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This paper estimates a DSGE model to explore how the economy is affected by financial and non-financial shocks. Bayesian methods and data from the US corroborate the results. This paper first illustrates how the financial sector is not only a transfer channel for exogenous shocks to the real economy, but also a contributor to business cycles through banks’ asset reallocation channel and the quality of capital adequacy constraint. The paper then shows that the contribution of financial and non-financial shocks has varied before, during and after the recent financial crisis; housing demand and asset price shocks are the main contributors and the credit shocks are the most persistent. In addition, the paper presents the application of macroprudential tools, along with their impact on the economy in general, and on welfare in particular. The findings illustrate that the tools which control household borrowing ability, such as loan-to-value or debt-to-income ratios, do not impact welfare significantly. However, the impact of policies on the leveraged sector is substantial. The paper proposes macroprudential policies that allow policy makers to stabilize the economy without changing welfare. Such policies, however, should be timely, targeted and temporary, otherwise they may cause disruptions.

In terms of heterogeneous devices and sensors, man and machine collaborate seamlessly, giving birth to the Internet of People, Internet of Things, and Internet of the Future. Within a short period, 30 billion intelligent devices in the form of smart applications will get connected to make an individual's life smoother, more comfortable, faster and accessible from anywhere at any time. IoT combines the power of IPv6 for network connectivity, sensing and nextgen communication technologies to meet future demands. Due to constraint environment in terms of memory, computation, and energy, this review paper will provide in-depth analysis of different OS'es. Candidate OS and Simulator is selected, keeping in mind various barriers and critical design characteristics. By doing this survey, it is possible for other research communities to make an appropriate choice for OS and making IoT a reality. Finally, the case study is also discussed which provides protocol stack implementation details along with deployable testbed, its size in terms of nodes supported and other security challenges. Critical preference level in terms of programming language and application areas from a developer perspective is also analysed and discussed to provide further research direction. IoT integration with future domains, along with various challenges, is explored at the end.

Banking regulation faces multiple challenges that call for rethinking the way it is designed. In this paper, we argue that regulators should focus more on simple equity requirements instead of elaborating complex rules. Such a constraint in equity is however opposed by the banking industry because of its presumed adverse impact on banks’ performance. Using various techniques (Lasso, Random Forest, Support Vector Regression, Artificial Neural Network) on a large dataset of banks’ balance sheet variables, we show that the equity ratio (equity over total assets) has a clear positive effect on banks’ performance when measured by the return on assets, while the impact of this ratio on the return on equity is most of the time negative. Strong equity requirements do not therefore impede banks’ performance, but do reduce the shareholder value. This may be the reason why the banking industry so fiercely opposes strong equity requirements. In addition, from a methodological perspective, we provide evidence that Random Forest performs better than other techniques at dealing with banks’ balance sheet data. Doing so, we provide avenues for future research dealing with these kind of data.

Surrogate-based-constrained optimization for some optimization problems involving computationally expensive objective functions and constraints is still a great challenge in the optimization field. Its difficulties are of two primary types. One is how to handle the constraints, especially, equality constraints; another is how to sample a good point to improve the prediction of the surrogates in the feasible region. Overcoming these difficulties requires a reliable constraint-handling method and an efficient infill-sampling strategy. To perform inequality- and equality-constrained optimization of expensive black-box systems, this work proposes a hybrid surrogate-based-constrained optimization method (HSBCO), and the main innovation is that a new constraint-handling method is proposed to map the feasible region into the origin of the Euclidean subspace. Thus, if the constraint violation of an infeasible solution is large, then it is far from the origin in the Euclidean subspace. Therefore, all constraints of the problem can be transformed into an equivalent equality constraint, and the distance between an infeasible point and the origin in the Euclidean subspace represents the constraint violation of the infeasible solution. Based on the distance, the objective function of the problem can be penalized by a Gaussian penalty function, and the original constrained optimization problem becomes an unconstrained optimization problem. Thus, the feasible solutions of the original minimization problem always have a lower objective function value than any infeasible solution in the penalized objective space. To improve the optimization performance, kriging-based efficient global optimization (EGO) is used to find a locally optimal solution in the first phase of HSBCO, and starting from this locally optimal solution, RBF-model-based global search and local search strategies are introduced to seek global optimal solutions. Such a hybrid optimization strategy can help the optimization process converge to the global optimal solution within a given maximum number of function evaluations, as demonstrated in the experimental results on 23 test problems. The method is shown to achieve the global optimum more closely and efficiently than other leading methods.

With the development of big data and artificial intelligence, distributed optimization has emerged as an indispensable tool for solving large-scale problems. In particular, the multi-agent system based on distributed information processing can be elaborately designed for distributed optimization, in which the agents collaboratively minimize a global objective function made up of a sum of local objective cost functions subject to some local and/or global constraints. Inspired by the applications involving resource allocation, machine learning, power systems, sensor networks and cloud computing, a variety of distributed optimization models and algorithms have been investigated and developed. The optimization models include unconstrained and constrained problems in continuous and discontinuous systems with undirected and directed communication topology graphs. The constraints include bounded constraint, separable and inseparable equality and inequality constraints. Meanwhile, in distributed algorithms, every agent executes its local computation and updating on basis of its own data information and that exchanging with its neighboring agents by means of the underlying communication networks, in order to deal with the optimization problems in a distributed way. This paper is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of extant distributed models and algorithms for distributed optimization.

This study examines how diversification in Indian business groups creates multiple forms of agency problems and has performance implications for group-affiliated firms. Departing from prior literature which emphasizes the principal–principal agency conflict in business groups, we argue that business group diversification leads to dual agency problems between controlling and minority shareholders (principal–principal) and shareholders and managers (principal–agent) in affiliated firms. Both these agency problems arise in diversified business groups through cross-subsidization of affiliated firms by inefficient capital investment, continuing presence of affiliated firms in declining industries, tunneling of resources from profitable affiliated firms, lack of attention by business group headquarters to affiliated firms, and affiliated firm managers' sense of perceived security, which negatively impacts affiliated firms’ performance. These agency issues are reduced with the increase in product market competition from exposure to international markets and through concentrated promoter ownership in the affiliated firms. Our hypothesized model finds empirical support in a sample of 828 business group–affiliated firms in India.

