Digital Commons Network^™

Financing Just Energy Transitions In Southeast Asia: Application Of The Just Transition Transaction To Indonesia, Vietnam, And Philippines, Abhinav Jindal, Gireesh Shrimali, Bharat Gangwani, Rajiv B. Lall

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

This paper investigates the applicability of the Just Transition Transaction (JTT), initially developed as a financial mechanism for South Africa's energy transition, to Southeast Asian (SEA) countries, including Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, which heavily rely on coal. Utilizing South Africa as a reference case study, we deconstruct the JTT and develop a novel framework of necessary and conducive features for evaluating its suitability for supporting a just energy transition in SEA. Our findings suggest that the JTT is well-suited for Indonesia and Vietnam but not as well suited for the Philippines. Recommendations for specific research avenues in estimating baselines …

Addressing Transportation Equity For Local Populations Using Emerging Technologies, Marcus Peoples

Theses & Dissertations

ADDRESSING TRANSPORTATION EQUITY FOR LOCAL POPULATIONS

USING EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

By

Marcus Peoples Jr

This qualitative study examines the persistent issue of transportation inequity in the United States, focusing on its impact on marginalized and underserved populations. The study employs a generic qualitative inquiry from Social Justice Theory to investigate how senior public transportation decision-makers perceive and address institutional barriers, technological opportunities, and strategic improvements in transportation equity. The study underscores the pressing need to address the intricate interplay of socioeconomic conditions, racial and ethnic diversity, and varying levels of urbanization that contribute to transportation inequity. Historical and contemporary factors, such …

Analyzing The Message Complexity, Signal Words, And Readability Of Medical Tourism Warning Messages, Alicia Mason, Sakshi Bhati

Faculty Submissions

Medical tourists are deemed to be a vulnerable patient population because they often have limited knowledge of the specialized health care treatment and services they seek. They are also frequently unfamiliar with the medical tourism physicians, providers, and facilitators with whom they interact. As a result, travel, biomedical, and procedural risks are often difficult to define and estimate. This analysis uses computer-automated technology to analyze the risk and warning messages distributed by government and private medical associations to medical tourists. Results show these messages are often complex and highly textual with little visual graphic elements. The messages frequently lack key …

Enhancing Visitor Experience Through Marketing For The Mayflower Bocawina National Park, Samantha O'Flaherty

Supply Chain Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis outlines a summer internship in Dangriga, Belize, where the author worked with Mayflower Bocawina National Park facilitated by Dr. Amy Farmer and Steve Darr. Dangriga faces challenges in the tourism industry due to competition from larger entities who have more resources and infrastructure. The author and their partner developed a marketing strategy for the park's new glamping experience and mountain bike trail, evolving into a comprehensive plan encompassing SEO, website management, and operational optimization. The project aimed to enhance the park's competitiveness, generate sustainable revenue, and support its growth and improvement initiatives.

Ceo Humility And Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Evidence Based On A New Unobtrusive Measure, Amy Y. Ou, Qian Lu, Xina Li, Chi-Nien Chung, Guoli Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Chief executive officers (CEOs) are expected to guard their firms against corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) incidents. In this study, we hypothesize that CEO humility relates negatively to CSIR occurrence and positively to correction because of CEO preferences for protecting stakeholder interests and employing systematic information processing. These associations are stronger in industries with a high number of CSIR incidents and when top management teams have a higher ratio of gender and racial minorities. We develop and validate a new unobtrusive measure of CEO humility by using automated, objective behavioral indicators derived from earnings conference call transcripts. Our arguments and hypotheses …

Unveiling Key Features: A Comparative Study Of Machine Learning Models For Alzheimer's Detection, Cailean Bushnell

