New Advances in Business, Management and Economics Vol. 9

Valuing Local Social Amenities through a Spatial Lens: Comprehensive Wealth Measurement in U.S. Metro and Non-Metro Counties

2025-07-16T08:24:37+00:00

This study reinterprets Roback’s general spatial equilibrium model within the comprehensive wealth framework to better estimate the contribution of local amenities, natural, built, social, cultural, and human capital residents’ wealth. Using data from 3,109 U.S. counties, spatial econometric models (including spatial error models, SEM) are developed and applied that capture cross-county spillover effects across borders. The findings reveal that property values often reflect rising demand for local amenities rather than limited housing supply, suggesting new strategies for property and income taxation. By differentiating between metro and non-metro counties, this study uncovers divergent policy implications: results suggest potential overprovision of services in metro areas while highlighting underprovision in non-metro regions. These refined insights into the determinants of local wealth and wage variation support more effective place-based policy and investment decisions.

Integrating the Economic Concept of a “Merit Good” Used to Justify the Teaching of Ethics Across the University Curriculum: Revisiting Musgrave’s Perspective

2025-07-16T08:30:07+00:00

Economic theory divides economic events into private goods and public goods. The Harvard professor Richard Musgrave introduced in 1956 the concept of merit goods because he discovered that there were several economic events which did not fit the definition of either private or public goods. Musgrave reports “free hospitals for the poor or public subsidies to low-cost housing (Musgrave1956, 340). Later, he added free education as an additional merit good and penalty taxation, as in the case of liquor as a demerit good. As his career developed, Musgrave added even more economic events to his category of merit goods (Ver Eecke 2007, 36, footnote 4).

Musgrave himself introduced several justifications for society imposing merit and demerit goods upon the members of the free market. One justification provided by Musgrave was an ethical justification (Ver Eecke 2007, 39).

In this paper, the authors use the concept of (de)merit goods to argue that economic reality has an ethical dimension. Hence, a philosophical reflection upon economics can be an opportunity to introduce students to ethical questions. We also present the content of such a course, which one of the authors has given.

Assessing the Impact of Entrepreneurship Practices on the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises: Evidence from Selected SMEs in Lagos

2025-07-16T08:34:21+00:00

Small and medium-scale enterprises are very crucial to the development of a country’s economy. On the other hand, entrepreneurship plays an important role in national development, poverty eradication and employment generation. This study examined the influence of entrepreneurship practice on small and medium enterprises in Lagos. The study reviewed the contribution and performance of SMEs to the economic development of a nation that also depends on various entrepreneurship practices. A total of 65 subjects were selected (using Taro-Yamane) from the population of 79 registered SMEs in furniture businesses. Questionnaires were used as a data collection instrument. Both primary and secondary data collection techniques were employed, and the Chi-Square method was used to analyse the data. The findings showed that, despite the enormous resources that abound in the country, the SMEs sector has not played a significant role in Nigeria's economy. SMEs in Nigeria have a long way to go for the sector to be productive enough and play the crucial role it is expected to play in relation to contributing to the growth and development of the economy of Nigeria. It is recommended that the government should as a matter of urgency, assist prospective entrepreneurs to have access to finance and necessary information relating to their business opportunities, modern technology, raw material, market, plant and machinery which would enable them to reduce their operating cost and be more efficient to meet the market competition. Further studies should look into other aspects of sustainable entrepreneurs, such as their driving factors and consequences.

Assessing Some Major Factors of Production and Efficiency Parameters in the Post Reform Agricultural Sector in Indian Economy

