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According to previous international studies, the impact of external regulation on bank risk is ambiguous. The purpose of this paper is to ask the question, “When do regulations matter for bank risk-taking?” by reporting the first empirical investigation of how the relation between bank regulations (capital requirements, official supervisory power and market discipline) and bank risk-taking is moderated by board monitoring characteristics.

Using SYS-GMM, the analysis of the interaction between bank-level boards of directors’ attributes (board size, board independence and board gender diversity) and external regulation is based on a sample of 493 banks operating in 54 countries over 2001-2015, accounting for three measures of bank risk-taking.

Regulations matter for bank risk-taking conditional on board characteristics: board size, board independence and board diversity. With the exception of capital requirements, the market discipline exerted by external private monitoring and greater supervisory power are unable to mitigate the propensity to greater risk-taking by banks resulting from larger board size, higher board independence and greater gender diversity of the board.

The bank risk empirical literature is still silent as to the interaction between board governance and regulation for the purpose of examining banks’ risk-taking. This paper fills this gap, thus making a significant contribution by extending our knowledge of whether and how board governance moderates the relationship between external regulation and bank risk-taking.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the foreign direct investment (FDI)–exports relationship in Nigeria using disaggregated FDI and export data.

This paper applies the autoregressive distributed lag cointegration approach in examining the long-run relationship between FDI and exports.

The results suggest that aggregate FDI has a positive and statistically significant long-run impact on total exports. Once exports are disaggregated into oil and non-oil exports, the positive, cointegrating relationship holds only for oil exports. When disaggregated by sector, primary sector and manufacturing sector FDI have a positive and significant long-run relationship with both total exports and oil exports but service sector FDI does not appear to have any significant influence on Nigerian exports.

This is the first paper that employs both sectoral FDI and disaggregated export data to examine the FDI–exports nexus in Nigeria.

This study empirically examines the moderating role of geopolitical risk on the tourism–economic growth nexus by applying a recent geopolitical risk indicator developed by Caldara and Iacoviello (2022) in a cross-country panel data growth model context for a sample of 24 countries.

A Dummy Variable Least Squares panel data model, nonparametric covariance matrix estimator and SYS-GMM estimation techniques are employed for the analysis. The authors capture the GPR moderating effect by disaggregating the cross-country sample according to low versus high country GPR score and through a GPR interaction coefficient. Several controls are included in the models such as gross fixed capital formation and—consistent with Barro (1990)—government consumption. Trade openness is used to account for the export-led growth effect. In line with neoclassical growth theory (e.g. Barro, 1991), the authors also include the real interest rate, to account for policy makers' commitment to macroeconomic stability, financial depth, as a proxy for financial development, population growth and the level of secondary school education. The authors also control for unobserved country-specific and time-invariant effects.

The research finds that the interaction term of geopolitical risk significantly contributes to the predictive ability of the regression and provides empirical evidence that confirms that only in low geopolitical risk countries international tourism positively and significantly contributes to economic growth. Important theoretical and policy implications flow from these findings.

The study not only contributes to advancing academic knowledge on the tourism–growth nexus, it also has impact beyond academia. Many countries have in the past pursued and many continue to pursue, tourism specialization and/or tourism-led growth strategies based on the theoretically well-established and empirically validated positive link between inbound tourism and economic growth. The findings alert policy makers in such countries to the significant moderating role that geopolitical risk plays in affecting the above-mentioned relationship and to the importance of prioritizing geopolitical stability as a policy precursor for the successful implementation of such strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in producer services in China using both country aggregate and provincial sub-sectoral data.

This paper applies autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration and panel data regression approaches in examining the determinants of Producer Service FDI (PSFDI).

Our results show differences between the determinants of aggregate FDI and PSFDI. Contrary to the typical influencing factors of general FDI (that include GDP, openness, low wages and environmental quality), the two main determinants of PSFDI inflows to China are found to be high wages and research inputs (specifically the number of research workers as a proxy for research intensity). Data drawn from 26 Chinese provinces disaggregated at sub-sector level of producer services corroborate the results.