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This thesis rigorously evaluates the application of an array of natural language processing (NLP) techniques and machine learning models to identify linguistic signatures indicative of dementia, as sourced from the DementiaBank Pitt corpus. Utilizing a binary classification paradigm, this study meticulously integrates sophisticated embedding methods—including Doc2Vec, Word2Vec, GloVe, and BERT—with traditional machine learning algorithms such as Random Forest, Multinomial Naïve Bayes, ADA boost, KNN classifier, and Logistic Regression, alongside deep learning architectures like LSTM, Bi-LSTM, and CNN-LSTM. The efficacy of these methodologies is evaluated based on their capacity to differentiate between transcribed speech impacted by dementia and that from control …

Enhancing Fan Engagement In Medium-Sized University Athletics: A Case Study Of The University Of Tennessee At Chattanooga, Colin Thompson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore how medium-sized universities, specifically the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), can mimic the successful fan engagement strategies of other universities to build a sustainable and engaged fan base. This study analyzes previous research into the factors that contribute to fan engagement, including the segmentation of attendees into fans or spectators, and compares financial records of selected peer institutions. Peer institutions were contacted in an effort to gain insights from their marketing departments. A randomized survey of the current student population was conducted to analyze what factors motivate athletic event attendance. The …

Volume 26, Issue 2 (Special Issue) -- Full Contents

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Informativeness Of Key Audit Matters: Evidence From China, Beng Wee Goh, Kiat Bee Jimmy Lee, Dan Li, Muzhi Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines whether the key audit matters (KAMs) disclosed in expanded audit reports as a part of recent regulatory reforms are informative for investors in an emerging economy setting. Using the recent adoption of expanded audit reports for firms listed exclusively in Mainland China, we find robust evidence that the abnormal trading volume and earnings response coefficients (ERCs) are higher and that stock price synchronicity is lower during the postadoption than preadoption period. In additional tests, we find evidence that KAMs are more informative for non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), smaller firms, and firms with a smaller analyst following. Finally, we …

Gamification In Erp Systems: A Study On Intrinsic Motivation And User Behavioral Intentions, Esi Adeborna, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Luvai Motiwalla

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the evolving landscape of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, integrating gamification shows promise for enhancing user training and education. However, empirical research on gamification's effect on intrinsic motivation in using ERP is limited. Hence, we examined the intrinsic motivational effects of a gamified ERP environment in this research. We created a Gamified Web Application linked to SAP ERP to investigate how gamification affects users' behavioral intention. Leveraging self-determination theory, we examined the influence of perceived competence, autonomy, and relatedness on usage intent. In a controlled experiment with 63 participants, data collected via survey revealed that gamification enhances perceived competence, …

How Variations In Health Status Influence Retirement Decisions?, Elham Parvizi Cherri

All Theses

Retirement date decisions are crucial for seniors. It is influenced by financial situation, health status, family conditions, planning for the rest of the life, etc. While some literature emphasizes economic well-being as a critical determinant, recent research suggests that health status is a more significant factor in retirement decisions. This thesis explores how variations in health status influence retirement decisions using panel data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Building on the extensive use of HRS data in previous studies, this research expands their approaches and methodologies. Both subjective and objective health variables are utilized to address the potential …

Buy Now Pay (Pain?) Later, Ed Dehaan, Jungbae Kim, Ben Lourie, Chenqi Zhu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

“Buy-now-pay-later” (BNPL) is a relatively unregulated FinTech innovation that provides consumers with easy access to credit for retail purchases. BNPL spending is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2025, but we know little about its effects. Using banking data for10.6 million U.S. consumers, we investigate the effects of BNPL on leading indicators of users’ financial health. We find that new BNPL users experience rapid increases in bank overdraft charges and credit card interest and fees compared with nonusers, consistent with BNPL facilitating overborrowing. An instrumental variable exploiting consumers’ pre-BNPL shopping habits bolsters our inferences. Our results inform regulatory investigations into …

