the private law locked up in regulatory silos for specific market sectors it obscures the reality of the consumer acquis and its transformative force. A fuller picture would include the contours of a loosely coherent system of European private law that is currently emerging. The main pillars of that pragmatic system are (for now) the withdrawal rights, unfair terms control, and remedies for non-conformity. Moreover, the contribution of European private law to access justice cannot be the only standard for its evaluation and critique; at least as important are interpersonal justice and democratic legitimacy.

Sustainability reporting patterns of companies listed on the Johannesburg securities exchange

The demand by stakeholders for information about companies’ social and environmental performance has led to sustainability reporting becoming essential. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines are the international reporting standard whereas the Johannesburg Securities Exchange Socially Responsible Investment (JSE SRI) Index guidelines are used in South Africa. Although South Africa is regarded as one of the leaders in sustainability reporting in the world, the JSE SRI Index is still a relatively new standard and its efficiency will only be proved over time. The research on which this paper is based, determined whether reporting patterns exist across specific market sectors of the sustainability reports of companies listed on the JSE in order to establish if the JSE SRI Index guidelines on reporting are efficient. Results indicated that all the selected market sectors reported on the environment, society and governance (ESG) categories as per requirements of the JSE SRI Index. The mining and materials sector reported more in the environment and the society categories than the other sectors, while in the governance category less reporting on indirect impacts by all the sectors was noted. The implication of this is that in general, companies find the JSE SRI Index guidelines on reporting easy to implement. However, less reporting of companies’ indirect impacts on their operating environments could mean that there is still a lack of completeness and transparency from the companies’ reports, which could be as a result of a lack of firmer guidelines by the JSE SRI Index guidelines on reporting of such issues.

A Computer-Based System for Mass Customization of Prefabricated Housing

The concept of employing web-based configuration systems towards mass customization of housing has been implemented by some prefabricated housing companies around the globe, and has become a challenging research area in the last few decades as an outcome of advancements in communication and design technologies. Different methodologies have been employed with the aim of efficiently engaging future homebuyers in the design of their homes. The thrust of this paper is to systematically formalize an advanced configuration system for mass customization of prefabricated housing for a company operating in the Canadian market. The focus is on one floor bungalows which are common within the Province of Quebec. Such housing models targets a specific market sector; elderly couples seeking retirement homes, with the aim of improving affordability through maintaining particular design and production qualities.

A core reference ontology for the customer relationship domain

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has emerged as an important strategy that companies should implement in order to build profitable and stable relationships with their customer. The domain of CRM has peculiar characteristics: a CRM strategy is largely independent from the specific market sector, it requires multiple units cooperation, it implies the management of a huge amount of knowledge, it is fruitfully supported by software solutions, and finally it implies the integration of human and machine activities. These characteristics suggest that both companies aiming at implementing an efficient CRM strategy, and software houses offering ICT solutions supporting CRM would take great advantage from a common semantic model of CRM. The main contribution of this paper is thus the proposal of O-CREAM-v2, a core reference ontology lbr the CRM domain, specifically targeted to Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME). The design of O-CREAM-v2 has been based on requirements mainly elicited from a domain analysis, which considered the way the involved actors talk about CRM within their business, by analyzing documents and interviews with representatives of SME and ICT companies. Moreover, in order to guarantee accuracy in the definition of the basic concepts and to support interoperability within/between companies, O-CREAM-v2 has been developed within the framework provided by the well-known DOLCE foundational ontology, together with three DOLCE extensions, i.e. the ontology of Descriptions and Situations, the Ontology of Intbrmation Objects and the Ontology of Plans. O-CREAM-v2 is composed by two layers: an upper core, which models more general concepts and relations, and can be useful also in business domains other than CRM, and a lower core, representing concepts and relations specific to the CRM domain. The content requirements defined by the domain analysis pointed out that an ontology for the CRM domain has to account for both particulars (such as activities, otters, sales, etc.) and information about them (customer records, reports about sales, etc.). Moreover, since CRM is typically supported by software tools, O-CREAM-v2 includes the formal characterization of software applications. Thus, O-CREAM-v2 is structured into five modules: Relationships, Knowledge, Activities (all three spanning both the upper and the lower core), Software and Miscellaneous (both limited to the upper core). The five ()-CREAM modules arc described in details in the paper. The discussion is concluded by mentioning two possible exploitation perspectives for O-CREAM-v2, which could be the basis for building: (a) Web-based repositories supporting the mediation between supply and demand of CRM-related tools; (b) tools supporting users in building the formal representations of resources in ontology-based IR systems and in the semantic search engines application field.