We add to existing literature by identifying the key determinants of inward PSFDI in China also via a provincial-level data analysis and disaggregation at sub-sectoral level of producer services.

Despite decades of research, the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and foreign direct investment (FDI) remains ambiguous. Using a recently developed patent enforcement index (along with a broader IPR index) and a large sectoral country-to-country FDI dataset, the authors revisit the FDI-IPR relationship by testing the impact of IPRs on UK and US outward FDI (OFDI) flows as well as earnings from outward FDI (EOFDI).

The authors use disaggregated data for up to 9 distinct sectors of economic activity from both the US and UK for OFDI flows and EOFDI, for a panel of up to 42 developed and developing countries over sample periods from 1998 to 2015. The authors employ a panel fixed effects (FE) approach that allows exploiting the longitudinal properties of the data using Driscoll and Kraay's (1998) nonparametric covariance matrix estimator.

The authors do not find any consistent evidence in support of the hypothesis that countries' strength of IPR protection or enforcement affects inward FDI, or that sector of investment matters. The results prove robust to sensitivity checks that include an alternative broader measure of IPR strength, analyses across sub-samples disaggregated according to the strength of countries' IPRs as well as developing vs developed economies and an extended specification accounting for dynamic effects of the response of FDI to both previous investment levels and IPR (patent) protection.

The authors make use of the largest most granular sectoral country-to-country FDI dataset employed to date in the analysis of the FDI-IPR nexus with disaggregated data for OFDI and EOFDI across up to 9 distinct sectors of economic activity from both the US and UK The authors employ a more sophisticated measure of IPR strength, the patent index proposed by Papageorgiadis et al. (2014), which places emphasis on the effectiveness of enforcement practices as perceived by managers, together with the overall administrative effectiveness and efficiency of the national patent system.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method that can calculate the transportation infrastructure network service capacity enhancement given by planned transportation infrastructure projects construction. Managers can sequence projects more rationally to maximize the construction effectiveness of infrastructure investments.

This paper designed a computational network simulation software to generate topological networks based on established rules. Based on the topological networks, the software simulated the movement path of users and calculated the average travel time. This software allows the adjustment of parameters to suit different research objectives. The average travel time is used as an evaluation index to determine the most appropriate construction sequence.

In this paper, the transportation infrastructure network of Sichuan Province in China was used to demonstrate this software. The average travel time of the existing transportation network in Sichuan Province was calculated as 211 min using this software. The high-speed railways from Leshan to Xichang and from Xichang to Yibin had the greatest influence on shortening the average travel time. This paper also measured the changes in the average travel time under two strategies: shortening the maximum and minimum priorities. All the transportation network optimisation plans for Sichuan Province will be somewhere between these two strategies.

The contribution of this research are three aspects: First, a complex network analysis method that can take into account the differences of node elements is proposed. Second, it provides an effective tool for decision makers to plan transportation infrastructure construction. Third, the construction sequence of transportation infrastructure development plan can effect the infrastructure investment effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel method for establishing the mathematical link between the restored Hogarth curve and the golden ratio, and to advance the potential application of the Hogarth curves in standardization of the garment pattern design by using this method.

The Hogarth curve was fully restored by using the plant design system (PDS) software package and divided the restored curve into two fragments based on the intersection point between the curve and the straight line joining the curve endpoints. The ratios between two fragments of curves and straight lines were calculated and compared with the golden ratio, respectively, which was set as a normalized value. The potential application of the restored Hogarth curves in the normalization of the garment pattern design was therefore studied by using the standard mannequins.

The ratio in the most beautiful curve, i.e., the fourth Hogarth curve, was found to be infinitely approaching to the golden ratio. Furthermore, the incorporation of the Hogarth curves into the garment pattern design demonstrated that the fourth Hogarth curve was the most aesthetic line.

This work offered a novel method for bridging the gaps between arts and maths, i.e., the mathematical relation between the Hogarth curves and the golden ratio. Such a method will provide the protocol to promote the potential applications of the Hogarth curves in the garment pattern design and the human body decoration.