A Model Of Information Visualization Interpretation, Michael Gene Hilgers

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Since the groundbreaking work by Cleveland and McGill in 1984, studies have revealed the difficulties humans have extracting quantitative data from visualizations as simple as bar graphs. As a first step toward understanding this situation, this paper proposes a mathematical model of the interpretation effort of a bar graph using concepts drawn from eye tracking. First, three key areas of interest (AOIs) are identified, and fixations are modeled as random point clouds within the AOIs. Stochastic geometry is introduced via random triangles connecting fixations within the adjacent key visual regions. The so-called landmark methodology provides the basis for the probabilistic …

How Can Cbdcs Be Designed To Drive Financial Inclusion?, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As a new form of national currency, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) hold the potential to be a transformative innovation that can enhance financial inclusion. However, the realization of this potential is very much contingent on their design. The realization of the benefit is also influenced by the barriers to financial inclusion that were identified in our first blog such as financial literacy, digital divide, and complexity.

Exponential Qubit Reduction In Optimization For Financial Transaction Settlement, Elias X. Huber, Benjamin Y. L. Tan, Paul Robert Griffin, Dimitris G. Angelakis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We extend the qubit-efficient encoding presented in (Tan et al. in Quantum 5:454, 2021) and apply it to instances of the financial transaction settlement problem constructed from data provided by a regulated financial exchange. Our methods are directly applicable to any QUBO problem with linear inequality constraints. Our extension of previously proposed methods consists of a simplification in varying the number of qubits used to encode correlations as well as a new class of variational circuits which incorporate symmetries thereby reducing sampling overhead, improving numerical stability and recovering the expression of the cost objective as a Hermitian observable. We also …

Decoding Gpt Mania In Chinese Stock Market, Yan Ma, Nan Hu, Shuyang Jia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study investigates the impact of investor attention on stock market reactions to ChatGPT using dialogues on the Chinese interactive investor platforms (IIPs). We measure investor attention by the number of investors’ questions toward ChatGPT on the IIPs and categorize the firms’ answers as Investing, Speculative, and Absent. The research reveals positive and statistically significant market reactions surrounding the initial questions that occur before firm responses. Positive abnormal returns are also observed around the initial answer dates, with Investing firms evoking the highest market response, followed by Speculative firms, and Absent firms exhibiting the lowest reactions. Our results suggest that …

A Multimodal Foundation Agent For Financial Trading : Tool-Augmented, Diversified, And Generalist, Wentao Zhang, Lingxuan Zhao, Haochong Xia, Shuo Sun, Jiaze Sun, Molei Qin, Xinyi Li, Yuqing Zhao, Yilei Zhao, Xinyu Cai, Longtao Zheng, Xinrun Wang, Bo An

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Financial trading is a crucial component of the markets, informed by a multimodal information landscape encompassing news, prices, and Kline charts, and encompasses diverse tasks such as quantitative trading and high-frequency trading with various assets. While advanced AI techniques like deep learning and reinforcement learning are extensively utilized in finance, their application in financial trading tasks often faces challenges due to inadequate handling of multimodal data and limited generalizability across various tasks. To address these challenges, we present FinAgent, a multimodal foundational agent with tool augmentation for financial trading. FinAgent's market intelligence module processes a diverse range of data-numerical, textual, …

Macrohft : Memory Augmented Context-Aware Reinforcement Learning On High Frequency Trading, Chuqiao Zong, Chaojie Wang, Molei Qin, Lei Feng, Xinrun Wang, Xinrun Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

High-frequency trading (HFT) that executes algorithmic trading in short time scales, has recently occupied the majority of cryptocurrency market. Besides traditional quantitative trading methods, reinforcement learning (RL) has become another appealing approach for HFT due to its terrific ability of handling high-dimensional financial data and solving sophisticated sequential decision-making problems, e.g., hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) has shown its promising performance on second-level HFT by training a router to select only one sub-agent from the agent pool to execute the current transaction. However, existing RL methods for HFT still have some defects: 1) standard RL-based trading agents suffer from the overfitting …