Crise financière et politique monétaire

Financial Crisis and Monetary Policy. Since 2007, financial markets and economies have been faced with a multiform crisis, which originated from specific market sectors, such as the US subprime credit component, and led to a systemic risk at the heart of the financial markets, causing major disruptions in funding markets as well as more recently in sovereign debt market. At each step in the gathering crisis, central banks have intervened in a timely and pragmatic fashion. They have provided emergency liquidity support and aggressively cut official interest rates in order to mitigate the consequences of the crisis in the financial markets and in the real economy. As a result of the severity of the crisis, central banks have also adapted their operational framework and have implemented innovative non conventional monetary policies. The nature of their response was conditioned by their explicit mandate and by the structure of their domestic funding mechanisms. Nonetheless the common objective was to lower the financing costs for the real economy and to ensure the smooth transmission of monetary policy. However, whilst the primary requirement concerns accommodative monetary policy, it remains paramount that expectations for future inflation remain firmly anchored. To this end, Central banks have defined the path to exit strategies, to ensure the normalization of their interventions in a medium term horizon. The implementation of these exit strategies is one of the post-crisis major challenges. Classification JEL : E02, G01, E52, E58.

Modelling cross-sectional profitability and capital intensity using panel corrected significance tests

Employing seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models with panel corrected standard errors (PCSE) this research augments and extends Fama and French's (2000) ‘first stage’ model of expected cross-sectional profitability. Capital intensity, defined as the ratio of depreciation plus interest expense to total assets was found to be significantly inversely related to profitability. In addition, specific market sector and country fixed-effects proved significant in models that simultaneously corrected for cross-sectional heteroscedasticity and cross-equation residual correlation. Both of these corrections addressed the potential bias from least squares standard errors or ‘inference problem’ noted in the previous work by Fama and French. Unrestricted and restricted SUR cross-sectional models with PCSE are used to compute t-statistics based on Fama–MacBeth, Litzenberger–Ramaswamy and standard panel methodologies. The former two methods provided significant results compared to those using the Fama–MacBeth approach.

Accommodating change ‐ Emerging real estate strategies

The pervasive impact of information technology, and the shift to a new economic paradigm has resulted in new ways of working. Successful organisations today are looking for work environments that unlock creativity, support collaboration, and ensure that the ideas of staff and collaborators are absorbed back into the intellectual capital of the organisation. Organisations have changed dramatically, but the physical settings have been slow to respond. The challenge for the real estate market and facilities professionals is to respond to a business model that supports both individual and collaborative working; provides for flexibility of tenure; and affords adaptability of both space use and function. A new real estate offer is emerging that provides both space, services and amenities, to support the tenants business over the life of a customer’s needs. Leading edge developers are now more concerned with creating a diversity of users, by providing space for a symbiotic clusering of firms in specific market sectors with their supporting supplier services and customers. Tenants to respond to continuous change are increasingly looking to reduce the amount of core space they own, with the majority of their portfolio consisting of flexible space on short‐term leases to absorb the demands of individual projects, and outsourced space on a ‘just in time’ arrnagement for support functions. The paper concludes that the property industry today is changing from traders in real estate to an emerging role as value stream integrators and total service providers over the life of the tenant organisation.

Research into the motivational aspects of the company car: examined specifically in Carlsberg‐ Tetley ‐ Scotland

The article highlights the importance of the company car as a major motivational tool used by employers when developing their employment policies. Research was carried out in a specific industry to highlight the differences that were perceived by employees in competing companies within a specific market sector. Changes in the Government Tax Laws with regard to “benefit in kind”, have tainted the individuals’ view of what was a key motivational tool. The different variables that employers assume are essential factors are highlighted, whilst closer analysis indicates the differing perceived value to the employee. The differing views are based on the varying levels of needs sustained by employees whilst the examination of the hierarchy of these needs is identified within the target groups selected. A clearer perception of how a major motivational tool can act as a demotivator is highlighted, and the findings are evaluated in the conclusions of the article.

CDI, the bipolar LSI technology with total systems integration capability

The system designer of today is becoming bewildered by an ever increasing variety of semiconductor technologies (if he can get passed identifying the initials). Among bipolar technologies, isoplanar and its variants, thin epitaxy processes such as Plessey Process 3, and integrated injection logic (I2L) all aim at specific types of advantage and are normally thus limited to specific market sectors. Metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) technologies have similarly proliferated, and can conveniently be split into single channel, e.g. P-Channel, and complementary MOS technologies. These again have their specific advantages and market sectors. Ferranti CDI, however, is unique in being able to penetrate a broad market front using a single and well understood standard process. Such an approach to a variety of systems is termed Total Systems Integration, which means that frequently a complete and relatively complex system can be realised on a single chip with minimal external components. This is made possible by the many attributes of CDI, such as the performance of a bipolar process with the packing density of MOS, the combination of digital and linear circuits on the same chip (digilin), excellent device performance over a wide current range and particularly at very low currents and good speed performance with better speed power product. To substantiate these claims, some examples of CDI products and applications are given below.