Search Results (33)

Exchange rate volatility has emerged to be one of the most critical determinants of price stability for countries operating in multicurrency systems with their own currency in the basket of currencies. This study empirically examined the impact of exchange rates (official and parallel market rates) on inflation in Zimbabwe during the multicurrency system for the period 2014 to 2024, together with comparing the impacts of the official and parallel market exchange rates on inflation. Time series and monthly data were used to examine the short and long run impact of exchange rates on inflation in an ARDL estimation framework. Findings revealed a short run and long run positive relationship between both the official and parallel market exchange rates and inflation, with the parallel market exchange rate being the most significant variable. Other control variables used, such as domestic productivity, have a highly significant negative impact on inflation through the official and parallel exchange rate models in both the short and the long run. Money supply, real interest rate, trade balance, foreign prices, foreign output, stock market prices and foreign currency reserves have varied impacts through either the official or parallel market exchange rate models. Policy recommendations include a contractionary Monetary and expansionary Fiscal policy mix that will result in exchange rate appreciation and stability, productivity growth, trade surplus, growth in reserves, and ultimately low prices. The exchange rate policy recommended in this study is to shelve discard the local currency in the multicurrency system until industrial capacity utilization exceeds 50% to add the local currency to the basket of currencies and 75% for mono-local currency (de-dollarization). Full article

In its response to the economic and financial crises of 2008, the sovereign debt and euro crisis of 2010–2015, and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2023, the European Central Bank (ECB) implemented an unconventional monetary policy aimed at providing liquidity for more than a decade, through a complex set of tools and operations that make up the so-called quantitative easing. The results of all of them are being analyzed from different perspectives. This paper studies the relationship between a large base money, characterized by a voluminous concentration of liquidity in the form of excess reserves, and broad money (the broad M3 aggregate). Our econometric work shows a low elasticity of broad money with respect to base money, concluding the existence of a weak relationship between both monetary magnitudes, with a sharp decline in the money multiplier. The demand for money has remained stable relative to its determining variables, interest rates and income. At the same time, some practices related to the handling of excess liquidity by European banks through deposit facilities deserve consideration. We propose strict control by the monetary authority over the nature and origin of the funds that constitute the excess liquidity derived from the ECB’s unconventional operations, and over its management. Full article

Background/Objectives: Wine neophobia identifies segments of consumers who are reluctant to consume new or unfamiliar wines. This study examined the wine neophobia levels of a cohort of 376 Spanish wine consumers and the differences in demographics, wine consumption, and food neophobia according to their degree of wine neophobia. To that end, a specific survey with demographic data, wine consumption habits, and neophobia levels was designed and administered to Spanish consumers. Methods: The Wine Neophobia Scale (WNS) and Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) were used, and data collected were statistically analyzed (chi-square test, Pearson correlation analyses, and principal component analysis (PCA)). Two different clusters were identified: high- and low-wine-neophobic groups (HWN and LWN, respectively). Results: Results indicated significant differences in gender, marital status, and employment between groups. The HWN group was generally formed by women and singles, whereas participants with a partner (not married) and employed individuals were mostly in the LWN group. Overall, HWN consumers were characterized by consuming wine less frequently, preferring fruity and “softer” wines (e.g., whites and sparkling wines) or wine mixed with soda, and being willing to pay less money (“less than 5 €”) to buy wine on a daily basis than low-neophobics, who preferred red reserve wines with higher sourness and astringency and were willing to pay for more expensive wines. Finally, a direct relation has been observed between wine and food neophobia, as the LNW group reported lower scores on items relative to greater openness to the consumption of new foods. Conclusions: The present study provides for the first time insights into the relationship between wine neophobia, demographics, and wine consumption behavior in Spanish consumers, which can be useful to the wine industry for the development of personalized wines. This approach can aid wine market segmentation as well as product innovation. Full article

The purpose of this study is to find symmetries and asymmetries in the exchange rate and macroeconomic fundamentals of advanced European markets, namely Denmark, the Euro Area, and United Kingdom, for the period of 2011 to 2022 via application of the NARDL technique. The findings reveal that interest rate affects DKK exchange rate asymmetrically in the long and short run, whereas money supply affects it in the short run. Foreign reserves are found to be helpful for all three currencies in stabilizing the exchange rate. A decline in gold price weakens GBP, DKK, and EUR in the long run. Previous studies suggest that the existence of asymmetrical relationships justifies the selection of NARDL for empirical analysis. This study makes a contribution to the existing literature, as it proves that forecasting via NARDL is also robust for analysis. The findings have significant policy implications for financial applications. Full article