This paper deals with the optimal reinsurance problem and involves the goals of both insurer and reinsurer. An important novelty may be the incorporation of the background risk that the reinsurer uses in order to diversify (or hedge) the risk ceded by the insurer. Accordingly, general methods to prevent the reinsurer moral hazard must be extended, and a new constraint must be satisfied by the selected reinsurance contract, namely, "the reinsurer increment of risk must be lower than the contract premium". Simultaneously, since the contract must be attractive to the insurer too, "the contract premium must be lower than the insurer risk reduction". Integrating both ideas, "the contract premium must be higher than the reinsurer risk growth and lower than the insurer risk mitigation". Bearing in mind both requirements, that is, the protection against the moral hazard and the spread containing the contract premium, the optimal reinsurance problem is studied under very general conditions about the involved risk measures and premium principles, general solutions are provided, and a practical illustrative example is presented.

Recently, Circular Economy (CE) is implemented by the manufacturing industries since it helps the management to reduce waste and increase productivity. Industries are adopting CE because it helps them gain economic, environmental, and social benefits. This study is primarily aimed at the identification and ranking of the drivers and barriers for the implementation of CE in the automobile industry. For this, an integrated approach of interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is utilized. The results of this study indicate that the share/ benefit and reduction of cost are the most critical drivers while unaware/limited knowledge and cost and financial constraint are the major barriers for the implementation of CE in the automobile industry. This integrated approach will help the decision makers and policy makers to take immediate and effective actions, and focus on the productivity of the company.

This paper investigates the optimal strategies for an economic constrained closed-loop supply chain network. Manufacturers are classified into two categories namely low-emission manufacturers and high-emission manufacturers, and are subject to two greenhouse gas (GHG) emission control policies. Low-emission manufacturers are equipped with green production technologies to achieve ecological goals. All manufacturers are responsible in recycling and remanufacturing processes. New products and remanufactured products are homogeneous, and have the same sales price in the demand markets. Based on the variational inequality (VI) theory, we obtain the control equilibrium conditions of the non-cooperative game theory model for each firm. We further solve the model with the modified projection algorithm, and statically analyze and compare the influence of relevant parameters such as carbon quota, consumers’ low carbon preference and recovery rate on the network state through numerical examples. The results show that the GHG emission constraint may stimulate manufacturers to increase green technology investment level. Moreover, the introduction of reverse channel will promote resource recycling, but impair manufacturers’ profits. The promotion of consumer's environmental protection awareness has positive influence on the operation of supply chain network. In general, there is a conflict between economic goals and ecological ones. However, the developed model proves that economic goals and ecological ones can be realized consistently under certain conditions.

(1) Problem Definition: In recent years, manufacturing firms in developing economies have made significant efforts to move up the production value chain by adopting foreign technology through licensing. However, there is negligible empirical evidence of the relationship between technology licensing and productivity growth in developing economy manufacturing firms (licensee firms), the focal relationship of interest in this study. We examine whether and how the relationship between technology licensing and productivity growth in the short run is affected by the challenges and constraints inherent in the contexts developing economy firms operate in. We do so by investigating the moderating role of formal workforce training program in a firm, and the corruption level and the infrastructural constraint level in the firm’s external environment. (2) Academic/Practical Relevance: Although the adoption of foreign technology by developing economy manufacturing firms is often driven by the goal to strengthen their capabilities in the long run, prior research provides a limited understanding of the performance consequences of technology licensing in the short run, which is an important business reality. Our study serves to address an important gap in research and practice by shedding light on some of the unique challenges and constraints that licensee firms in developing economies face as a consequence of foreign technology licensing. (3) Methodology: The empirical analyses are conducted using matching and fixed-effects regression on a multi-industry data set from the World Bank comprising detailed firm-level information from over 16,000 manufacturing firms across 25 developing economies in South Asia and East Asia. To strengthen the causal inference of the results and rule out alternative explanations, we use several alternative matching techniques and empirical methods addressing selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity. (4) Results: Our results indicate that the adoption of foreign technology by developing economy manufacturing firms has a substantial short-run disruptive effect on firm operations with productivity growth declining by 4.5 percentage points in these firms relative to comparable firms that do not use foreign technology licensing. Toward mitigating such disruptive effects, we find that formal workforce training programs attenuate the negative relationship between technology licensing and productivity growth. However, infrastructural constraints in the external business environment amplify this negative relationship. Intriguingly, our results suggest that corruption in the firm’s external environment acts as an “efficient grease,” attenuating the negative impact of technology licensing on productivity growth. (5) Managerial Implications: Our results provide compelling evidence on not only the presence of but also the large magnitude of the disruptive effects of technology licensing on productivity growth. The findings offer important insights for manufacturing firms and policymakers in developing economies on how to mitigate these negative effects. The results highlight opportunities for policymakers to (a) encourage firms to have formal workforce training programs, (b) reduce infrastructural constraints in the business environment, and (c) institute regulatory practices that can substitute for the effects of corruption.

The increasing penetration of renewables tends to demand more flexibility from gas-fired units to maintain system reliability, which significantly strengthens the interdependency between the electricity and the natural gas markets. To this end, intra-day gas market trading may be necessary, and a completely deregulated natural gas market may emerge in the future. As the interdependency between the electricity and the natural gas markets keeps growing, this paper proposes a bi-level strategic bidding model to study the market behaviors of the gas-fired unit, which simultaneously acts as a strategic power producer in the electricity market and a gas buyer in the natural gas market. The upper-level problem maximizes the profit of the gas-fired unit, and the two lower-level problems respectively model the market-clearings of the electricity and the natural gas markets. The upper and lower levels interact through locational marginal prices of electricity and natural gas. The proposed bi-level optimization model is converted to a mathematical problem with equilibrium constraint (MPEC). Then it is transformed into a mixed-integer second-order-cone programming (MISOCP) for efficient calculation. Numerical results demonstrate the proposed methodology is capable of mimicking the market-clearing process and strategic behaviors of the gas-fired unit in the interdependent energy markets effectively.

Diverse physical features of urban areas alongside socio-demographic characteristics affect car ownership, and hence the daily mobility choices. As a case of sustainable mobility, we explore how various urban environments and socio-demographics associate with the spatial and social distribution of household car ownership and carlessness in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland. Three urban fabrics characterizing the study area are established based on the transportation mode (walking, public transportation, or automobile) the physical urban environment primarily supports. The national level Monitoring System of Spatial Structure and Urban Form database, and the National Travel Survey (2016) are utilized to further include spatial and socio-demographic variables into our analysis across these fabrics. Our results show that households with and without cars differ in terms of residential distance to the city center, neighborhood density, house type, and socio-demographic profiles. Single pensioners and students are most likely to be carless, whereas families represent the opposite. Within the carless households the differences are also evident between different groups. For the more affluent households residing in dense and well-connected areas, and mostly possessing driver’s licenses, carlessness is presumably a choice. Contrarily, many other carless households represent the less affluent often located in the more distant, low-density, and less accessible areas, while also possessing less driver’s licenses, making carlessness more of a constraint, as the local urban fabric does not support such lifestyle. Consequently, carless households should be increasingly recognized as a focus group in sustainable urban planning in terms of identifiable best practices and potential vulnerability.