Curves with various profiles have been demonstrated to be more attractive and decorative than the straight lines by William Hogarth. Among all kinds of curves, Hogarth proposed seven serpentine lines as the most beautiful curves, i.e., Hogarth curves. Those seven Hogarth curves are subsequently applied in a wide range of fields, e.g., sculpture, painting, architecture and fashion design, indicating their significance to the development of the formal beauty. Recently, the beauty of Hogarth curves has been suspected to be induced by their special-designed curvature, which could have the potential relationship with the Golden Ratio. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the Hogarth curves and golden ratio by comparing the curvature of curves with the Fibonacci sequence.

Each of the Hogarth curves was fully restored and divided into two parts according to the turning point of the curvature; the ratios of span, curvature and angles between these two parts were compared with the Fibonacci sequence.

The experimental results disclosed that the ratio of the fourth Hogarth curve, which was considered as the most beautiful line by Hogarth, was infinitely approaching the golden ratio. Based on the relationship between the fourth Hogarth curve and the golden ratio, the ratios of each curve were employed to define and normalize these curves, providing a quantitative way to redraw the Hogarth curves.

This research work unlocked the information of the relationship between the Hogarth curves and golden ratio, and proposed an effective and convenient mathematic way to quantify the Hogarth curves. The experimental findings disclosed the underlying mechanisms of the beauty of the forth Hogarth curves. Such a fundamental study will promote the establishment of the normalized methods for evaluating the beauty of arts and provide novel ideas for researchers and industrial technologists to use the Hogarth curves.

This study aims to examine the effect of corporate derivatives use on firm value and how the corporate governance index modifies this relationship.

The sample consists of 219 nonfinancial firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) from 2011 to 2019. The study used ordinary least square regression with year and industry dummies for estimations. Multiple estimation models such as fixed/random effect, Fama–MacBeth and two-stage least squares (2SLS) are used for robustness. Finally, the PROCESS macro tool is used to estimate the effect of moderating the role of corporate governance (CG) as robustness.

The findings show that derivatives use has an inverse influence on firm value. The firms did not use derivatives as a risk management tool but for speculation motives. However, the corporate governance index significantly weakens this relationship. However, strong governance forces the managers to use derivatives for hedging purposes. The firm-specific factors, including size, age, leverage, cash, financial distress cost, dividend and growth opportunities, also significantly influence firm value. The findings are robust to the other estimation models.

The findings indicate that emerging economies like Pakistan are more prone to agency problems. The strong corporate governance structure helps firms turn the speculative motive of derivatives use into hedging purposes and mitigate the agency issues.

This empirical evidence suggests that good governance structures can help improve the impact of derivative usage on firm value.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study that examines the conditional role of corporate governance on the derivatives–value relationship from the viewpoint of agency problem/speculative motive.

This paper’s aim is modeling and simulation of an advanced controller design for a novel mechatronics system that consists of a hydrostatic journal bearing with servo control. The proposed mechatronic system has more worth in tribology applications as compared to the traditional hydrostatic bearing which has limited efficiency and poor performance because of lower stiffness and load-carrying capacity. The proposed mechatronic system takes advantage of active lubrication to improve stiffness, rotor’s stability and load-carrying capacity.

The current work proposes extended state observer-based controller to control the active lubrication for hydrostatic journal bearing. The advantage of using observer is to estimate unknown state variables and lumped effects because of unmodeled dynamics, model uncertainties, and unknown external disturbances. The effectiveness of the proposed mechatronic system is checked against the traditional hydrostatic bearing.

Proposed mechatronics active hydrostatic journal bearing system is checked against traditional hydrostatic journal bearing. It is found that novel active hydrostatic journal bearing with servo control has good tribology performance factors such as stiffness, less rotor vibration, no wear and friction under starting conditions and high load-carrying capacity under different conditions of spindle speed, temperature, initial oil pressure and external disturbance. The result shows that proposed mechatronics system has more worth in rotary tribology applications.

The current manuscript designs a novel active hydrostatic journal bearing system with servo control. The mathematical model has advantages in term of estimating unknown state variables and lumped effects because of unmodeled dynamics, model uncertainties and unknown external disturbances. The result shows improvement in dynamic characteristics of a hydrostatic journal bearing under different dynamic conditions.