This article investigates the role of the model of family and their savings as a support to growth and source of economic sustainability. The central objective of the present article was to determine the impact of the model of a family on the propensity to save money in the population of Poland. As indicated by independence tests, in most studied cases, the model of a family does not have a key role in sustainable consumption and saving behavior. The only exception are the forms of allocation of the saved capital. The study results suggest that households in Poland hold traditional views on the family model and the allocation of their savings. Decisions in everyday life are often reached together with the partner, which may attest to the growing egalitarian tendencies in Polish families. The research shows that the funds saved monthly by households are not planned in advance but constitute a financial surplus after all the expenses have been paid, which is then set aside as a reserve for the future. Partners usually prefer to have separate bank accounts with funds for day-to-day spending. However, the awareness concerning the forms of allocating capital is still poor, which is confirmed by the fact that most of the financial surplus is kept in the current account. The funds saved this way are spent to satisfy current needs, such as holidays or durable goods, and cover expenses in emergencies, which may be particularly important in the context of minimizing the risk of poverty and social exclusion, which should be prevented in line with the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Full article

It is generally stated that the fractional-reserve banking system (FRBS) is consistent with sustainable economic growth and development. While it assumes that depositors will not be a joint demand who will claim all their money simultaneously, it supposes that a monetary aggregate greater than the monetary base will not harm economic performance. However, the FRBS’s call to central banks casts doubt on the sustainability argument and its ethical support. This article explores the FRBS from the ethics of private property, proving a radically different course to promote sustainable economic growth and development. After reviewing and discussing the ethics of private property for the FRBS and its call for central banks, the case of fiat inflation and business cycles clarifies the narrow relationship between ethics and sustainability. These findings are applied to some modern ethical dilemmas around the FRBS, proving novel avenues for policy reform and research opportunities. Full article

This study examined credit risk management and return on equity of Nigerian deposit money banks (DMBs) twelve (12) years (2010–2021) post-adoption of the common accounting year-end as mandated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2009. Our data set comprises independent variables of capital adequacy ratio (CAR), liquidity ratio (LQR), loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR), risk asset ratio (RAR), non-performing loans ratio (NPLR), loan loss provision ratio (LLP), and size (SZ). Our dependent variable is the return on equity (ROE). Using a panel data regression analysis, we found that CAR, RAR, NPLR, and SZ are the significant determinants of ROE. We also found that Nigerian DMBs now significantly rely on offshore borrowings in Eurobonds to create risk assets to overcome CBN’s constriction on using local depositors’ funds to create risk assets. Furthermore, we found that shareholders of DMBs with international banking licenses in Nigeria within the study period were not significantly more compensated for their risk exposure than investors in risk-free assets (treasury bills). Therefore, the CBN should continue strengthening its regulatory functions with regular reviews that would compel improvements of the DMBs’ credit risk management systems to mitigate the likely failure of the credit life cycle of granted loans. Additionally, a review of its current regulatory cash reserve ratio of 37.5% is imperative to reduce DMBs’ dependence on offshore funding and its associated foreign exchange risk. Full article

The purpose of this original study is to critically analyse the emergence and development of the national models of financial regulation, international standards and codes, and regional and national financial regulation and supervision (for the cases of the UK, USA, Sweden, the EU, and Finland). The research raises both academic and regulatory concerns. The relevance and purpose of this research arise from a need for an academic analysis of the economic nature and classification of financial market regulation systems. They represent a theoretical justification for changes in the policies and supervisory practices of national and international regulatory authorities in response to innovations in financial technologies and instruments, digital products, and risks. Secondly, it will stimulate more systematic work on regulatory databases, registration, and reporting procedures in various economies in different financial markets. The author identifies five main systems of national financial regulatory markets: the multi-tiered, multi-agency US system, the twin peaks model (UK), and the mega-regulatory model (Sweden). There is a thorough review of the international standards and institutions that work for the stability of financial systems. The analysis of the regional and national systems of financial regulation and supervision is based on the examples of the EU and Finnish institutions. National macro- and micro-economic regulation and supervision have been examined, with a focus on the US Federal Reserve and the US Treasury. An important result of the study is the systematisation of the directions of the development of national and international regulatory institutions (since the 1980s). First, the minimum capital and credit risk requirements for banks (the 1980s) were complemented in the 21st century by buffer reserves, liquidity, and leverage standards. Second, regulation focuses on ensuring the sustainability of the national economy. The regulatory focus is on ensuring the sustainability of national and global financial systems. Third, there is an increase in the number of supervised institutions. Fourth, there is a division of the functions between central banks (macro-economic regulation) and one or two mega-regulators (micro-economic regulation and supervision). Fifth, there is a division of labour between the international financial institutions (BIS, IMF, and WB) and national regulators. Sixth, the focus is on protecting consumers and investors and countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Seventh, there is an understanding based on a common approach by central banks to new financial technologies and cybersecurity. Full article