PurposeThis article investigates the relationship between family ownership and export performance in the context of SMEs while also considering the moderating role of the financial dimension and, in particular, financial constraints and financial flexibility.Design/methodology/approachWe select a sample of 1,132 Italian SMEs to examine through an econometric analysis the role and impact of family ownership and the financial moderating variables being used on their export performance.FindingsThe results indicate that there is a U-shaped relationship between family ownership and export performance: the highest levels of export performance correspond to the lowest and highest family ownership levels, whereas when a mixture of family and nonfamily ownership exists, the performance suffers because of “conflicting voices” dominating strategic visions and approaches, harming the firm's export commitment. Moreover, the findings show that lower financial constraints and/or stronger financial flexibility improve the relationship between family ownership and export performance.Research limitations/implicationsOur findings show that the ownership structure is important for export performance; in particular, firms should avoid a mixture between family and nonfamily ownership because it is detrimental to export performance. Moreover, Italian SMEs need to develop sources of financing other than the banking channel, and policy makers should favour this process to overcome financial constraint problems and improve financial flexibility. Limitations concern the use of other econometric approaches and measurement variables to further investigate the connection between family ownership and export performance.Originality/valueThe present study enhances the comprehension of the complex relationship between family ownership and export performance by documenting the relevance of the level of family ownership and considering the moderating role of financial constraints and flexibility.

The low rate of technology adoption has long been a key constraint on improving productivity, income and yields in farming, particularly in developing countries where market-based systems of production are not well developed, the subsistence economy remains strong, land is held under communal tenure and family labour is the backbone of production. We examine four case studies of technology adoption to explore key socio-economic factors facilitating or constraining adoption. Our case studies cover an array of adoption situations from different parts of the developing world: 1. The socio-cultural barriers to the adoption of new technologies to control Cocoa Pod Borer in Papua New Guinea; 2. The role of land pressure on differential adoption rates of cocoassie yams amongst ethnic groups in Ivory Coast; 3. Past agricultural practices and their influence on adoption of a new planting pattern and selected oil palm planting material in Cameroon; 4. Taking account of gender relations to facilitate successful adoption of a new oil palm initiative for women smallholders in Papua New Guinea.

The present study enriches the literature on hospital performance by analysing the total factor productivity growth of Shenzhen hospitals for the period 2005–2013 during which the 2009 Reform was implemented in the hospital sector of China. Unlike most previous studies, we adopt the global metafrontier Malmquist productivity index approach which allows the relaxation of the constraint of technological heterogeneity for hospitals by ownership. The analysis showed that there was a slightly rise in productivity of 0.68% on average. The technological regression experienced by the sampled hospitals out weighted the improvement in efficiency change. By hospital ownership type, public hospitals exhibit an average productivity decline by 0.67%, while non-public hospitals enjoyed an average productivity growth of 3.28% in general. Technological change is mainly the source of productivity change. While public hospitals are found to be the technology “leaders”, non-public hospitals have been catching up with the frontier over time. High bed utilisation was found to enhance technological progression, boost productivity growth, and allow hospital to catch up with the frontier. However, 2009 Reform exerts negative impact on the productivity growth and technological regression of the sampled Chinese hospitals.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at the asymmetric effect of oil production on environmental degradation in OPEC member countries from 1970–2019. Design/methodology/approach The authors build a nonlinear panel ARDL–PMG model using the Shin et al. (2014) nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach in panel form to assess both the short- and long-run impact of positive and negative oil production movements on CO2 emissions. Findings The result demonstrates that the variables are cointegrated. According to the linear long run coefficients, oil production, FDI inflows and economic growth both have a positive and significant relationship with CO2 emissions, implying that they deteriorate environmental quality in OPEC countries, while renewable energy has a negative relationship with CO2, implying that increasing renewable energy improves environmental quality. The asymmetric findings prove that positive and negative shocks of oil production exert a positive effect on carbon emissions in short run and long run. Research limitations/implications To begin with, the empirical assessments do not include all OPEC member nations; researchers are advised to resolve this constraint by looking at the economies of other OPEC members. Albeit the lack of data for other energy sources may serve as another constraint of this research, future research is expected to broaden the current framework via other energy sources such as nuclear, electricity, biomass, solar as well as wind. Originality/value The research adds to the body of knowledge as many of the prevailing studies in the literature failed to look at the asymmetric effect of oil production on the quality of environment. This is another gap in the literature that the current study is set out to fill. This study adds oil production as an explanatory variable and helps to extend the existing literature for OPEC countries, which could propose a solution to deal with ensuing environmental issues.

The rapid growth of the Chinese travel market has gained attention in the tourism industry. However, very few studies have been conducted to examine travel constraints that prevent Chinese outbound travelers from going somewhere quite accessible to their major destination from a multidestination perspective. Drawing upon the leisure constraint model (LCM), this study explored Chinese independent tourists' perceived travel constraints in selecting second-tier destinations in their destination choice and analyzed the market segments. A self-administered survey was collected from 393 Chinese travelers who did not visit Gyeonggi Province close to Seoul during their travels in South Korea. Based on the findings, four distinct groups were formed. The findings provide important insights into destinations that desire to attract more Chinese independent travelers.

In this paper, the decentralized energy management of a community of prosumers is studied. The coordination of the prosumers participating in the community is cast as a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) with local and global coupling constraints. A dual decomposition method with a tightening of the coupling constraints is applied to solve the problem in a decentralized way. The resulting tightened problem provides feasibility guarantees for the obtained solutions. A receding horizon approach that exploits the structure of the problem is proposed to divide the problem in subproblems and solve them sequentially. The proposed approach ensures that the tightened problem is feasible under realistic conditions, whereas the existing methods may result in infeasible problems. Moreover, it may reduce the necessary constraint tightening compared to existing methods. Two setups are evaluated for the organizational structure of the community, one with a community coordinator and one without. Moreover, three different structures of the communication graph are analyzed for the setup without a coordinator. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method results in feasible problems that can be solved due to the reduced constraint tightening when other methods are not feasible. In the case of feasible problems, the optimality gap is comparable to that achieved with existing methods and even smaller for communities with a small number of participating prosumers.

