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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed several chinks in the armour of public health infrastructure across the world. However, the impact of the pandemic has been assessed primarily from the perspective of the 'privileged' members of society. The experiences of the 'other' world inhabited by the marginalised communities, who have had their livelihoods crushed under the weight of the pandemic, have been scarcely documented. As thousands of migrant workers were more scared of death caused by hunger rather than the disease itself, the various steps taken by different countries to curb community transmission have unveiled the ugly side of these measures. For example, as several states such as the US, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, and India/Bharat imposed lockdowns, border closures, quarantines, inter alia, the most vulnerable section of the human population has been the migrant workers, especially those individuals who were employed in the unorganised sector. Thus, the global health crisis has unravelled deep-rooted deficiencies, racial biases, and an overall lack of concern and empathy for the lesser privileged, apart from the growing socio-economic divide between the rich and the poor. This research paper aims to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant workers in the informal sector by exploring the measures imposed by the US, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, and India/Bharat and analyse how their fundamental rights, including the right to development, were compromised. Through this paper, the author provides a five-point strategic framework that can be adopted globally to prevent such instances in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informational domain related to COVID-19 reflects the degree of uncertainty and pace of evolution of the pandemic. This places a burden on peoples' searches for information to guide their choices, importantly including for COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, it is important for health communications that support vaccination campaigns to attenuate vaccine hesitancy to be accessible, including in terms of readability, and adapted to the evolving pandemic. This paper aims to understand internet searches on COVID-19 vaccination, specifically the mix of sources and readability of the sources over a two-year period (2021–2023) in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, for search results in English, as English is a main language for each of these locations. The sources accessed through online searches in June 2021 and May 2023 were categorized by type of source and whether they were from one of the focal locations or elsewhere. The readability of information from web-search results was assessed using a set of readability tests (Flesch–Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Index, Coleman–Liau Index, and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook Grade level). Over the two-year period there was an increase in government sources and reduction in mass media sources with distinct local patterns. Local government sources increased in Singapore whereas foreign government and multi-lateral organization sources increased in Hong Kong, with the Philippines being an intermediate pattern. In contrast to the changing mix of sources, the readability tests indicate a low proportion of URLs scoring within recommended readability thresholds across locations and types of sources over the two years. Information on COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment is an important part of health communications that includes internet search. The paper contributes to understanding health communications during a pandemic, including mix of local and non-local sources and contingency on local social and health context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the rapid urban expansion and the burgeoning number of landfill sites, managing water infiltration in these areas has become a critical challenge, especially in cities like Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Singapore where traditional cover materials such as silt, clayey gravel, and sand are scarce. A three-layer (silt/gravelly sand/clay) capillary barrier cover system has been proposed to address this issue in humid climates. As an alternative to scarce traditional materials, using local soils and construction waste (CW) for this system presents a viable solution. However, the real-world performance of this adapted three-layer system, constructed with local soils and CW under natural rainfall conditions, remains to be fully evaluated. This paper presents a field test evaluating the water infiltration behavior of a three-layer capillary barrier landfill cover system under natural conditions. The tri-layered system is comprised of a 0.6 m loose local unscreened soil layer, covered by a 0.4 m CW layer and topped by a 0.8 m heavily compacted local screened soil layer. Monitoring findings reveal that, during the wet season, infiltration through the top two layers was staved off until the third rainfall, after which these layers retained moisture until 15 September 2016. The fluctuation in pore water pressure in the topmost layers showed each rainfall was contingent not only on the day's precipitation but also the hydraulic state. Beyond the hydraulic state's influence, a deeper tensiometer showed resulted in a diminished correlation between the surge in pore water pressure and daily rainfall. This declining correlation with depth can be attributed to the capillary effect and the reduced permeability of the screened soil layer. Rainfall patterns significantly affect percolation, with the combination of a short-duration, intense rainfall and prolonged weak rainfall resulting in a marked increase in percolation. In the foundational screened soil layer, the pore water pressure remained relatively low, with the cumulative percolation over six months (June to December) registering approximately 10 mm. These findings suggest a promising performance of the three-layer capillary barrier cover system, integrating local soils and CW, in the year of the study conducted in a humid environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs empirical data in three major Asian real estate markets - Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore, from 2001 to 2021, to study the leverage strategies of two related types of real estate companies – real estate investment trusts (REITs) and real estate operating companies (REOCs). The business model of the former must adhere to a real-estate-focused investment strategy while the latter undertakes a whole range of real estate development activities including land acquisition, financial feasibility analysis, construction, investment and asset management to redevelopment and disposal, and are not subject to the REIT rules with respect to tax transparency, earning distribution, real estate holding and leverage limit. We find that REOCs use 18.96% more debt than REITs after controlling for the agency and market risks, dividend yields, and property sector, country, and year fixed effects of firms; dividend payout has no effect on the leverage strategies; and high tax ratio increases the debt usage of REOCs relative to REITs. We also analyze the liquidation costs and business uniqueness effects. We find real estate value to total firm value ratio, as a proxy of liquidation cost, has negative effects on debt ratios for both real estate firms. Due to their uniqueness, REOCs with a high concentration of rental revenue stream are more vulnerable to liquidation risks, and thus more likely to have lower debt ratio. REITs however tend to have higher debt usage as rental incomes enhance cash-flow liquidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem definition: A significant percentage of online consumers place consecutive orders within a short duration. To reduce the total order arrangement cost, an online retailer may consolidate consecutive orders from the same consumer. We investigate how long the retailer should hold the consumer's orders before sending them to a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for processing. In this order-holding problem, we optimize the holding time to balance the total order arrangement cost and the potential delay in delivery. Methodology/results: We model the order-holding problem as a Markov decision process. We show that the optimal order-holding decisions follow a threshold-type policy that is straightforward to implement: Hold any pending orders if the holding time is within a threshold or send them to the 3PL otherwise. Whenever the consumer places a new order, the holding time is reset, and the threshold is updated based on a cumulative set of the past consecutive orders in the consumer's shopping journey. Using a consumer's sequential decision model, we personalize the threshold by finding its closed-form expression in the consumer's order features. We determine the model's coefficients and evaluate the threshold-type policy using the data of the 2020 MSOM Data Driven Research Challenge. Extensive numerical experiments suggest that the personalized threshold-type policy outperforms two commonly used benchmarks by having fewer order arrangements or shorter holding times. Furthermore, personalizing the order-holding decisions is significantly more valuable for "enterprise" customers. Managerial implications: Our research suggests a higher threshold for consumers who are more likely to place consecutive orders within a short duration. The consumers' demographic information has a significant effect on the threshold. Specifically, the threshold is higher for "plus" consumers, female consumers, and consumers in the age group of 16–25 years. The threshold for tier 1 cities is lower than that for tier 2 to tier 4 cities but higher than that for tier 5 cities. History: This paper has been accepted as part of the 2020 MSOM Data Driven Challenge. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71931009, 72201237, and 72231009], the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Grants 15501920 and 15501221], the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund [Tier 1, Grant RG17/21; Tier 2, Grant MOE2019-T2-1-045], the Association of South-East Asian Nations Business Research Initiative Grant [Grant G17C20421], and the Neptune Orient Lines [Fellowship NOL21RP04]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2023.1201. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]