2025-07-16T08:37:33+00:00

In the Indian scenario, agriculture is the provider of food security and livelihoods and an earner of foreign exchange. Although the agricultural sector has been a prominent sector for development under the policy regimes undertaken by the Government of India and self-sufficiency in food production has been achieved, there is still a major necessity to increase production, as high GDP growth without corresponding agricultural growth could lead to an acceleration in inflation. This article analyses some of the factors affecting agricultural production and the possible set of efficiency parameters that can play an important role in improving the productivity of this sector. The study analyses the performance of institutional credit, net irrigated area, consumption of fertilisers and consumption of pesticides as major contributory factors of agricultural production in the Indian economy in the post-1990 era. Moreover, an increase in the contributory efficiency parameters can also play an important role in increasing the output of a sector. Thus, this study has discussed the importance of some of these factors, like the rate of rural literacy and the rate of rural technical education, the length of road per square km, share of agricultural NSDP to total NSDP in the Indian agricultural sector for the post-reforms period. Adequate food security would insulate the Indian economy from fluctuations of agricultural prices in international markets, and increased cash crop production could act as a generator of foreign exchange. Though the growth of performance of institutional credit, consumption of fertilisers and consumption of pesticides has been quite satisfactory over the years in the post-reforms period, more steps need to be taken to technologically advance the availability of water for agricultural production. Thus, policies in the current time should concentrate more on increasing the efficiency of producers in the agricultural sector of the Indian economy, along with allocating more resources to the sector.

The Subprime Crisis: The Result of an Explosive Cycle in the USA

2025-07-16T08:41:50+00:00

The subprime crisis, considered by experts to be the worst since the 1930s, is mainly linked to the American mortgage policy. According to the contemporary cycle theory, the origin of the crisis lies in the manipulation of key interest rates by the Federal Reserve. This study aims to analyse the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis. It is based on a general analytical framework for the problem of crises. Drawing on the theory of financial cycles and principles of political economy, the study explores how speculative bubbles emerge and burst.

Speculative bubbles are not new in economics; the first identified as such was the "Tulip Crisis" in the 17th century. Other crises followed. This study primarily focuses on the subprime mortgage crisis, marked by the bursting of a speculative bubble in the real estate sector in the United States. This study analyses the events of this crisis and may serve as an early warning in identifying bubble patterns in the economy.

An analysis of financial cycles indicates the existence of several phases inherent in financial cycles and applicable to the subprime mortgage crisis. Analysis of the cycles in the study clearly shows that the optimistic and "sheep-like" behaviour of financial markets contributes to the formation of speculative bubbles. Moreover, while the Federal Reserve (FED) can be blamed for the subprime mortgage crisis, economists failed to mobilise existing and well-known theoretical economic principles to prevent this turbulence. This study concluded by discussing the COVID-19 crisis and the government's response.

Digital Transformation for Sustainable Rural Entrepreneurship: Bridging Innovation and Inequality through Social Solidarity Models

2025-08-08T11:04:34+00:00

The digital transformation of rural entrepreneurship is an increasingly urgent priority in both regional and global development policies. The digitalization technology transformation of entrepreneurship has positive impacts, but also increases inequality and disrupts the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study aimed to examine the impact of digitalization technology transformation on rural entrepreneurship and explain its mitigation efforts using exploratory sequential mixed methods. The policy acceptance model method was used to reduce uncertainty in analyzing entrepreneurial behavior patterns. This mixed method was used to perform authenticity of context, measurement, or control, and generalisation through two stages. The first stage used the exploratory design method to examine the qualitative data. The second stage employed an explanatory design to describe quantitative information. Data were collected using questionnaires and semistructured interviews equipped with ethnographic observations. The results showed that the digitalization technology transformation of rural entrepreneurship supports various new potentials. These include decent work opportunities, family entrepreneurship, and local economic growth. However, the technology increases inequality and the fear of traditional markets that could disrupt the achievement of other sustainable development goals (SDGs). This inequality and the risk of uncertainty could be mitigated by the social solidarity economic transformation business model based on the potential of local humanist wisdom. The results showed a humanist social solidarity economic system (SSE) model that could reduce the impact of this inequality. The SSE model of social innovation could fill the void of social entrepreneurship theory because it is humanist and different from the established materialistic capitalist socio-economic model. Therefore, this study could provide scientific information and implications for social and institutional policies. It could also contribute to the literature on new institutional and social entrepreneurship innovation theories related to the wave of Kontratieff Schumpeter. Therefore, this study is expected to fill the void in the new institutional theory and socio-cultural entrepreneurship literature.