Village-owned enterprises (BUMDes) in Indonesia, as village economic institutions can drive village potential, by the Central Maluku communities BUMDes is called as a BUMNeg which have the same meaning. BUMNeg becomes village income (Village Law, No. 6 of 2014). Objectives of the study: (1) Knowing the Role and Development of Village-Owned Enterprises that have been intervened through capital participation from the Village Fund, (2) Understanding the potential and capacity of villages constraint factors and main supporters in supporting the activities of Village-Owned Enterprises, (3) Obtaining a management model of Village-Owned Enterprises that is in accordance with the local conditions of the village community. The study used a qualitative approach. The results of the study illustrate (1) the role of BUMDes in the sample villages having different results. In Waai Villlage the existence of the BUMDes has been carried out in accordance with the functions of the BUMDes, namely carrying out economic functions. Whereas the existence of BUMDes in Tulehu Village was not carried out, village funds were only embedded in goods purchased, and only functioned socially, not functioned to generate village income. (2) Obstacles and main supporters of the BUMDes are: (a) The existence of potential natural resources, but not yet managed, (b) Potential Number of residents not managed as a business unit management market in Tulehu Village, (c) Custom institutions do not function, (d) Village funds are not managed according to their functions in Tulehu Village, in Waai village according to function, (e) Location of Waai Village is very strategic with potential villages. (3) BUMDes Strengthening Model in Tulehu village will exist through three stages: activation, implementation and development. Strengthening the BUMDes in Waai village, namely: building a network with the village’s government / king to continue to maintain trust relations and build networks with other parties as a reinforcement of BUMDes development

In recent years, We Media’s chaotic behavior has emerged one after another. How to properly supervise We Media and effectively manage its violations has become an urgent problem in the process of national governance system and governance capacity building. From the three aspects of opportunity, motivation, and control methods, this paper analyzes the relevant stakeholders and their relationships in the process of We Media information dissemination. It constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of government, We Media, and public participation, which focuses on the analysis of the equilibrium point of the game model and carries out simulation experiments to explore the influence of government responsibility constraints on the evolution results. The research results show that government regulation plays an important role in restricting We Media’s information release. When the government's willingness to regulate increases, We Media will be punished more if it violates rules. In order to reduce the cost of punishment and other factors, We Media will reduce the willingness to violate the rules. After the occurrence of social hot events, the public is more willing to be guided by positive information from We Media, prompting the government to choose strict supervision strategies, effectively reducing the violations of We Media and achieving the Pareto optimum. According to the research results, this paper puts forward reasonable countermeasures to realize the comprehensive governance pattern of noncompliance of We Media and correct guidance of public emotional cognitive behavior under responsibility constraints. The research results provide theoretical support and decision-making basis for We Media information management and control.

Aiming at the problems of poor system throughput and poor performance appraisal indicators in traditional enterprise employee performance appraisal management systems, a corporate employee performance appraisal management system based on the CS architecture was designed. Firstly, the system architecture of performance appraisal system is built, the system logical architecture design is determined, and the functional modules of the appraisal management system are analyzed. Then, the influencing factors of employee performance appraisal management system are analyzed through the evaluation constraint parameters, and the quantitative regression analysis model of enterprise employee performance appraisal management is constructed to realize the design of enterprise employee performance management software. Finally, the evaluation management system database was built to realize the enterprise employee performance evaluation system’s design based on CS architecture. The experimental results show that this system can improve the throughput of the employee performance appraisal management system and the rationality of enterprise employee appraisal standards. It plays an important role in enterprise employee performance appraisal management.

Background: The use of physical constraint in pediatric dentistry is highly controversial. Papoose boards in particular, which envelop and immobilize children during treatment procedures, have been described as barbaric devices even though their goal is to protect the patient. In this debate, the voice of parents is important but still missing in the scientific literature. Aim: To understand how parents or caregivers experienced physical constraint and the use of the papoose board on their children during regular dental treatment. Design: We conducted qualitative research rooted in interpretive phenomenology. Accordingly, we performed in-depth individual interviews with a purposive sample of 7 parents or caregivers. The interviews took place in Montréal, Canada, after the children had been treated with a papoose board for nonemergency dental treatments. The discussions were audio recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed. Results: Two perspectives emerged among participants. Some explained that the papoose board calmed their children, helped the dentist to complete the procedures, and made their experience less stressful. For others, the papoose board was a horrible and traumatizing experience, leading to feelings of guilt toward their children. They expressed anger toward the dentists for not allowing them enough time to decide and for imposing use of the device. Conclusion Our study raises serious ethical concerns about this practice. We believe that using a papoose board should remain an extraordinary measure and, more generally, that dental professionals should reflect on the place of children and their families in clinical encounters. Knowledge Transfer Statement: The findings of this study should encourage policy makers, dental professionals and ethicists to consider the following points: 1) the traumatizing experiences described by parents raise serious ethical concerns about the use of papoose boards; 2) the dental profession should reflect on the place of children and their families in the clinical encounter and grapple with the importance of consent and how to ensure consent in encounters involving children and their parents.

In developing countries, little information is available about solid-waste characteristics, determinants for adoption and performance-evaluation of municipal-waste management systems in Municipals. This study aimed: to characterize the municipal solid-wastes, collection, dumping and evaluate the efficiency and reliability of Municipal solid-waste management system. A total of 200 households were randomly sampled and interviewed. Data was analysed using Binary-Logistic Regression model to determine factors influencing collection and dumping of solid wastes. Results showed that biodegradable/organic wastes comprise a major fraction of solid-wastes produced. Factors that influenced solid-waste collection and dumping included: household-age, unavailability of solid-waste containers, inadequate collection/dumping space and weak legal-enforcement against poor-dumping. The waste system is constrained by inadequate transport facilities, inadequate space for temporal dumping; and lack of legal enforcement in matters of solid-waste poor handling. These have made the systems ineffective and unreliable. This study recommends involvement of all stakeholders in innovative approaches to uphold sustainable municipal sanity.

This paper aims to find an efficient method to assign different projects to several regions seeking an equitable distribution of the expected revenue of projects. The solutions to this problem are discussed in this paper. This problem is NP-hard. For this work, the constraint is to suppose that all regions have the same socio-economic proprieties. Given a set of regions and a set of projects. Each project is expected to elaborate a fixed revenue. The goal of this paper is to minimize the summation of the total difference between the total revenues of each region and the minimum total revenue assigned to regions. An appropriate schedule of projects is the schedule that ensures an equitable distribution of the total revenues between regions. In this paper, we give a mathematical formulation of the objective function and propose several algorithms to solve the studied problem. An experimental result is presented to discuss the comparison between all implemented algorithms.

