1. Impact of social networks on the labor market inequalities and school-to-work transitionsMahmut Özer, Matjaž Perc, 2021, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Countries invest in education systems in order to increase the quality of their human capital. In this context, it is seen that especially after the expansion of the higher education systems, countries try to increase higher education graduation rates in order to improve the quality of human resources in the labor market. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to facilitate the transitions from school-to-work, and to increase social welfare by meeting the human resources needs of the labor market. The facilitation of school-to-work transitions has a direct impact on youth unemployment. School-to-work transitions are influenced not only by the quality of education from primary to higher education but also by the dynamics of the labor market. Social network analysis can provide important insights into this dynamics, and in doing so reveal that there are indeed many factors that play a key role in determining who gets a job and why, including, first and foremost, social contacts. An analysis of job search channels reveals that partners, friends, and relatives are those social contacts that are most decisive for employment outcomes. Research reveals that employers use social-contact-based reference channels much more frequently than formal channels for recruitment. Thus, employers frequently use such reference channels in recruitment. It has also been shown that the use of social-contact channels reduces employers' costs of finding suitable employees and increases productivity since employees hired through these channels also stay longer in their firms. We here explore the full potential of social network analysis to better our understanding of school-to-work transitions, to reveal in no uncertain terms the importance of social contacts, and to show how these insights can be leveraged to level the labor market for all involved. An important take-home message is that the labor market dynamics is strongly affected by the Matthew effect, such that the inequalities and the gaps between opportunities only grow and widen as the underlying social networks evolve. It is therefore important to mitigate these effects well before school-to-work transitions come into play, namely during the education. In particular, we assert that minimizing the inequalities during education should effectively mitigate the uneven impact of social networks on school-to-work transitions. Ključne besede: employment, higher education, inequality, labor market, Matthew effect, social network Objavljeno v DKUM: 04.10.2024; Ogledov: 0; Prenosov: 7 Celotno besedilo (272,06 KB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
2. The delayed surplus response for hops related to market dynamicsDouglas MacKinnon, Martin Pavlovič, 2022, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: The cyclical nature of hop market pricing has been recorded since the 16th century, but the effect had never previously been documented or quantified. Using Bayesian inference in an analysis of data regarding the US hop industry collected and published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) it was possible to measure the change of inventory and acreage responsiveness to price during periods of free and markets regulated through the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR). The data demonstrated a delayed, reduced, or total lack of responsiveness in the change of direction of acreage and inventory in response to directional changes in season average price (SAP) during free market periods. This reaction was referred to as the delayed surplus response (DSR). The data also demonstrated the absence of the DSR during periods in which proprietary varieties reached greater than 50% of US acreage and production. Patented plant varieties offer a legal monopoly over that intellectual property (IP). The absence of the DSR during periods in which a majority of US acreage and production were proprietary indicated a strong degree of control over supply. By extension, the owners of proprietary varieties demonstrated the ability to influence price at desired levels. Ključne besede: Bayesian inference, brewing industry, disequilibrium, hop market, proprietary variety Objavljeno v DKUM: 11.07.2024; Ogledov: 75; Prenosov: 6 Celotno besedilo (370,30 KB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
3. Age and market capitalization drive large price variations of cryptocurrenciesArthur A. B. Pessa, Matjaž Perc, Haroldo V. Ribeiro, 2023, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Cryptocurrencies are considered the latest innovation in finance with considerable impact across social, technological, and economic dimensions. This new class of financial assets has also motivated a myriad of scientific investigations focused on understanding their statistical properties, such as the distribution of price returns. However, research so far has only considered Bitcoin or at most a few cryptocurrencies, whilst ignoring that price returns might depend on cryptocurrency age or be influenced by market capitalization. Here, we therefore present a comprehensive investigation of large price variations for more than seven thousand digital currencies and explore whether price returns change with the coming-of-age and growth of the cryptocurrency market. We find that tail distributions of price returns follow power-law functions over the entire history of the considered cryptocurrency portfolio, with typical exponents implying the absence of characteristic scales for price variations in about half of them. Moreover, these tail distributions are asymmetric as positive returns more often display smaller exponents, indicating that large positive price variations are more likely than negative ones. Our results further reveal that changes in the tail exponents are very often simultaneously related to cryptocurrency age and market capitalization or only to age, with only a minority of cryptoassets being affected just by market capitalization or neither of the two quantities. Lastly, we find that the trends in power-law exponents usually point to mixed directions, and that large price variations are likely to become less frequent only in about 28% of the cryptocurrencies as they age and grow in market capitalization. Ključne besede: cryptocurrency, price variation, market value, econophysics Objavljeno v DKUM: 25.03.2024; Ogledov: 224; Prenosov: 13 Celotno besedilo (2,00 MB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
