Case Study
Mar 29, 2019
In today’s hypercompetitive world, electronics manufacturing companies experience challenges to respond to increasing consumer electronics demand while combatting disruptive change in their industries. The revolution in manufacturing via Industry 4.0 has transformed the way that companies approach supply chain process to gain a stronger understanding of data efficiencies. This case study examines OptimalPlus to demonstrate how its services while tapping into today’s technologies keep pace with competitors during disruptive change in the consumer electronics industry. OptimalPlus is a leader in providing the software solutions necessary for electronics manufacturers to get the most out of its supply chain process. This study explores the concept of Industry 4.0 and the benefits that manufacturers can gain from utilizing technologies. By understanding the benefits of using Industry 4.0, scholars and practitioners can better understand the way to innovate under the lens of disruptive change in the marketplace.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.eS3BadarIqbal
Editorial Note
Mar 29, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
I am really very happy and more than satisfied in writing the second editorial on Special Issue on “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part-2” (GWCC: Part-2). This is because of the enormous interest the contributors had shown on this critical issue that the globe has been confronting. Initially, as a Guest Editor, I had planned to publish this Special Issue in one volume only. However, due to a large number of contributions received from across the World, I had to go for Volume II (Part-2). This all speaks out the immense significance of the topic.
Review Article
Mar 28, 2019
The study is in line with Oates (1951), where fiscal decentralization is explained as the delegation of income and consumption powers from the central government to the devolved units, both local and national levels within the framework of decentralization. Fiscal decentralization is considered to be the panacea in eradicating poverty, particularly in developing countries. This review entails the assessment of the influence of fiscal asymmetric decentralization on household effects. Specifically, the review looks at the interaction between budget efficacy, fiscal policy, and county treasury management and household effects. Despite the fact that scholarly work has been conducted on all the concepts, arguably inadequate attention has been given to the influence of fiscal asymmetric decentralization on household effects. Furthermore, scanty information was found on revenue disparity or financial planning attributes. In addition, not much has been done on fiscal control by subnational governments and self-fiscal reliance as counties continue to rely on funding from the national governments although counties have considerable potential to generate their own revenue. The challenges of comprehensive results are observed, and the study concludes that it appears critical to focus more on analysis that will establish the link of control theory and practice, which will need more firm and integrative study process.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.836535
Original Research Article
Mar 14, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
Climate change is one of the concepts in Namibian languages that does not have any meaning or cannot be easily translated into the native dialects. It is very alien to many Namibians but yet growing in popularity, as it has become a problem that is affecting the economy, natural resources, and tradition and culture of the native people. Climate change is probably going to worsen the dry circumstances that are currently experienced in Southern Africa or Namibia to be specific. If it happens that rainfall does come in good amounts regularly, it will probably erupt in greater power. This will eventually lead to floods and erosion damages in some parts of the country, though these expectations have had very little influence on Namibian policy. Reid et al. (2008) stated that over the past 20 years there has been annual decrease in the Namibian economy of up to 5%, which has been a result of the climate change mostly impacting natural resources in the country. The result was reported using the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model simulations for Namibia. However, this result has negatively impacted the poorest people the most, which is a consequence of decline in wages and employment opportunities, especially for uneducated or unskilled labor in rural areas. It is of utmost importance for Namibia to take initiatives to ensure that most of its policies and activities are environmentally proofed. Namibia should have a unique approach to deal with displaced farmers and farm workers and citizens of such nature by looking into its issues of colonialism. In addition, there is a clear need to mainstream climate change into policies of developing countries like Namibia, because it is the responsibility of these countries to muddle through with climate change impacts and plan for a climate-constrained future.