A district heating network has generally more than one production unit, and then there are different ways to fulfill the energy demand of the network. This paper deals with the planning problem which is a problem of optimization under constraints. The production units are modeled using MINLP (mixed integer non-linear programming), in particular the following technical aspects are considered: storage capacity (for municipal wastes and biomass), allowable operating range, allowable variation of power over time, partial load performances, minimum working time when a unit runs, and minimum waiting time when it is in stand-by mode. The environmental constraint is the annual share of renewable energies in the global energy mix (for example, at least 50% over a year). The model aims to minimize the operating cost of the network. The problem cannot be solved by a one-shot optimization, so the paper proposes a sequential approach: first, a target of renewable share is calculated for each month of the year; secondly, the planning production is determined each day according to the calculated target. The results of a case study show that the planning strategy that only aims to minimize the operating cost violates the environmental constraint. Using the developed planning model raises a little bit the cost (4.5%) but fulfills the heat demand and environmental constraint at the same time. Considering a reduced VAT eligible in France when the constraint on renewable share is met, the proposed planning is even better in term of the total cost (10% lower).

We assess whether imperfect knowledge of labor regulation hinders job creation at small and medium-sized firms. We partner with a labor law expert organization that provides information about labor regulation via newsletters and access to a specialized website. We randomly assign 1,800 firms to get access to this service for a 21-week period. Six months later, the average employment level at treatment firms was 12 percent higher than at control firms. The intervention decreased the perception that labor regulation is a constraint to hiring and increased optimal employment level. (JEL D22, D83, J63, L25, K31, O15)

This paper presents a trilevel risk-averse strategy to configure the grid-scale energy storage systems (ESS) in active distribution network. Unlike the traditional planning framework, which presumes that ESS and renewable energy sources (RES) are cooperatively planned, we consider a practical situation that the siting choice of individual RES owners could be conflict with systems operation target of hosting capacity improvement. To address this challenge, a trilevel ESS planning formulation with “min-max” risk constraint is developed. Also, a scenario-based stochastic program model is incorporated in the lower level problem to handle the random fluctuation of RES outputs. As the resulting risk-constrained trilevel formulation is computationally difficult, we develop a customized column-and-constraint generation algorithm with finite convergence. Numerical studies on 33-bus test system and a real-world 56-bus distribution network indicate that the proposed methodology can effectively enhance the robustness of look-ahead ESS configuration against those non-cooperative and uncertain integration choices for renewable energy construction. Moreover, our customized algorithm demonstrates a superior solution capacity and scalability to support the efficient decisions for risk-averse storage planning.

A consumer is considered as a person or a group of people who uses purchased goods, products, or services only for personal use, and not for manufacturing or resale. Consumers usually purchase valuable and useful commodities or goods by spending all or partial of their income. The property of a commodity that enables it to satisfy human wants is called utility. Producers must be conscious to increase the utility among the consumers. This study has considered the maximization of utility problem of consumers of Bangladesh subject to two constraints; namely, budget constraint and coupon constraint. Consequently, in the study two Lagrange multipliers are used and interpreted these with mathematical analysis. Prediction of consumer behavior will help both producers and consumers to take decision of their future economic productions and consumptions, respectively. This article is ornamented with sufficient theorems and economic analyses. So that all the readers find interest when go through the economic analysis of utility maximization.

More than half of Indian population were engaged in agricultural sector but the available technology doesn’t ensure food security of the country. Hence, to diffuse new agricultural invention and innovation in the farming community, there arises a need for effective medium for transfer of technology. Thus, KVK bridges the gap between the technology generation and dissemination. The present study was proposed to understand the impact of KVK in doubling farmers income to formulate suitable programmes. For the study, descriptive research design was adopted. 120 respondents from Biswan taluk of Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh were selected as respondents. Primary data collected from respondents and secondary data from available literatures. The findings revealed that majority of the respondents were middle aged, illiterate, upto 5 members in their family, medium level of annual income, possesses their own land, agriculture as their main occupation, medium level of mass media exposure, office bearer in one organization, high level of extension contact. Meanwhile, more than half of the respondents had reported medium level of impact towards the activities carried out by KVK, beneficiary selection is not unbiased is a major constraint suggested that maximum emphasis should be given on learning by doing. View Article DOI: 10.47856/ijaast.2021.v08i9.011

In india Panchayati Raj now functions as a system of governance in which Gram Panchayats are the basic units of local administration. The system has three levels: Gram Panchayat (village level), Mandal Parishad or Block Samiti or Panchayat Samiti (block level), and Zila Parishad (district level). Panchayat Raj has come to be related with two broad images. First, it is a government by itself and second it is an agency of the state government. In the integrated exercise of planning for social and economic development, co-ordinate roles, the present set up is a three-tier representative structure of government where the administrators, elected leaders and local population participate in the developmental effort. In this regard the members of Panchyat faced many problems there this study confront the constrains faced by members and suggestions to overcome them with 120 sample unit of Ujjain district. The major finding was obtained in this study that the most serious constraint perceived by the Gram Panchayat Members during agriculture development programmes was Insufficient use of communication media (85.83%) as it was perceived to the highest extent by gram Panchayat Members with major suggestion of them Properly and timely use of communication media. View Article DOI: 10.47856/ijaast.2021.v08i9.019

This research focus to investigate the effect of audit quality and financial constraint on the complementary level of financial and tax reporting aggressiveness. This research uses binary logistic regression to investigate the effect of audit quality and financial constraint on the complementary level of financial and tax reporting aggressiveness with a sample of 147 manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in 2017-2019. This research found that companies with good audit quality have a complementary level of financial and tax reporting aggressiveness that tends to be below. Also, companies that face financial constraints have a higher complementary level of financial reporting and tax aggressiveness. This study presents empirical evidence that supports the view of audit quality and financial constraint’s impact on the complementary level of financial and tax aggressiveness. Although there are many studies that discuss the relationship between financial and tax aggressiveness, there are still few studies that contribute to examine the determinants of the complementary level of financial and tax reporting aggressiveness in Indonesia.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Research suggests that the incidence of moral distress experienced by health professionals is significant and increasing, yet the concept lacks clarity and remains largely misunderstood. Currently, there is limited understanding of moral distress in the context of midwifery practice. The term moral distress was first used to label the psychological distress experienced following complex ethical decision-making and moral constraint in nursing. The term is now used across multiple health professions including midwifery, nursing, pharmacy and medicine, yet is used cautiously due to confusion regarding its theoretical and contextual basis. The aim of this study is to understand the concept of moral distress in the context of midwifery practice, describing the attributes, antecedents and consequences. This concept analysis uses Rodgers’ evolutionary framework and is the first stage of a sequential mixed-methods study. A literature search was conducted using multiple databases resulting in eight articles for review. Data were analysed using NVivo12©. Three core attributes were identified: moral actions and inactions, conflicting needs and negative feelings/emotions. The antecedents of clinical situations, moral awareness, uncertainty and constraint were identified. Consequences of moral distress include adverse personal professional and organisational outcomes. A model case depicting these aspects is presented. A midwifery focused definition of moral distress is offered as ‘a psychological suffering following clinical situations of moral uncertainty and/or constraint, which result in an experience of personal powerlessness where the midwife perceives an inability to preserve all competing moral commitments’. This concept analysis affirms the presence of moral distress in midwifery practice and provides evidence to move towards a consistent definition of moral distress.