Stock markets serve as a conduit for money and liquidity, which are necessary for economic growth and stability. This study aimed to determine whether stock market impacts are communicated in an economically unstable environment, characterised by volatility, high inflation rates, and political instability. The research used a time series Vector Autoregressive model (VAR) with quarterly data from between 2013 and 2022. The study revealed that there is a positive statistically significant association between the stock market and economic growth at the 10% level. On the other hand, the stock market liquidity has no major influence on Zimbabwe’s economic development. As a result, the study advises policymakers to evaluate the rules regulating the stock market carefully and to relax some of the requirements for firms to be listed on the stock exchange. The stock market will become more liquid as a result of this because it will draw more internal and external businesses to being listed. The ZSE should also develop a framework for the gradual implementation of the commodity derivatives exchange as Zimbabwe’s substantial mineral reserves and robust agriculture may bring significant income to the country’s economy. Full article

The biodiversity of our planet is under threat, with approximately one million species expected to become extinct within decades. The reason: negative human actions, which include hunting, overfishing, pollution, and the conversion of land for urbanisation and agricultural purposes. Despite significant investment from charities and governments for activities that benefit nature, global wildlife populations continue to decline. Local wildlife guardians have historically played a critical role in global conservation efforts and have shown their ability to achieve sustainability at various levels. In 2021, COP26 recognised their contributions and pledged USD 1.7 billion per year; however this is a fraction of the global biodiversity budget available (between USD 124 billion and USD 143 billion annually) given they protect 80% of the planets biodiversity. This paper proposes a radical new solution based on “Interspecies Money”, where animals own their own money. Creating a digital twin for each species allows animals to dispense funds to their guardians for the services they provide. For example, a rhinoceros may release a payment to its guardian each time it is detected in a camera trap as long as it remains alive and well. To test the efficacy of this approach, 27 camera traps were deployed over a 400 km${}^2$ area in Welgevonden Game Reserve in Limpopo Province in South Africa. The motion-triggered camera traps were operational for ten months and, using deep learning, we managed to capture images of 12 distinct animal species. For each species, a makeshift bank account was set up and credited with GBP 100. Each time an animal was captured in a camera and successfully classified, 1 penny (an arbitrary amount—mechanisms still need to be developed to determine the real value of species) was transferred from the animal account to its associated guardian. The trial demonstrated that it is possible to achieve high animal detection accuracy across the 12 species with a sensitivity of 96.38%, specificity of 99.62%, precision of 87.14%, F1 score of 90.33%, and an accuracy of 99.31%. The successful detections facilitated the transfer of GBP 185.20 between animals and their associated guardians. Full article

Cryptocurrencies offer various benefits in terms of privacy protection and cross-border transactions, but they have also been used for illicit activities such as money laundering due to their anonymous nature and the difficulty of cross-border regulation. Additionally, the unethical actions of some virtual asset service providers (VASPs), such as rug pulls and the embezzlement of user funds, have further eroded the trust between users and VASPs. Implementing identity management on blockchains can help restore trust between users and VASPs. However, current solutions have privacy concerns as identity providers have access to the asset balances and transaction records of each user’s wallet account, and no solution can support all public blockchains unconditionally. To address these issues, this paper proposes a multi-chain aggregated identity scheme. In this scheme, the identity provider will issue a non-fungible token (NFT) for users who have undergone verification, and wallet accounts from different blockchains will be added to a cryptographic accumulator. The accumulator value is then bound to the identity NFT through a smart contract by the user. This allows the user to prove to others that the identity of the wallet account owner has been verified. The use of accumulators also allows users to combine proof for multiple wallets into a single proof, which significantly improves the efficiency and provides a way for VASPs such as centralized exchanges to demonstrate Proof of Reserves (PoR) to users. Importantly, this scheme preserves privacy as neither the identity provider nor the VASPs can link the user’s real identity with the wallet accounts. Only regulators can access the user’s identity data held by the identity provider and the user’s wallet account held by the VASP to link real identities with wallet accounts for the purpose of sanctions or criminal investigations. Additionally, the scheme supports all blockchains by allowing wallet accounts from any public blockchain to be added to the accumulator. Furthermore, the NFT implementation in the scheme helps prevent identity loss or theft, as it can only be transferred by the identity provider. Full article

Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and tigers (Panthera tigris) share the same landscape in India. Elephants, which range over 239,171 km², occupy 45.5% of the 433,261 km² habitat that tigers inhabit. Equally, at least 40% of elephant corridors are used by tigers. A shared landscape offers opportunities for careful, integrated management strategies with shared resources. The species are protected differently in India, with tiger reserves being legal entities dedicated to the protection of tigers and their habitats, and Elephant Reserves being management units with no legal standing. With additional disparities in financial supports to tiger reserves—which receive 10 times more money than elephant reserves—it is obvious that the elephant reserves are being treated inequitably. Since the two species coexist in the same landscapes, efforts to protect tigers can help to make up for elephant conservation gaps and optimise the use of conservation resources by tweaking a few management and policy practices. In addition, the overlay of tigers using elephant corridors can efficiently secure habitat linkages for both species. Full article

The Federal Reserve has played an arguably important role in financial crises in the United States since its creation in 1913 through monetary policy tools. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the impact of monetary policy on the United States’ economic growth in the short and long run, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Vector Autoregressive (VAR) method explores the relationship among the variables, and the Granger causality test assesses the predictability of the variables. Moreover, the Impulse Response Function (IRF) examines the behavior of one variable after a change in another, utilizing the time-series dataset from the first quarter of 1959 to the second quarter of 2022. This work demonstrates that expansionary monetary policy does have a positive impact on economic growth in the short term though it does not last long. However, in the long term, inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), is affected by expansionary monetary policy. Therefore, if the Federal Reserve wants to cease the expansionary monetary policy in the short run, this should be done appropriately, with the fiscal surplus, to preserve its credibility and trust in the US dollar as a global store of value asset. Also, the paper’s findings suggest that continuous expansion of the Money Supply will lead to a long-term inflationary problem. The purpose of this research is to bring the spotlight to the side effects of expansionary monetary policy on the US economy, but also allow other researchers to test this model in different economies with different dynamics. Full article

Longer-term projections indicate that today’s developing and rising nations will account for roughly 60% of the global GDP by 2030. There is tremendous financial growth and advancement in developing countries, resulting in a high demand for personal loans from citizens. Depending on their needs, many people seek personal loans from banks. However, it is difficult for banks to predict which consumers will pay their bills and which will not since the number of bank frauds in many countries, notably India, is growing. According to the Reserve Bank of India, the Indian banking industry uncovered INR 71,500 in the scam in the fiscal year 2018–2019. The average lag time between the date of the occurrence and its recognition by banks, according to the statistics, was 22 months. This is despite harsher warnings from both the RBI and the government, particularly in the aftermath of the Nirav Modi debacle. To overcome this issue, we demonstrated how to create a predictive loan model that identifies problematic candidates who are considerably more likely to pay the money back. In step-by-step methods, we illustrated how to handle raw data, remove unneeded portions, choose appropriate features, gather exploratory statistics, and finally how to construct a model. In this work, we created supervised learning models such as decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), and k-nearest neighbor (KNN). According to the classification report, the models with the highest accuracy score, f-score, precision, and recall are considered the best among all models. However, in this work, our primary aim was to reduce the false-positive parameter in the classification models’ confusion matrix to reduce the banks’ non-performing assets (NPA), which is helpful to the banking sector. The data were graphed to help bankers better understand the customer’s behavior. Thus, using the same method, client loyalty may also be anticipated. Full article

In the present work, the prevalence, etiological factors and effective treatment scheme of mastitis in cows of dairy farms “Balke” and “Madi-R” in Eastern Kazakhstan were investigated. In total, 210 heads were investigated on two farms. The incidence of mastitis in cows on dairy farms is not the same in different years. Average clinical mastitis was detected in 35.4% of cows in 2016, 19.6% in 2017, 28.5% in 2018, and in 2019 in 16.4% of cows. The prevalence rates of subclinical mastitis by year had some differences. So, in 2016—36.5% of cows, then in 2017—21.5%, 2018—19.3% and in 2019—22.6%. In cows with udder inflammation, serum calcium 9.37 ± 0.15 mg/% with a range of 8.0 to 10.8 mg/%, phosphorus 3.58 ± 0.07 mg/% (3.0 to 4.3 mg/%), reserve alkalinity 363.46 ± 6.69 mg/% (320 to 440), carotene 0.49 ± 0.03 mg/% (0.220 to 0.988 mg/%), which are in the lower limit of physiological parameters. The drug “Dorob” was tested during the study of comparative effectiveness of treatment methods. The results of the study showed that this drug has anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and stimulating healing actions. The treatment of the sick cows with catarrhal mastitis has shown that a total of 8 cows have recovered in the control group and 10 cows in the experimental group with the preparation “Dorob”. The period of recovery in the control group was 8.8 ± 0.39, and in the experimental group—6.2 ± 0.28 (p < 0.05). The drug does not contain antibiotics and hormonal preparations. The inclusion of the drug in the scheme of treatment allows for effectively treating inflammatory processes in the udder of cows and restoring their productivity with minimal cost of time and money. Full article