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The purpose of this study aims to synthesize a novel donor–acceptor dye based on phenothiazine as a donor (D) and nonconjugated spacer was devised and synthesized by condensing of 2,2'-(1H-indene-1,3(2H)-diylidene) dimalononitrile with aldehyde and the practical synthesis methodology as given in Scheme 1.

The prepared phenothiazine dye was systematically experimentally and theoretically examined and characterized using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H,13C NMR), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (IR) and high-resolution mass spectrometry. Density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory DT-DFT calculations were implemented to determine the electronic properties of the new dye

The UV-Vis absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy of the synthesized dye was investigated in a variety of solvents with varying polarities to demonstrate positive solvatochromism correlated with intramolecular charge transfer (ICT). The probe’s quantum yields (Фf) are experimentally measured in ethanol, and the Stokes shifts are found to be in the 4846–9430 cm⁻¹ range.

The findings depicted that the novel (D-π-A) chromophores may act as a significant factor in the organic optoelectronics.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of the economic policy uncertainty (EPU), geopolitical risk (GPR) and climate policy uncertainty (CPU) of USA on Bitcoin volatility from August 2010 to August 2022.

In this paper, the authors have adopted the empirical strategy of Yen and Cheng (2021), who modified volatility model of Wang and Yen (2019), and the authors use an OLS regression with Newey-West error term.

The results using OLS regression with Newey–West error term suggest that the cryptocurrency market could have hedge or safe-haven properties against EPU and geopolitical uncertainty. While the authors find that the CPU has a negative impact on the volatility of the bitcoin market. Hence, the authors expect climate and environmental changes, as well as indiscriminate energy consumption, to play a more important role in increasing Bitcoin price volatility, in the future.

This study has two implications. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first to extend the discussion on the effect of dimensions of uncertainty on the volatility of Bitcoin. Second, in contrast to previous studies, this study can be considered as the first to examine the role of climate change in predicting the volatility of bitcoin. This paper contributes to the literature on volatility forecasting of cryptocurrency in two ways. First, the authors discuss volatility forecasting of Bitcoin using the effects of three dimensions of uncertainty of USA (EPU, GPR and CPU). Second, based on the empirical results, the authors show that cryptocurrency can be a good hedging tool against EPU and GPR risk. But the cryptocurrency cannot be a hedging tool against CPU risk, especially with the high risks and climatic changes that threaten the environment.

Low-carbon concrete represents a new direction in mitigating the global warming effects caused by clinker manufacturing. Utilizing Saudi agro-industrial by-products as an alternative to cement is a key support in reducing clinker production and promoting innovation in infrastructure and circular economy concepts, toward decarbonization in the construction industry. The use of fly ash (FA) as a cement alternative has been researched and proven effective in enhancing the durability of FA-based concrete, especially at lower replacement levels. However, at higher replacement levels, a noticeable impediment in mechanical strength indicators limits the use of this material.

In this study, low-carbon concrete mixes were designed by replacing 50% of the cement with FA. Varying ratios of nano-sized glass powder (4 and 6% of cement weight) were used as nanomaterial additives to enhance the mechanical properties and durability of the designed concrete. In addition, a 10% of the mixing water was replaced with EMs dosage.

The results obtained showed a significant positive impact on resistance and durability properties when replacing 10% of the mixing water with effective microorganisms (EMs) broth and incorporating nanomaterial additives. The optimal mix ratios were those designed with 10% EMs and 4–6% nano-sized glass powder additives. However, it can be concluded that advancements in eco-friendly concrete additive technologies have made significant contributions to the development of sophisticated concrete varieties.

This study focused at developing nanomaterial additives from Saudi industrial wastes and at presenting a cost-effective and feasible solution for enhancing the properties of FA-based concrete. It has also been found that the inclusion of EMs contributes effectively to enhancing the concrete's resistance properties.

This study aims to explore the challenges faced by the tourism and hospitality industry following the COVID-19 pandemic and to propose effective strategies for recovery and resilience of this sector.

The study analysed the challenges encountered by the tourism and hospitality industry post-pandemic and identified key strategies for overcoming these challenges. The study utilised the modified Delphi method to finalise the challenges and employed the Best-Worst Method (BWM) to rank these challenges. Additionally, solution strategies are ranked using the Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method.

The study identified significant challenges faced by the tourism and hospitality industry, highlighting the lack of health and hygiene facilities as the foremost concern, followed by increased operational costs. Moreover, it revealed that attracting millennial travellers emerged as the top priority strategy to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on this industry.

This research contributes to understanding the challenges faced by the tourism and hospitality industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers valuable insights into practical strategies for recovery. The findings provide beneficial recommendations for policymakers aiming to revive and support these industries.