The research is focused on the role of two related key concepts, namely variables and data, in the impact evaluations of public projects. A difficult task of the evaluators and researchers is to select the appropriate variables to ensure the best model of reality and satisfy the evaluation methods' needs. Therefore, the paper aims to look at the current knowledge and discuss how variables and data could be best used to connect the evaluation models, the particularities of the intervention with the potential of the advanced quantitative assessment methods. The results emphasise that evaluations operate with data with different levels of granularity, as required by the intervention logic. Structuring data in clusters and categories, performing evaluability assessments are useful in assessing data quality and limitations and improving them. In line with the existing literature, we demonstrate that data accessibility is a key constraint and imposes adjustment of the desired evaluation model to a feasible one. While Big Data and Open Data systems significantly improved data quality in evaluations in recent years, blockchain, as a ledger technology with default features related to decentralisation and security, is expected to bring large benefits to evaluation. For evaluators and policymakers, blockchain potential is an area of further research looking for additional advantages that could enhance the use of quantitative methods.

This paper aims to describe the supervision of the Central Kalimantan regional head election during the pandemic. The problem is focused on how the description of election supervision by Election Supervisory Agency? and what constraint are faced and their solutions in the context of local wisdom?. The research type is descriptive qualitative. Data Collecting through interviews, observation, and literature study. The data obtained were analyzed descriptively using the Mile and Huberman model. This study shows several things: First, the implementation of supervision is more on tasks outside the crucial task of Bawaslu, namely the supervision of the pandemic health protocols as an additional task burden. Second, the obstacles faced by Bawaslu starting from the preparation, voting, and post-voting. Namely: Updating and determining the voter list was constrained by the Work From Home and Large-Scale Social Restrictions policies; Procurement and distribution of logistics whose suppliers had not yet recovered from the impact of the pandemic; Some officials were reluctant and resigned because of the rapid test rules; distorted ballot papers; The officers' lack of compliance with the working mechanism that had been determined. Third, The context of local wisdom in the supervision of Pilkada in Central Kalimantan, namely: Balanga, Huma Betang, Ma'mapas Lewu, Isen mulang, and Dayak Greetings: Tabe salamat lingu nalatai, Salam Sujud Karendem malempang, Adil ka’ Talino bacura’mi ka’ Saruga, Basengat kajubata.

The comprehensive utilization of distributed power sources can effectively reduce the consumption of fossil energy and reduce carbon emissions. Based on the situational awareness technology, this paper proposes a distributed power optimization dispatching technology, with the least carbon emission as the optimization goal and meeting the grid load demand as the constraint condition. First, in the situation awareness stage, collect information such as the operation status of the power grid; second, use the data collected by situation awareness to simulate the operation of the power grid in the situation understanding stage to achieve in-depth perception of the power grid; finally, consider the grid operating load in the situation guidance stage Demand adjustment and optimization strategy to realize flexible dispatch and control of the power grid in a favorable direction. This paper takes the IEEE 30-bus system as an example for simulation analysis, and the simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This research sought to analyze the Service Performance of BP4 (The Board of Marriage Development and Preservation) in the field of Muslim Guidance at the Ministry of Religion of Hulu Sungai Tengah Regency and to identify the existing constraint factors. This research employed a case study method with a research approach. Data collection techniques used in this research were interview, observation, and documentation. The research results revealed that: 1) the service performance of BP4 in the field of Islamic Guidance at the Ministry of Religion of Hulu Sungai Tengah Regency on the performance indicators of quality, quantity, timeliness, cost effectiveness, need for supervision, and interpersonal impact is quite good and 2) the existing constraint factors are the timeliness during service process where service users are not present during mediation process and the occasional difficulties faced when extracting service user data.

Reduced transit capacity to accommodate social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic was a sudden constraint that along with a large reduction in total travel volume and a shift in activity patterns contributed to abrupt changes in transportation mode shares across cities worldwide. There are major concerns that as the total travel demand rises back toward prepandemic levels, the overall transport system capacity with transit constraints will be insufficient for the increasing demand. This paper uses city-level scenario analysis to examine the potential increase in post-COVID-19 car use and the feasibility of shifting to active transportation, based on prepandemic mode shares and varying levels of reduction in transit capacity. An application of the analysis to a sample of cities in Europe and North America is presented. Mitigating an increase in driving requires a substantial increase in active transportation mode share, particularly in cities with high pre-COVID-19 transit ridership; however, such a shift may be possible based on the high percentage of short-distance motorized trips. The results highlight the importance of making active transportation attractive and reinforce the value of multimodal transportation systems as a strategy for urban resilience. This paper provides a strategic planning tool for policy makers facing challenging transportation system decisions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An increasing number of States has adopted new or revised existing laws that establish foreign direct investment (FDI) screening mechanisms on grounds of national security. Comparing FDI screening in Germany and China as a case study, this article identifies three regulatory hurdles to investors related to such mechanisms, namely unpredictability, procedural uncertainty, and the lack of transparency in practice. Adopting the theory of induced reciprocity, this article argues that these regulatory hurdles could be reduced if symmetry constraint on national FDI screening schemes can be established between sovereign States in an international agreement. To achieve induced reciprocity between the European Union and China regarding FDI screening on grounds of national security, the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment could incorporate certain fundamental principles and regulatory objectives of EU Regulation 2019/452 Establishing a Framework for the Screening of Foreign Direct Investments into the Union as a starting point and a way forward.