Original Research Article
Mar 07, 2019
Small enterprises represent a large proportion of enterprises in most economies and are a driving force for economic growth. Most small enterprises refrain from exporting due to a number of challenges. The aim of this study was to determine the exporting barriers perceived to constrain exporting from Lesotho-based manufacturing micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The study adopted a cross-sectional descriptive design. Data were collected from 162 Lesotho-based manufacturing enterprises through a self-administered questionnaire. Factor analysis revealed three export barrier groupings, namely international, distribution, and financial constraints. The descriptive statistics showed that Lesotho-based manufacturing MSMEs perceive lack of financial resources for market research, lack of financial resources to finance export sales, and lack of excess capacity for exports, all internal to an enterprise-loading under financial barriers as constraints to exporting. The study added to the literature new classes of export barriers. The findings suggest that the government of Lesotho has to put in place mechanisms that can reduce financial constraints to enable MSMEs to contribute as expected.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.739951
Review Article
Feb 19, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
Since ages, India has held the flagship of being prosperous, economically viable, financially sound, rich in resources, and diverse in traditional and cultural aspects, yet has never failed to cater to the needs of crores of citizens. The economic factors and flow of financial wherewithal have pushed Indian economy to the brighter side of development. However, the growth aspects led to a significant decrease in the climatic and weather conditions and therefore an urgent need to mend up the environmental issues. Greenfield investments were sought as remedial measure to sustain the issues of environment as well as economic and financial feasibility in the form of investments. Investment is a gizmo for creating wealth by employing funds with an intention of achieving additional income or growth in the value and gets rewarded by return. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is such an investment wherein foreign investors make their funds employable in the foreign-based company either through greenfield investments, brownfield investments, or through portfolio investment. In Indian context, overseas investments can be made either through automatic route or through Reserve Bank of India and Government of India. The highlight of this paper is the significance of greenfield investments in the developmental aspects of Indian economy.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.740622
Original Research Article
Feb 12, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
To estimate the long-term effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission on cereal yield in Sudan, we employed an autoregressive distributed lagged (ARDL) bound test for cointegration analysis. The ARDL results reveal evidence of cointegration between the dependent variable (cereals yield) and two independent variables (CO2 emission) and agricultural GDP. The estimation results of the error correction model indicate that change in CO2 has a positive and significant impact on the cereal yield in the long and short terms, as 1% increase in CO2 leads to a cereal yield increase by 3% in the short term and by 0.7% in the long term. This result adds two important findings to the existing literature: First, the positive impact of CO2 on cereal yield in Sudan supports previous research findings in other countries of warm and arid climates. Second, the effect of CO2 on cereal yield differs from short to long term, as our finding indicates that CO2 has a greater positive effect in the short term compared to that in the long term, implying that the effect of CO2 on cereal yields is not linear, as commonly perceived, but it decreases as time duration extends to longer periods. This may be due to the CO2 effect on global warming that emanates from cumulative CO2 concentration, which leaves a disproportionate impact on crops over time.
Review Article
Feb 08, 2019
There is a growing concern of youth unemployment among tertiary graduates. Skills acquired in school provide an opportunity to grab. Unemployment sounds unusual in the preindependent colonial era when people learn the trade of the family. After independence, schooling for government jobs became a mantra. There is a shift from the culture and socioeconomic structure to governmental employment structure. This study determines how the population structure is outpacing public government business creating employment deficit and how the curriculum is defeating entrepreneurial development in Ghana. The literature is reviewed, and discussion with students as focused group addresses the unemployment problem. The study concludes that the educational curriculum that is not incorporating the traditional industries is creating unemployment.
Original Research Article
Jan 31, 2019
We consider functions that assign to each evaluation profile a preference system or a list of menu-dependent preferences. The rule by which such an assignment takes place is said to be a menu-dependent preference functional (MDPFL). We extend the concepts of invariance under individual cardinal transformations, weak Pareto, binary independence, weak dictatorship, and veto power from the context of social welfare functional to our framework of MDPFLs. We consider admissible sets of evaluation profiles that are slightly more general than necessarily requiring that all evaluation profiles be admissible. We introduce the concepts of nested and nested* MDPFLs. Our first result says that a nested MDPFL that is invariant under individual transformations, globally weakly Paretian, and satisfies global binary independence must be weakly dictatorial. Our second result says that a nested* MDPFL that is invariant under individual transformations, globally weakly Paretian, and satisfies global binary independence must have an individual/criterion that wields veto power.