The Fourth International Workshop On Smart Data For Blockchain And Distributed Ledger (Sdbd '24), Feida Zhu, Jian Pei, Michael Zeller, Bingxue Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the advent of Bitcoin, a cryptographically-enabled peer-to-peer digital payment system, blockchain together with a whole package of distributed ledger technologies, which serve as the underlying foundation of all the crypto-currencies, have been gaining attention from both academia and industry in the last fifteen years. The recent years have witnessed tremendous momentum in the development of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, largely due to the impressive rise in the market capital of these digital tokens. More and more industries, from banking and insurance, to supply chain and e-commerce, are quickly realizing the great potential in blockchain technology in efficiency boost, …

Effortless Mindfulness Toolkit: Easy Meditation Scripts To Begin Each Class., Brett Whysel

Open Educational Resources

The Effortless Mindfulness in the Classroom Toolkit is an open educational resource designed to create happier classrooms, boost student engagement, and foster a sense of community through brief, effective mindfulness exercises. This comprehensive toolkit provides educators with everything they need to seamlessly integrate mindfulness practices into their teaching routines, regardless of prior experience. The toolkit includes introductory slides, 15 ready-to-use meditation scripts, and accompanying audio recordings, covering a variety of mindfulness techniques such as focused breathing, body scans, and loving-kindness meditations. Each meditation is paired with a reflective prompt to deepen student engagement and reinforce the benefits of mindfulness. Additionally, …

Ai-Driven Cybersecurity Threats And Organizational Consequences, Apeksha Kale

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This project used a case study research strategy to investigate the impact of AI-driven cybersecurity threats on organizations. The research questions are: Q1: How can different types of organizations improve their defenses against AI-driven cybersecurity attacks? Q2: How will future hackers most likely access AI tools, and what AI tools will they use? Q3: What strategies can organizations implement to enhance resilience against phishing emails? Three Case Studies were selected and analyzed to answer the three research questions. The findings are Q1: AI-driven cyberattacks pose significant risks, but organizations can improve defenses by investing in AI technologies like Vectra …

Mda Foundation Mission Of Mercy: Transforming Lives, Relieving Pain, Anne Berquist

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

The MDA Foundation's Mission of Mercy (MOM) dental clinic in Flint provided free dental care to 659 patients over June 14-15, delivering 6,678 procedures valued at $1,156,285. The 120-chair clinic, set up by volunteers, saw patients from 35 Michigan counties and neighboring states. Patients, many of whom queued overnight, received an average of ten procedures each. Volunteers, including retired dentists, performed a wide range of services, from cleanings to complex surgeries. Translators were available to assist non-English speakers, and patients were informed about ongoing free or reduced-cost care options. The event, supported by local donations and community services, will continue …

Empowering Change To Shape Tomorrow: An Integrated Marketing Communications Plan For The Building Wealth Initiative, Ramtin Ranjpour

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

We are witnessing a renaissance — one where organizations are expected to be a community with a valued culture. With the rise of this wave, incorporating integrated marketing communications (IMC) into organizations is more vital than ever. This project uses the public relations theory of relationship management, and the marketing model of AIDAR (attention, interest, desire, action, retention) to craft a professional IMC plan for the Building Wealth Initiative (BWI), an Inland Empire nonprofit organization specializing in financial literacy and services. The project uses focus groups and secondary research through informal online observations to gain the essential understanding for creating …

Spaces Of Progress And The Challenge Of “Mindfulness” In A Postcolonial World, M. Satish Kumar

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Progress implied both change and improvement in the colonial and postcolonial world. Such a concept of progress came to be enshrined in specific geographical places. The notions of development and underdevelopment in the postcolonial context thereafter supplanted this idea. Over time, while the structures of colonial domination dissolved, those of embedded regional inequalities came to be deeply entrenched, thereby urging for Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach to “mindfulness” in a “postcapitalist,” postcolonial world. The key question is whether postcolonialism has reached an impasse in its delivery and deployment of ideas across the widening gulf between the spaces of progress and stagnancy. …