Credit Risk, Monetary Policy Efficacy and Economic Performance in Tunisia: Evidence from ARDL and Markov Regime Switching Models

2025-08-08T11:07:13+00:00

The historical swings between periods of excess credit risk and phase shifts of tranquil periods with relatively easier banking credit conditions stimulating investment up to a certain limit raised the debate of the prevalence of credit risk switching regimes of the type of Markov regime switching models for credit risk exerting a lagged effect on economic performance and drained by monetary policy efficacy breakpoint shifts. Credit risk is at its maximum during recessions because of the increase in the likelihood of non-repayment of loans as investments perform bad in terms of profitability. Credit risk is assessed in terms of risk premiums that encompass the historical effect credit performance exerts on the banking assessment board of creditworthiness. This instance of modeling credit risk is proven to exhibit both patterns, although contrasting apparently, but with breakpoints in the unit root of monetary policy will herald obvious and fathomable key features of recent economic events driven by financial shocks in Tunisia. The main purpose of the research is to scrutinize the impact of banking sector related effects on economic performance depending on credit to the public sector monetary policy efficacy and economic growth, in order to elucidate the relationship between financial shocks and economic performance and to forecast future short run evolution of economic situation starting from an ARDL model exhibiting the main determinants of credit risk then passing to the diagnostic of a Markov model with jump effect applied to credit risk in a time series.

The first model shows a positive autocorrelation of credit risk signaling plausible self-sustaining exacerbation, a positive correlation with credit to the public sector as a proportion of GDP, a lagged negative correlation with GDP growth and a negative correlation with monetary policy efficacy. Granger causality shows that credit risk Granger causes GDP growth with a lag of three years. When monetary policy efficacy improves output gap widens. This means that actual output is farther from potential output. Businesses are having a boom in sales because of the expansionary phase of the business cycle or a bust because recession. Empirical data and regression results for the case of Tunisia show the prevalence of a Markov switching regime for credit risk, validating the jump effect hypothesis corresponding with a lag to the collapse of economic performance and heralding a sharp decline in economic performance caused by a phase shift in monetary policy efficacy. The transition probabilities found empirically validate the hypothesis of a persistent hypothesis of a first tranquil regime and a jump effect highly turbulent regime with a severe pike like the one in 2008 whose excessive negative consequences for economic performance and socioeconomic unrest have shown up with a lag of three years round end 2010 at the onslaught of regional MENA economic and sociopolitical meltdowns. The study concluded that the probability of transition from regime one with jump to regime 2 with steady low credit risk is very significant, whereas the probability of transition from regime 2 to regime 1 is expected to be non-significant, which means that regime switches of financial and socioeconomic distress are not ascertained but when they happen the return to the steady state is ascertained.

The Effectiveness of Infotainment Advertising: Consumer Attitudes Across TV and Print Media

2025-08-08T11:10:43+00:00

An Infotainment advertisement is a type of TV advertisement that begins with providing knowledge to the audience, and the sponsor’s name is shown only at the end of the advertisement. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of infotainment advertising compared to traditional product-focused advertising across different media formats (television and print), and to explore the role of self-referencing in shaping consumer attitudes and purchase intentions toward advertised products. The self-referencing perspective, which considers the extent to which consumers relate ad content to personal memories and experiences, offers useful insights into how Infotainment advertisement influences consumers’ attitudes. Self-referencing is a reason that infotainment may have more positive attitudes toward the advertisement and thus the product.

This study is based on 2x2x2 experiments, 2 products (facial masks vs card debt consolidation loans), 2 media (TV vs print), and 2 types of advertisements (i.e., Infotainment ad vs self-product-focused ad). For this experiment, undergraduate students enrolled in Principles of Marketing courses at City University of Hong Kong and Chu Hai College of Higher Education, who had no prior exposure to infotainment advertising concepts, were selected as participants. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions and exposed to a single advertisement corresponding to their assigned group. Responses of the participants were measured using a 7-point Likert scale.

The results suggest that the Infotainment TV ads do have positive effects on the audience’s attitudes toward the advertisement and product, as well as purchase intention. However, the effects are not significant for print ads. From the findings, it is recommended that advertisers should prioritize infotainment TV ads for higher engagement.