Review Article
Jan 14, 2019
Trade policy among the G20 has emerged as one of the challenges the group faces during the last decade after the 2008 global financial crisis. This paper aims at analyzing the current trade disputes between China and the United States and the efforts the G20 has taken to settle these disputes. The fundamental questions this study attempts to answer are as follows: (1) what the US–China trade dispute means for the world trading system? (2) what the G20 can do to prevent destructive trade wars? We confront this view by critically examining a large body of evidence on the effects of trade policy on economically important outcomes. We begin with a discussion of the role of G20 in stabilizing world economy. We show the G20’s recent economic and trade development challenges and measurements of trade policy and identification of its causal effects. We present the trade balance between the United States and China. We also illustrate the efforts made by the G20 in promoting the development of China–US trade cooperation. Data were collected from different sources. Data are collected from the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) publications, and the G20 summits’ reports. The results show that the United States has a trade deficit with China, and the global growth would be notably curtailed as investment and consumer spending fall back. The G20 should focus on supporting the WTO, being upfront about the mixed effects of trade and investment, and improving G20 measures to tackle protectionism.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.735041
Review Article
Jan 14, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
The Right to Development is a relatively new right in human rights law. Although its roots may be traced to pre-world war era, Right to Development took concrete shape with the passing of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986. Some renowned academic institutions in India are making recent efforts to make the “Right to Development” a Fundamental Human Right. Climate change poses a direct threat to human rights of people, especially in tropically situated countries of the south (including India), which are coincidentally home to a large number of vulnerable/marginalized people who are considerably poor to concern themselves with issues such as climate change. Due to mounting pressure from least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing countries (SIDSs), international community has lately shown greater interest in establishing a direct link between climate change and human rights. This interest may be a reaction to the recurrent failures in reaching a consensus in the climate change negotiations through mechanical Conference of Parties (COPs). Similar to a bottom-up approach that seems to have worked well for the Paris agreement, it was believed by experts that linking human rights to climate change would shake the conscience of the reluctant parties to act expeditiously. The importance of a human rights–based approach to climate change will be highlighted in the light of two recent developments in the climate change discourse: First, the recognition by scientists of several extreme disaster as climate change events directly violating the human rights of the vulnerable; second, the dilution of the differentiation created between developing and developed nations by the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) principle in the recent climate change agreements. This paper seeks to establish the efficacy of the human Right to Development (through tools such as Greenhouse Development Rights) in effectuating the third world approaches to the issue of climate change in the global south.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.735011
Original Research Article
Jan 11, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
Environmental degradation (measured, for example) by CO2 emissions has an adverse effect on public health, leading to the need for a higher level of healthcare expenditure. The level of per capita income, which has been identified as a major determinant of healthcare expenditure, is associated with environmental degradation as represented by the environmental Kuznets curve. The results presented in this study show that when a country, like Australia, falls on the declining sector of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), healthcare expenditure is negatively related to environmental degradation. Although this proposition sounds counterintuitive, it is justified theoretically and supported empirically.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.735009
Original Research Article
Jan 04, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
The concerns surrounding climate change have grown manifold in recent times. It has been observed that some developed countries have been shying away from playing their part in milestone agreements on climate change. The recent withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement of 2015 and an abysmal performance post the formalization of the Kyoto Protocol of 2002 has shifted the onus of battling this catastrophic global issue on emerging economies, especially China and India. In this context, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of India’s evolving role in addressing climate change concerns. From the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement, India has made positive and sincere strides towards the issue of global warming and climate change, embracing a number of policies and measures in its hope for a sustainable tomorrow. The article also highlights the environmental challenges faced by India in its economic development. Finally, it lists out the key recommendations that can be implemented by India for improving its environmental performance.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.738226
Case Study
Jan 04, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
The role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) for sustainable development, particularly in developing countries, has become a topic of debate among environmental, business, and economic researchers. In that context, we try to explore the compatibility and congruence of the business operations of MNEs vis-à-vis sustainable development in the developing part of the world. By using a multitheoretical framework followed with a multicase analysis concerning emerging and developing countries, we investigate how MNEs are addressing regional requirements of sustainable development where environment, local culture, and institutional mechanism are the key concerns. The adherence to evolving institutional mechanism over the years along with willful ethical steps taken by MNEs are found to be important in improving the state of affairs in the developing nations.
10.18639/MERJ.2019.735006
Review Article
Jan 03, 2019
Special Issue S3: “Global Warming and Climate Change: Part 2”
Asia-Pacific is currently in charge of almost half of the worldwide carbon outflows and thus causing harm to the environment. So, in order to reduce t he carbon outflow, it is important to calculate or know the carbon dioxide emissions of Indian students perusing higher education in India and analyze the attitudes of students to reduce carbon footprint levels in the university campus. For this purpose, data were collected by conducting an online survey from 200 students pursuing higher education in a leading private university to assess individual carbon footprint per student by using the calculator developed. Findings revealed that higher awareness level of individual footprints positively impacted their behavior toward carbon footprint reduction as students are willing to avail shared services available in campus.