Based on the comparative perspective of environmental regulation performance, this paper uses the threshold effect model to analyze the nonlinear characteristics of the impact of environmental regulation on economic development and environmental pollution and explore the dual performance of environmental regulation on economic and environmental development. The results are fourfold: Firstly, the intensity of fiscal expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection has a restraining effect on environmental pollution, but it has a crowding-out effect on economic growth. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve a win-win situation between ecological protection and economic development by increasing the intensity of financial expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection. Secondly, giving more financial rights to local governments in eastern China may help to reverse the non-win-win situation of the economy and the environment. Thirdly, increasing the environmental protection awareness of local governments will help to achieve a win-win situation. It is more effective to achieve a win-win situation of ecology and economy using constraint regulation than incentive regulation. Finally, the economic development level of the last period has different threshold effects on the current environmental pollution in the eastern and western China. Thus, the impact of environmental regulation lags. We conclude that we should give full play to the role of the environmental regulation, stimulate the endogenous power of environmental system, accurately implement the key differentiation strategy, and promote the win-win situation of ecological protection and economic development.

In today's competitive business situation, the supplier frequently offers his or her retailers a permissible delay period to stimulate sales. In addition, the capacity of any warehouse is limited in practice; thus, the retailer needs an additional rented warehouse to store the excess units when the order quantity exceeds the capacity of the own warehouse. Furthermore, with the globalization of the marketing policy, the supplier may provide the retailer a discounted price if the quantity of purchase is large enough. Green inventory management reduces the environmental impacts of a business without lacking its profit. Considering all of the factors mentioned above, in this paper, we study a green economic order quantity model with capacity constraint under order-size-dependent trade credit and all-units discount along with minimizing carbon for a cleaner environment. The paper discusses all the potential cases, which may occur in green inventory models with carbon emission cost under different allowable delay in payments. Shortages are allowed and partially backordered. The main objective is to determine the sustainable optimal ordering strategies for retailers and decide whether a rented warehouse (RW) is to obtain ordering and replenishment policies for a retailer such that the retailer’s annual profit is maximized. First, we prove that the conditions of the objective functions have interior minimizer value and the closed-form optimal solution is found. Next, an algorithm is developed to determining the global optimal solution of the problem. Finally, some management insights are drawn by observing the applicability of the developed algorithm and also by performing sensitivity analyses on different parameters.

The paper aims to present a supply model to satisfy the required household final energy carriers, freshwater and industrial cooling loads for a deprived area of access that is located in hot and humid climate. To this aim, a multi-generation hybrid solar thermophotovoltaic integrated system with capability of adjusting heat to power ratio dynamically is introduced. Appropriate analytical tools are developed to obtain the optimal capacity of any systems and energy flows subject to the technology and demand constraints, the financial limitation and the constraints defined by the politicians and local government. The demand constraints are identified through the field studies and the comfort conditions. Moreover, the required final energy carriers are quantified by using an engineering software that observe the interaction among the useful energy demands due to the conversion technologies. The large optimization problem caused by the dynamic of the system is reduced through merging the constraints. The constraint coefficient matrix reduced by 91% in the case study with negligible effect on the accuracy. The results show the multi-generation system contribution to meet the local demand is 35%. However, the electricity generated is 83 times higher than the local demand, the difference is sold to the national network.

This study presents agroforestry practices by farmers in Mount Bamboutos, why they adopt agroforestry practices and main constraints towards adoption as well as the relationship between agroforestry practices and household food security. A purposive sampling technique was used to administer 195 questionnaires. Data collected were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The demographic information analyzed showed that the majority of respondents were males (76%) and all were literate with a majority using fuel wood as their main source of energy. The major agroforestry practices were, planting of fodder, fertilizer, fruit and timber trees, compost manure and farm yard manure preparation. The highest year of adoption of agroforestry practices was in 2019. Most (50%) of the respondents adopted agroforestry practices for better crop yields. However, the main constraints to agroforestry adoption were lack of training, lack of seeds and much labour involved. Lack of training was the greatest constraint cited by respondents. 39% of the respondents were food secure and apart from compost manure practice that was negatively associated with food security, all the other agroforestry practices were positively associated with food security. Based on findings of this study, it is recommended that extension agents and other stakeholders should intensify efforts to educate and train more farmers on the practice and advantages of agroforestry. This will go a long way to increase adoption rate while ensuring food security.

Recently, the European Commission passed the Guideline on Electricity Balancing to standardize future reserve products in European electricity markets. Strict regulatory requirements are imposed on ramping behavior that must be adhered to, which brings ramping constraints into renewed focus. In a literature review, we find that prevalent ramping constraint formulations cannot guarantee that those regulatory requirements are fully satisfied. Since reserve activation in relation to ramping constraints is not discussed in literature, we aim to fill this research gap with a focus on the impact of reserve activation on ramping feasibility, availability of reserve, and thereby induced imbalances. We argue for the use of a simple, yet consequential and more robust, extended version of ramping constraints to account for intertemporal dependencies of reserve in general and to satisfy regulatory requirements in particular. Prevalent formulations significantly overestimate available reserve compared to the robust formulation. Worst-case bounds on the overestimation factor are provided for common operating modes. Computational experiments on standard benchmark sets confirm that the prevalent formulation overestimates reserve in realistic scenarios. Reserve activations are simulated from German data in a comprehensive ex-post analysis to identify reserve overestimation as a hitherto neglected source of imbalances and to quantify its extent.

This paper examines the barriers and adaptation strategies of smallholder farmers in the Northern Development Authority (NDR) zone of Ghana to climate change. The study also investigates the effect of the socio-economic and institutional factors on the on-farm adaptation strategies to climate change of smallholder farmers. The study employs descriptive statistics to analyse the barriers and adaptation techniques of a sample of 125 smallholder farmers in the NDR zone of Ghana. The binary logit model was employed to analyse the effect of the socio-economic and institutional factors on the on-farm adaptation strategies to climate change. The results show that households face considerable availability and liquidity constraints in adapting to climate change. The lack of capacity building program is the major availability constraint, while the lack of funds to purchase fertiliser is the major liquidity constraint. Most farmers do not apply any adaptation technique, while the few farmers who adapt to the changing climate frequently use soil and water conservation and grow different crop varieties and diversification of the crop produced. A number of socio-economic characteristics and institutional factors (particularly governmental extension services), and the longitudinal temperature and rainfall significantly affect the on-farm adaptation strategies of households. Though smallholder farmers in the NDR zone of Ghana apply a multiplicity of on-farm and non-farm adaptation strategies, this research is limited to on-farm adaptation strategies of smallholder farmers. The study recommends that policies aimed at helping smallholder farmers adapt to climate change should greatly emphasise on capacity-building programs. Also, investment in extension services to support rural farm households is highly recommended due to the great impact it has on adapting to climate change. This paper contributes to the empirical literature by first using the farm-level survey data from wider geographical areas in the NDR zone of Ghana to analyse the climate change adaptation strategies of smallholder farmers. This paper also focusses on only the on-farm climate change adaptation strategies of households in the NDR zone of Ghana.