This chapter revisits the Hausman (1978) test for panel data. It emphasizes that it is a general specification test and that rejection of the null signals misspecification and is not an endorsement of the fixed effects estimator as is done in practice. Non-rejection of the null provides support for the random effects estimator which is efficient under the null. The chapter offers practical tips on what to do in case the null is rejected including checking for endogeneity of the regressors, misspecified dynamics, and applying a nonparametric Hausman test, see Amini, Delgado, Henderson, and Parmeter (2012, chapter 16). Alternatively, for the fixed effects die hard, the chapter suggests testing the fixed effects restrictions before adopting this estimator. The chapter also recommends a pretest estimator that is based on an additional Hausman test based on the difference between the Hausman and Taylor estimator and the fixed effects estimator.

This study aims to examine the role of financial inclusion and institutional factors such as corruption and the rule of law (RL) on the credit risk and stability of banks.

The study considers a sample of 61 developing countries and uses very robust estimation techniques that allow controlling for endogeneity, heteroskedasticity and serial correlation, such as instrumental variables method in two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS), instrumental variables generalized method of moments (IV-GMM), as well as system of generalized methods of moments in two stages (Sys-2GMM).

The results confirm that financial inclusion and strengthening the RL can significantly contribute to reducing credit risk and improving the financial stability of banks; in contrast, the authors find that weak control of corruption aggravates credit risk. In addition, they found that greater competitiveness in the banking sector increases credit risk.

This study supports the need to promote financial inclusion and strengthen institutional factors to improve the stability of the banking sector, as well as promote general well-being in the economy.

This study contributes to the scarce literature by simultaneously using institutional factors such as corruption and the RL and macroeconomic variables such as economic growth and inflation in the relationship between financial inclusion and the banking sector, as well as considering competitiveness as an explanatory factor for banks’ credit risk and stability.

The main purpose of the present work is to introduce two new Schiff bases as corrosion inhibitors (CIs) for carbon steel (CS). The anti-corrosion performance of these Schiff bases having N and S heteroatoms in their structures was investigated and compared in 2 M HCl electrolyte. The inhibitory activity of these Schiff bases was also assessed.

Common electrochemical assays like potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance measurements were used to evaluate the ability of compounds in reduction of the rate of corrosion. Quantum chemical calculations (QCCs) were also used to examine the corrosion inhibitive and the process related to the electrical and structural characteristics of the molecules acting as CIs.

The electrochemical measurements indicate that both Schiff bases acted as the efficient CIs of CS in 2 M HCl electrolyte. The adsorption of the Schiff base on the surface of the CS caused the corrosion to be inhibited. The change of Gibbs energies indicated that both physical and chemical interactions are involved in the adsorption of NNS and SNS on CS surfaces. The predicted QCCs of the CIs neutral and positively charged versions were well-aligned with those obtained by electrochemical experiments.

Using electrochemical experiments and quantum chemical modelings, two new Schiff bases, N-2-((2-nitrophenyl)thio)phenyl)-1-(pyrrole-2-yl)methanimine (NNS) and N-2-((2-nitrophenyl)thio)phenyl)-1-(thiophen-2-yl)methanimine (SNS), were evaluated as anti-corrosion agents for CS in 2 M HCl electrolyte. The DFT calculations were considered to compute the quantum chemical parameters of the inhibitors.

This paper aims to examine the impact of COVID-19 on inflation in Indonesia. There are two questions in this study: (1) Is there an impact of COVID-19 on inflation in Indonesia? and (2) whether there are differences in the impact of COVID-19 on regional inflation in Indonesia, considering the different intensities associated with COVID-19.

The estimation technique showing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on inflation uses the difference-in-differences (DID) method described by Pischke (2008). The core idea of the estimation above is continuous DID using panel data. No province was affected by COVID-19 before 2020:Q1. Once COVID-19 hits the economy, the effects vary from one district to the other.

The authors find that the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affects inflation – the more severe the pandemic, the lower the inflation. This finding conforms with several studies suggesting higher demand pressures than supply during the pandemic. Compared with supply-side indicators such as production index, demand-side indicators – such as consumer confidence index and real sales index – fell more sharply.

In the Introduction section, the authors have added a discussion that indeed the COVID-19 pandemic affects inflation through both the demand- and supply-side shocks. While factors driving regional differences in inflation rate are important research and policy questions, the analysis of these factors is outside the scope of this study. The study focuses on the COVID-19 impact on inflation and whether the pandemic disproportionately affects some regions than the others.

This research is important to provide an understanding of the nature of the pandemic on inflation in the context of the Indonesian economy, which is essential to policy formulation, especially for the Central Bank in carrying out the mandate to maintain rupiah stability. This issue is due to the implications of different policy responses between demand- and supply-side shocks.

As a novelty in this study and research gap, the authors use a continuous DID method to account for the varying intensity of COVID-19 across the provinces. In particular, the authors use the number of positive cases of COVID-19 per 1,000 population as opposed to just a binary indicator of before-and-during COVID-19 across provinces.

The purpose of this study is to explain the following questions: First, whether the executive equity incentive has an impact on enterprise innovation and digital transformation; Second, if there is any influence, whether there is difference between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises in the research conclusions; Third, whether the digital transformation of enterprises has had an intermediary effect between executive equity incentive and enterprise innovation; Fourth, whether the proportion of independent directors in the corporate governance mechanism has a regulatory effect.