The Decline Of Republican Democracy And Rise Of The Techno-Authoritarian State: Reading Dystopian Novels In Hindi Literature, Manindra Nath Thakur

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In the past few decades, the nature of capitalism has changed fast as it has lost its philosophical justification based on the principle of the common good. There have been many avatars of the idea of the “common good”: “white man’s burden to civilize the world,” “welfarism,” and “neoliberal concept of freedom of choice.” Capitalism now seems to have moved in a new direction, however, and it has failed to produce any further philosophical justification for its existence as a mode of production despite generating unprecedented economic inequality. Consequently, there is a rising tension between capitalism and democracy in societies …

Covid-19: Change In Adjusted Gross Income From Net Migration In Nevada, 2020-2021, Ayda Atici, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data on changes in taxable income and net average income as a result of net migration for each county in Nevada during the COVID-19 pandemic (from 2020 to 2021). The data illustrate which Nevada counties experienced increases in taxable income and average income, and which counties experienced losses. The data are retrieved from “Tax Data Reveals Large Flight of High Earners from Major Cities During the Pandemic,” an interactive data report by the Economic Innovation Group.

My Manager Endorsed My Coworkers’ Voice: Understanding Observers’ Positive And Negative Reactions To Managerial Endorsement Of Coworker Voice., Emily Poulton, Szu-Han Joanna Lin, Shereen Fatimah, Cony Ho, Lance Ferris, Russell Johnson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research on managerial voice endorsement has primarily focused on the processes and conditions through which voicers receive their managers’ endorsement. We shift this focus away from the voicers, focusing instead on the dual reactions that endorsement generates for observing employees. Drawing from an approach-avoidance framework, we propose that managerial endorsement of coworker voice could be perceived as a positive and negative stimulus for observers, prompting them to approach opportunities and avoid threats, respectively. Results from a pre-registered experiment and a multi-wave, multi-source field study revealed that managerial endorsement of coworker voice was positively related to observers’ voice instrumentality, thus prompting …

Ah, You’Re One Of Those Entrepreneurs: An Investigation Into Investors’ Evaluations And Support Of Typecasted Entrepreneurs, Jonathan C. Preedom

All Dissertations

Chapter 1: In this qualitative study, I examine how entrepreneurial investors assess and decide which early-stage ventures to support based on the entrepreneurial pitch. These decisions are made in highly uncertain environments where the risk of incorrect evaluations is significant. Drawing on the literature on categorization and sensemaking, I induce a typology of five common ways investors typecast entrepreneurs based on salient auditory and visual cues from the pitch. This work provides an important foundation for understanding biases in the investor-entrepreneur dynamic, as well as the implications of such typecasting for entrepreneurial resource support.

Chapter 2: In this quantitative study, …

Post-Productivism And Rural Revitalization In China: Drivers And Outcomes, Meiling Wu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We propose that post-productivism offers a useful analytical framework for understanding the multi-scalar and diverse changes that are taking place in China’s rural revitalization. As a theoretical framework that emerged from the study of rural changes in the Global North, the applicability of post-productivism in the Global South has been contested. This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the emergence of post-productivism in rural China and uses post-productivism as a framework to conceptualize a wide range of changes in China’s rural revitalization. We conceptually clarify the driving forces that give rise to post-productivism and the outcomes these drivers produce. …

Research On Digital Platform Capabilities And Entrepreneurship Empowerment Performance Of Science And Technology Industrial Parks, Jieyu Zheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In the era of the digital economy, industries are shifting toward platform-based and ecological trends, with industrial parks similarly adopting digital and platform-based patterns. The systematic planning, functional layout, and service efficiency of science and technology industrial parks (sci-tech industrial parks for short) are designed to address emerging industries’ spatial and organizational needs. This approach aims to create a system where digital transformation is employed as the mechanism and digital platforms empower entrepreneurial enterprises within these parks, fostering high-quality park development. However, despite efforts to build digital platforms for transforming into digital parks, many industrial parks have found their platform …