4. New suptech tool of the predictive generation for insurance companies : the case of the European marketTimotej Jagrič, Daniel Zdolšek, Robert Horvat, Iztok Kolar, Niko Erker, Jernej Merhar, Vita Jagrič, 2023, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Financial innovation, green investments, or climate change are changing insurers’ business ecosystems, impacting their business behaviour and financial vulnerability. Supervisors and other stakeholders are interested in identifying the path toward deterioration in the insurance company’s financial health as early as possible. Suptech tools enable them to discover more and to intervene in a timely manner. We propose an artificial intelligence approach using Kohonen’s self-organizing maps. The dataset used for development and testing included yearly financial statements with 4058 observations for European composite insurance companies from 2012 to 2021. In a novel manner, the model investigates the behaviour of insurers, looking for similarities. The model forms a map. For the obtained groupings of companies from different geographical origins, a common characteristic was discovered regarding their future financial deterioration. A threshold defined using the solvency capital requirement (SCR) ratio being below 130% for the next year is applied to the map. On the test sample, the model correctly identified on average 86% of problematic companies and 79% of unproblematic companies. Changing the SCR ratio level enables differentiation into multiple map sections. The model does not rely on traditional methods, or the use of the SCR ratio as a dependent variable but looks for similarities in the actual insurer’s financial behaviour. The proposed approach offers grounds for a Suptech tool of predictive generation to support early detection of the possible future financial distress of an insurance company. Ključne besede: European insurance market, suptech, supervision, financial deterioration identification, neural networks Objavljeno v DKUM: 25.03.2024; Ogledov: 220; Prenosov: 17 Celotno besedilo (2,55 MB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
5. Proprietary varieties’ influence on economics and competitiveness in land use within the hop industryDouglas MacKinnon, Martin Pavlovič, 2023, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: To evaluate changes to hop industry concentration and competitiveness the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) was used. The ownership of hop proprietary varieties, their acreage and production were compared with public varieties. Market share for each proprietary hop variety acreage and production was calculated between 2000 and 2020. The quantity of land under centralized control in the U.S. hop industry due to increased proprietary variety acreage between 2000 and 2020 was quantified. Assuming tacit collusion between the participants in the oligopoly, the HHI enabled us to quantify the portion of land under oligopoly control. The HHI analysis of hop acreage and hop production demonstrated that market concentration rose rapidly between the years 2010 (0.0376 and 0.0729) and 2020 (0.4927 and 0.5394). This resulted in decreasing business competitiveness within the market during this period caused primarily by rapid consolidation of ownership during increased proprietary variety acreage and production increases. Calculations revealed that in 2016 a tipping point had been reached concerning market concentration, which resulted in higher sustained season average prices of hops—a key raw material in brewing. Ključne besede: hop industry, varieties, market concentration, intellectual property, prices Objavljeno v DKUM: 21.03.2024; Ogledov: 183; Prenosov: 14 Celotno besedilo (1,13 MB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
6. ‘Free-market capitalism’ and democracy in the period of democratic recession : investigating the relationship in 141 countries, 2006–2017Tibor Rutar, 2023, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Since the mid-2000s, democratization has slowed, stopped, and even reversed across the world. At the same time, societies have become more oriented toward free markets as measured by indexes of economic freedom. Relying on a panel sample of 141 developed and developing countries between 2006 and 2017, this paper is the first to investigate whether the two phenomena are related by employing economic freedom data. It finds that there is no net-negative relationship between aggregate economic freedom and democracy in this time-period. Instead, mixed findings of both an overall positive and overall neutral (but not negative) association are uncovered in between-country and within-country analyses, respectively. In between-country analyses, using the disaggregated index shows that the legal system/property rights component drives most of the positive relationship between aggregate economic freedom and democracy in the developed world. The same between-country analyses in the developing world show that freedom of international trade is positively associated with democracy, while modest regulation has a negative relationship. However, additionally controlling for omitted variable bias using country-fixed effects, the paper does not find evidence for either a positive or negative relationship between subsequent changes in levels of economic freedom and democracy. Ključne besede: democratic recession, democracy, economic freedom, neoliberalism, free-market capitalism Objavljeno v DKUM: 13.03.2024; Ogledov: 332; Prenosov: 14 Celotno besedilo (1,31 MB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
7. When the customer and the wine shelf meet : factors of ethnocentrism when selecting a bottle of wineVita Petek, Črtomir Rozman, Jasna Potočnik Topler, 2021, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: This study examines the importance of wine characteristics when choosing wine, such as the shape and colour of the bottle, type of wine cork, information on the wine label, price and ethnocentrism. Three research questions were proposed in this paper. A quantitative online survey in the form of 458 participants was carried out in Slovenia. Participants were asked questions relating to their wine consumption behaviour. The results of this study show the Spearman's correlation coefficient between ethnocentrism and country-of-origin importance. These findings benefit winemakers who want to improve their wine sales and learn what characteristics of the wine label are significant. Ključne besede: buying, selling, wine, consumer, wine market, wine label, communication Objavljeno v DKUM: 24.01.2024; Ogledov: 277; Prenosov: 12 Celotno besedilo (713,40 KB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
8. Energo-economics payback investment calculation modelling of gas-steam combined cycle power plantDušan Strušnik, Jurij Avsec, 2022, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: The paper deals with energo-economic payback calculation modelling of the combined gassteam cycle operation, demonstrating the basic characteristic properties of cycle behaviour in different operating regimes and calculating the payback period of the investment. The calculation of the payback period of the investment is based on the calculation of the net present value and with actual obtaining data sets from a recently built gas-steam combined cycle power plant. The results of the calculation modelling show that the gas-steam combined cycle power plant can achieve a useful efficiency of up to 88% in the back-pressure operation of the steam turbine. The useful efficiency of the gas turbine is up to 40%. The payback period of the investment depends on the investment costs, the quantity and market price of the consumed fuel, the quantity and market price of the generated electricity and thermal energy. The results show that with a price ratio fuel/electricity of 0.36, the payback period of the investment is 4 years, with a price ratio fuel/electricity of 0.54, the payback period of the investment is as much as 17 years. Ključne besede: calculation, efficiency, investment, market, modelling, payback Objavljeno v DKUM: 30.10.2023; Ogledov: 503; Prenosov: 5 Celotno besedilo (1,81 MB) Gradivo ima več datotek! Več... |
9. |
10. |