Well connected users are generally discovered in communities which is one of the most important tasks for network data analytics and has tremendous real applications. In recent years, community search in attributed graphs has begun to attract attention, which aims to find communities that are both structure and attribute cohesive. Meanwhile, searching a community that is structure cohesive but attribute diversified, denoted as attribute diversified community search, is still at an early stage. In this paper, we introduce our recent effort for discovering attribute diversified community. In fact, for different applications, the needs of attribute diversification for modelling the community are quite different. We introduce three attribute diversified community models in which attribute diversification takes different roles for presenting as an objective and as a constraint. We also discuss major techniques for speeding up the attribute diversified community search. We conduct extensive experiments to show the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithms for finding attribute diversified communities in various settings.

Comprender las restricciones financieras es fundamental para analizar el papel de las altas barreras en las micro y pequeñas empresas en los países en desarrollo. Esta investigación identifica el papel de la formalidad en las micro y pequeñas empresas en el acceso al crédito. Para analizar la formalidad en las empresas peruanas, esta investigación utilizó la variable licencia . Los datos a nivel de empresa denominados Encuesta Nacional de Empresas (ENE), son proporcionados por el Instituto Nacional de Estadística del Perú (INEI). Este artículo utiliza el método de Variables Instrumentales (IV) y encuentra que cuando las empresas tienen licencia, es más probable que tengan acceso al crédito (de formal a informalidad), en promedio. Por otro lado, estos hallazgos confirman que los efectos reales de las licencias aumentan entre 15 y 19 puntos porcentuales en el acceso al crédito y reducen en 16 puntos porcentuales las restricciones financieras para las MYPES.

Tractorization is crucial in the agricultural transformation of societies with either large farm size or challenged by a severe labor shortage. However, most smallholder farmers still lag in its use, making it necessary to investigate current tractor use by smallholders. This study investigated the factors that influence smallholder farmers’ decision to use tractors in the Delta and Benue States of Nigeria. Specifically, it determined the current level of mechanization (tractor use) in the farming system, estimated the contributions of tractor use among smallholder farmers, and determined the factors influencing smallholder farmers’ tractor use decisions in the study area. Multistage sampling techniques were used to collect data from 280 respondents. Descriptive statistics, a logistic model and odds ratio (OR) constituted the analytical framework. The results showed that poor tractor use still exists among smallholder farmers, with as much as 72% of farmers not using tractor in this modern era. The study revealed that the mean income of tractor users was twice as high as that of non-tractor users. The OR result revealed that educational status, household labor, farming experience, alternative occupation, and farm area under cultivation influenced the decision of the smallholder to use tractor services. It would seem that lack of utilizing the benefits of tractorization is a crucial constraint that calls attention to the need for a holistic campaign among the farming population. The practical applications of family labor are likely to remain high.

As the financial markets have evolved, the cross-shareholding networks have been formed among Chinese enterprises with equity as the concluded relationship. Exploring the impact of the cross-shareholding networks on financing constraints has important implications for the decisions of manufacturing companies. This paper uses the social network method to characterize the cross-shareholding networks of manufacturing companies from 2007 to 2019 and explores the effects of the cross-shareholding networks on financing constraints. The innovation of this paper is to explore the relationship between the two. It is concluded that the centrality or structural holes richness of manufacturing companies in the cross-shareholding network is inversely related to the financing constraint. The higher the centrality or the richer the number of structural holes, the lower the level of financing constraints.

Like many libraries across Canada, Manitoba public libraries have grappled with the challenges that COVID-19 has presented. Libraries have struggled to remain operational and offer a high level of service to patrons within the constraint of public health orders, all the while ensuring the safety and employment of their staff. Within the ever-changing environment of COVID-19, the Manitoba Library Association recognized the need to gather information from the library community in order to better position themselves to lend support and in an attempt to bridge information gaps. This article describes a study conducted by the Manitoba Library Association whereby fifty-five Manitoba public libraries were surveyed to identify how they were responding to COVID-19 and what their needs might be. The survey questions were divided into 6 sections (facilities, services, communications, staffing, connecting, wrap-up) and the results provide information and insight into how the Manitoba library community has dealt with the pandemic. More importantly, the results can serve to guide other libraries in decision-making and preparation for a pandemic., Comme plusieurs bibliothèques au Canada, les bibliothèques publiques du Manitoba ont dû faire face aux défis présentés par la COVID-19. Les bibliothèques ont tenté de demeurer opérationnelles et d’offrir un niveau élevé de service aux usagers en respectant les contraintes des ordonnances de santé publique tout en assurant la sécurité et les emplois de leur personnel. Compte tenu de la constante évolution de la situation de la COVID-19, la Manitoba Library Association a reconnu le besoin de recueillir de l’information pour la communauté des bibliothèques afin qu’elles puissent mieux se positionner pour offrir du soutien et afin de tenter de combler le manque d’information. Cet article décrit une étude menée par la Manitoba Library Association par laquelle 55 bibliothèques publiques du Manitoba ont été sondées afin d’identifier comment elles ont réagi à la COVID-19 et de connaître leurs besoins. Le sondage comportait six sections (installations, services, communications, personnel, relations, sommaire) et les résultats fournissent des informations et un aperçu sur la façon dont la communauté des bibliothèques du Manitoba a réagi à la pandémie. Plus important encore, les résultats peuvent guider les autres bibliothèques dans la prise de décision et la préparation face à une pandémie.

Low adoption of agricultural technologies slows efforts to increase agricultural productivity and enhance rural livelihoods in developing countries. A large body of literature has sought explanations for the problem, but the focus has been mainly on micro-level farm and community factors affecting adoption. Institutional factors such as policies and market conditions, which are also important, have been largely overlooked and, few, if any, studies combine the two levels of analysis. We use Morocco as a case study to analyze institutional and farm-level factors affecting diffusion and adoption of improved wheat varieties. Results show both sides to be important. Institutional factors such as overly stringent variety testing procedures, imbalance of power among actors in the seed sector and ill-conceived variety licensing contracts limit access to seeds of more recently released varieties. Adoption of older new varieties is found to be affected by farm and farmer characteristics, but imperfect access to new seeds, sometimes associated with the failings identified above, is also a constraint. Findings signal the need for increased private engagement in seed multiplication; revised variety testing procedures; alternative royalty mechanisms; and enhanced linkages between public research and private seed companies.