In the context of China's promotion of “digital China” construction and high-quality development of economic innovation, this paper takes Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in 2011–2019 as a sample, empirically studies the linear and nonlinear relationship between executive equity incentive and enterprise digital transformation and innovation, and further considers the regulatory effect of heterogeneous property rights and the proportion of independent directors, with a view to improving the reform of China's enterprise equity incentive system make contributions to enterprise innovation and digital transformation.

The results show that executive equity incentive has a positive role in promoting enterprise digital transformation and innovation, and enterprise digital transformation has a positive role in promoting enterprise innovation; Digital transformation of enterprises has a partial intermediary effect between executive equity incentive and enterprise innovation.

First, it expands the research on the economic consequences of enterprise salary incentive system. Second, it expands the research on the specific role path of enterprise digital economy transformation. Third, provide new ideas for the reform of corporate governance mechanism.

The purpose of this article is to make a contribution to the existing knowledge by using the unique cross-jurisdiction data drawn from the FCA’s REP-CRIM submissions to explore dynamics behind firms’ perceptions on financial crime. Capturing firm’s sentiment is notoriously challenging, and any relevant regulatory data is usually not available in the public domain. A recent exception is the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) financial crime data return (REP-CRIM) submissions which include the cross-country regulatory data on the UK financial institutions’ perceptions of jurisdiction risk. Despite a broad literature with respect to financial crime, there exists an important gap in the existing knowledge with respect to factors that are associated with the perceptions of firms with respect to jurisdiction risk, which this article aims to close.

Using cross-country regulatory data on the UK financial institutions’ perceptions of jurisdiction risk, this study empirically determines that perceptions of jurisdiction risk is significantly and positively associated with anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) framework, as well as with tax burden on business and institutional and legal risk in the case of 165 jurisdictions.

The findings lend support to the proposition that unsystematic efforts and too much publicity may ascertain the high-risk image of a jurisdiction, deterring cross-border business. Policy implications that emerge from the study also add to the case for strengthening institutional and legal frameworks, as well as relieving the tax burden on doing business.

Findings of the present study should be interpreted with caution, as the dependent variable used in the present study reflects UK firms’ perceptions of jurisdiction risk, which may depend on various factors such as different risk appetites and the countries in which firms carry out business, and not necessarily the actual level of risks based on financial crime statistics. For example, a jurisdiction which may indeed be considered high risk, would not necessarily be ranking high on the FCA’s list of UK firms’ jurisdiction risk perceptions due to few firms operating in that particular country. As a result, the list could differ from the Financial Action Task Force’s black and grey lists. Findings based on the regulatory data on the UK financial institutions’ perceptions of jurisdiction risk should be considered preliminary in nature, given that they are based on a single year cross sectional data. As global and country-level AML/CFT efforts continue to intensify and as more regulatory data becomes publicly available, it would be imperative to bring further empirical evidence to bear on the question of whether financial crime perceptions are likely to be more pronounced for jurisdictions where AML/CFT efforts are more intensified. Likewise, from a policy standpoint, it would be equally important to explore further the role that institutional and legal risk, as well as tax burden on businesses, play in shaping firms’ perceptions of jurisdiction risk.

Findings lend support to the proposition that unsystematic efforts and too much publicity may ascertain the high-risk image of a jurisdiction, deterring cross-border business. Therefore, rather than waiting for more data to be made available by other financial regulators, which could lead to a more conclusive evidence in the future, on balance, the findings of this study add to the case for carefully designing and systematically implementing AML/CFT measures in a less publicized manner. Findings lend support to the theoretical postulation that disorderly efforts and undue publicity regarding AML/CFT efforts serve to ascertain the high-risk image of a jurisdiction, which could deter cross-border business and could be detrimental to how firms undertake due diligence. They also suggest that disorderly implementation of AML/CFT measures may hinder access to formal financial service and jeopardize authorities’ ability to trace the movement of funds, which may also add to negative perceptions of jurisdiction risk.

Findings are in line with the theoretical expectations that perceptions of jurisdiction risk would be expected to be higher in countries with inadequate disclosure rules, lax regulation and opacity jurisdiction. Likewise, results are aligned with the expectations that tax burden on business would be expected to be in a positive relationship with jurisdiction risk, as it would increase the likelihood of tax evasion, which incentivizes financial crime. Therefore, policy implications that emerge from the study also add to the case for strengthening institutional and legal frameworks and relieving the tax burden on doing business as part of efforts to improve the international image of jurisdictions with respect to financial crime risks.

Using the cross-country regulatory data on the UK financial institutions’ perceptions of jurisdiction risk, this study has empirically determined that perceptions of jurisdiction risk is significantly and positively associated with AML/CFT framework, as well as with tax burden on business and institutional and legal risk. These findings have implications from a policy standpoint.